Ms. J's First Week

For my first week teaching in the library at Upham Elementary School I wanted to find a way to get to know the students and also allow them a chance to get to know me.  What better way than to share some of my favorite new books?  After all, sharing stories and books is a very librarian thing to do.

2013 has been a great year for picture books and the Caldecott Medal will be announced on Monday, January 27th so I thought sharing books and stories for the next few weeks could also give students an opportunity to see what books might win the award.  My plan is to have our own voting to see which book the students of Upham think should win the prize for best picture book of 2013.

Some of the topics we will discuss this week:

• Why are picture books important?
• If a book has illustrations does that make it a picture book?
• Can a picture book be non-fiction?
• What types of themes and vocabulary do you find in picture books?
• What is the difference between an author and an illustrator?

We will look at the book that won the Caldecott Medal last year and discuss why students think this book won:

This is Not My Hat
Written and Illustrated by Jon Klassen

We will also look at some of the other titles that won Caldecott Honors such as Creepy Carrots illustrated by Peter Brown and Extra Yarn also illustrated by Jon Klassen.

Some of the new books that we will be reading and discussing are:

Here is a VoiceThread we made in library with the 1st Grade classes.  The question was, "Was there ever a time when you went wild like Mr. Tiger?"






The 4th Graders had a chance to answer a question too.  Ms. J asked for their opinion about picture books. Not everyone is a fan of picture books... at least not yet.  They typed in their answers on a Padlet (padlet.com) wall: