IMC Cafe this week

Welcome to the IMC Cafe! My name is Mrs. Csorba and I'll be your sever this week. Our chef has cooked up 20 delicious titles for you to taste test! These books are all being nominated for the Bluestem award. What is the Bluestem award? "Big Bluestem, the Illinois state prairie grass, symbolizes the entire Bluestem Award and the variety of titles on the Master List each year.  The deep roots of this dominant native grass of the tall grass prairie indicate the older titles with lasting appeal.  New yearly growth relates to the newer titles chosen.  Its changing colors are a reflection of the variety of literatures, and the three seed spikes represent the three grades of students for whom the program is intended: 3rd, 4th, and 5th." -ISLMA

Students must read at least 4 of these titles to vote for their favorite by end of February. 

Here is the link to the list. We have multiple copies of all 20 titles. There is a special prize for students that read all 20! :) 

Bluestem List

What's happening in the IMC?

3rd graders are hearing about Chromebooks expectations and reviewing them with a game called Kahoot!
4th and 5th are looking at our database called NoveList. It is an online booking finding source. They can either use it to find the next book they want to read but they'll have to check our OPAC to make sure we have it in the IMC. If not students will learn how to fill out a google form for book recommendations for our Panther Pick display.

IMC Orientation

This week students heard about the IMC expectations and how to be respectful, responsible and safe. We also reviewed book care and circulation! A note went home about this. Have you seen it? :)

4th and 5th graders played a Kahoot to review book care and circulation. It was a lot of fun. Ask them about it!  Below is a link to book care rules with Skippy Jon Jones! Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/YnOfQQiiPpE

Welcome Back!

We've been busy getting our IMC ready for our Panthers to check out all our fabulous materials! The students were welcomed into the IMC this week by hearing a cute story called, Do Unto Otters by Laurie Kelley. It is a book about manners and the golden rule "Do Unto Otters as you would want Otters to do unto you!" We made otter bookmarks as well. I enjoyed hearing about your child's summer and the books they have read too! Next week we will have orientation and a note will come home with your child about this!

What's Going on in the IMC

It is that time of year when we start reading one of the book award nominees to the students! This year 3rd grade is hearing Justin Case: School, Drool, and Other Daily Disasters. 4th grade is listening to Mission Unstoppable from the Genius Files and 5th grade is listening to Masterminds or The Fourteenth Goldfish! It is a fun time of the year to enjoy these nominees. We also will be reading a little bit during book checkout to ensure we finish the book by the end of the school year!!!

Update from the IMC

Last week recap:
3rd grade finished up Text Features unit. We took a brief look at the Bluestem nominees for 2017.
This upcoming week students will learn about some basics for coding!!!!!

4th grade students participated in the Hour of Code and learned some basic coding from code.org! This week we will continue exploring this wonderful website with some other activities.

5th grade students had a Nearpod lesson on Website evaluation and learned about 8 things to look for when evaluating a website to make sure it is a reliable source. Next week we will apply these tools and determine which websites are fake and real from a list provided.

What's New In the IMC?

Welcome Back from Spring Break! Hope everyone had a wonderful time!

This week our 3rd graders will continue with our text features unit. We will finish up by learning about diagrams and captions.

4th graders will learn about Novelist. We will learn how this is a great resource for reader's advisory. We also will take a look at the new list of the 2017 list of Caudills and Bluestems!

5th graders will be reminded how to use Novelist and be given time to explore this reader's advisory source and hopefully find their next book they'll want to read. We will also look at the Bluestem and Caudill list for 2017.

Student Book Review :: The Sixty-eight Rooms

Title: The Sixty-eight Rooms
Author: Marianne Malone
Call Number: FIC MAL
Reviewer: Isabel 
Summary: This book is about a girl named Ruthie. At her school she id going on a field trip to a museum called The Sixty-eight Rooms.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Review: I recommend this book because you really want to keep reading it and there is a lot of cool stuff. I also like it because it is based off a real museum called The Sixty-Eight Rooms.

Student Book Review :: The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912

Title: The Sinking of the Titanic, 1912
Author: Lauren Tarshis
Call Number: FIC TAR
Reviewer: LC

Summary: It's about a boy named George, and his sister. They are on the Titanic, which hit an iceberg. Will they make it out in time?

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Review: It has a lot of action.

Week of January 18-22

This week begins internet safety. We will spend this week and next week learning about internet safety from Common Sense Media using a Nearpod lesson. Then, we will continue with internet safety on and off for the remainder of the year.

This week 3rd grade will learn about Rings of Responsibility. These rings are: self, family & friends, and community. Students will reflect on how they are responsible offline, how are they digitally responsible online in these rings and how their actions effect themselves and others.

4th grade will looks at Strong Passwords. We will identify characteristics of strong passwords, apply these characteristics and create new, strong passwords, and create posters to share this information.

5th grade will look at talking safely online. We will analyze private information and why it shouldn't be given out to anyone without parent permission. We also will debate on what to do when someone we don't know asks us for our private information!

Student Book Review :: Home of the Brave

Title: Home of the Brave
Author: Katherine Applegate 
Call Number: FIC APP
Reviewer: Reese


Summary: It is about this boy named Kek and he is from Africa. And he lived with his Dad, Mom And his brother. But him and his Mom were the only ones who survived, and she is missing!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review:I recommend this book because it is very interesting to me. And it is very good.

Student Book Review :: Harry Potter Series

Title: Harry Potter Series
Author: J.K Rowling
Call Number: FIC ROW
Reviewer: Maya

Summary: The Harry Potter series is about a boy wizard whose parents have died. Harry's parents were killed by the greatest dark wizard of all time- Voldemort. Harry is the only known wizard to survive the Killing curse that Voldemort kills people with. Harry must defeat Voldemort. He goes to a school too, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes friends and enemies.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Review:It is good, magic filled, with horrors for Harry on every turn.

Student Book Review :: Wings of Fire Series

Student Book Review: Wings of Fire Series

Title:The Wings of Fire Series :: The Dragonet Prophecy is #1)
Author: Tui Sutherland
Call Number: FIC SUT
Reviewer: Lukas

Summary: This 5 dragons who want to join a war which will stop everyone's differences. The 5 dragon species our a Mudwing, Sandwing, Nightwing, Seawing, Rainwing. Each have names which are Clay-Mudwing, Sunny-Sandwing, Tsunami-Seawing, Glory-Rainwing, Starlight-Nightwing. If you want to know more about these characters read it and you'll find out.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review:I like it because it feels like to me a mystery like who are the bad guys in the war and other dragons just lying that their species are the good guys.

Student Book Reviews and Interactive Books

This week in the IMC 4th and 5th graders learned how to fill out a book recommendation and write a book review via Google Docs. We are excited to post these book reviews on the IMC blog. Please check in often to read the reviews. Also you'll find the link to submit a book recommendation on the right hand side of the blog! We love recommendations!



3rd grade learned about a bunch of book series we have that are interactive books. Many books either have you go to a website to play a game or watch a video.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Library Learners! What are your 2016 Reading Resolutions?

This week in the IMC we made 2016 flap books that both reflected on books we read and helped set up our 2016 reading resolutions.

The weather outside is chilly! Warm up with a good book? Need book recommendations? Check out our winter genre spotlight. We are focusing on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Also our January Author Spotlight is Tom Angleberger!