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!

Last IMC class of 2015!

We've ended our Typing Unit last week. I really encourage my library learners to continue on with the program until they've completed all levels. We will revisit typing next year. They program we used was www.typing.com. Students can continue with the accounts I've created or sign up for a new account, with parent permission. :)

This week, we listened to a holiday story to kick off winter break. 3rd grade listened to Chris Van Allsburg's The Polar Express narrated by William Hurt. 4th grade was read Cranberry Christmas. 5th grade read The Carpenter's Gift :: A Christmas Tale about the Rockefeller Center Tree. Students can learn more about the tree at www.rockefellercenter.com or more about Habitat for Humanity at www.habitat.org

Take a look at our busy year in the IMC! It has been fun! We will continue to have fun in 2016!





Enjoy the holidays with you and your families! Merry Christmas!

Typing Unit Has Ended

Our typing unit has ended. However I highly encourage your child to continue with our program! Students may continue with typing at www.typing.com and use the accounts I created for them!

Next week we will do something fun in IMC before we break for winter!

Typing

We are working on our typing skills for the next several weeks in the IMC. We started our typing unit last week. This will continue up until the week before Winter break. We are learning home row position and continuing as the program progresses. Students are encouraged to use home row position when they are using their Chromebooks...not just when they're practicing typing. Students are welcome to practice at home with the free program at www.typing.com

Halloween Week in the IMC

We've enjoyed our storybook pumpkins that have been coming in to the IMC! Thank you to everyone who participated and created a pumpkin! They all turned out spook-tacular! Check them all out here in the video!





This week students listened to one of Patrick Carmen's 3:15 Things That Go Bump in the Night. This is my favorite book to read to the students. 3:15 means we "listen to a chilling introduction", we "read the spooky story", and we "watch the scary video ending" if we decide we're brave enough! Visit 315stories.com for more info!

IMC Cafe

Last week and this week IMC classes will be coming to library class for IMC cafe. Here we will be taste testing the 20 nominees for the Bluestem award and the Rebecca Caudill award. Students in grades 3-5 should read 4 or more Bluestem nominees by February to vote. Students in grades 4 & 5 should read 3 or more of the Caudills to vote in February for their favorite.

IMC update

Last night we had a very successful and amazing literacy night with bestselling author, Kate Klise! She visited our school to do a writer's workshop with our students and parents. It was a free event thanks to our awesome PTO! Students learned about the writing process to write their own best seller and many had a chance to share their stories. We even heard one of Kate's stories, Grammy Lamby and the Secret Handshake. Kate had books to purchase and autographed them all and took many pictures with our library learners. Such a fun night! Thank you to everyone that came out!

Coming up this week in the IMC:

3rd: Will go on a book hunt with the iPads. We've been talking about location in the library and where our materials are found. This activity will reinforce location. They will work in teams and hunt for books in different sections of the library. 

4th: We will continue with our genre unit. We already studied realistic and science fiction. This week we will learn about the elements that make a book historical fiction. 

5th: We will continue with our Dewey Decimal unit. We will finish up our Dewey Hunt and make a word cloud to describe the section of the nonfiction collection using tagul.com.