Season's Readings! What to read over the holiday

A few people have asked for recommendations of what to read during the holidays. Here are some lists with many titles to choose from.

Common Sense Media has a bunch of lists. Most of which you can search by age range.

Check out this MentorMob playlist for links to a variety of lists. This is my first time using MentorMob to put together resources. Let me know what you think.

Create your own Playlist on MentorMob!

Season's Readings!

Image courtesy of santathing, http://www.librarything.com/blogs/librarything/2007/12/santathing-about-to-close/

The Red Dot Award 2013

The Red Dot Award is a children's choice award where the shortlisted titles are chosen by a committee of teacher librarians in Singapore from recent children's literature (first published in English within the past four years), with the goal of offering a range of books from around the world. Students will vote for their favorite books in March. 

The Red Dot books are divided into four categories:

Early Years (ages 3-7)

Younger Readers (ages 7-10)

Older Readers (ages 10-14)

Mature Readers (ages 14-adult) - these books will be in the secondary library.

Stop by the library to check out the books or browse these resources to find out more.  

Early Years

Younger Readers

Older Readers

The Red Dot Youtube Playlist 

The Red Dot Diigo group

Here's a MentorMob playlist of resources including book trailers, author interviews, and activities for some of the books. 

Create your own Playlist on MentorMob!

Voting will take place early March and the Reader's Cup will take place in May. 

Getting Serious about Series

Has this happened to you? You finished reading an amazing book, you know it's the first in a series but you're not sure which book to read next.  Don't you hate it when you can't figure out which title is next in a series?

Check out this website. 

You can search by series title, series subject, book title, or author. It's easy! If you search by author, you might find another series by the same author that you might like too.

We don't have all of these titles yet, but if you see something you think we should have in our library, let me know!

Writing Competition- A Martian Christmas

 Attention UWCSEA writers! Australian author, Sarah Brennan, is sponsoring a writing competition about Christmas on Mars.

Hmm…Christmas on Mars…I wonder what that would be like? Would there be Christmas trees…or Christmas rocks? Christmas crackers … or Christmas craters? Would there be a jolly old man in a red suit called Santa…or a grumpy little green man with a name more like Splorrg or Grrrmph! What would Martians eat at Christmas time? What would they give for presents? Would they sing Christmas carols? It’s entirely up to you and your amazing imagination!

There will be two age groups: grades 1-3 and grade 4-6. 

Entries due by midnight January 18, 2013. 

For more information go to Sarah's blog.  

WebPath Express- a new online resource

WebPath Express is a search tool that provides K-12 students with safe, fun and familiar searches that integrate over 70,000 trustworthy, relevant websites into our library catalog.

Here’s how to use it; the steps are quite simple.

1.    http://catalog.uwcsea.edu.sg/   OR   UWCSEA East-Primary Library

2.    Click on the WebPath Express tab on the left. 

3.    There are 3 ways to search:

• Search
• Browse
• Visual Search 

4. Choose the correct grade level. 

Goodreads for Read Alouds

Many people have asked me for recommendations of great read alouds for their classes.

I've just started using Goodreads to share lists with you for read aloud recommendations. So far, I have started lists for grades 1-5. These are novels not picture books. Have a look and, of course, feel free to share your favorites with me and I'll add them.

Coming soon to Singapore!

What do Harry Potter, The Cat in the Hat, Twinkletoes, and Fantastic Mr. Fox have in common? They will all be in Singapore! We are very fortunate to have some exciting children's literature related events nearby. Click on the dates below for more information. 

2 June- 30 September

22 August - 3- September

4-16 September

8 September 

1 November - 9 December

31 January - 9 February Horrible Histories! Mr. Gruffalo! Mr. Bean!

Back to School!

The primary library officially opened this week and so far things are going smoothly. Thank you for your patience as we continue to get things ready for the school year. Hundreds of boxes of books have arrived and we are working our way through them to get them on the shelves and in the classrooms. Our priority is getting books in your class libraries and then the new books for the library. Here are some links to beginning of the year info. 

Library Procedures

UWCSEA eResources: Online Databases

 To get logins / passwords:

send a blank email to
database_passwords@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg
and all the logins/passwords will be automatically sent back to you.  
(NB: Only works for people with an @gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg email address.)

Click below to find out how to:

Check your library account

Search Destiny- the Library Catalog

Search Using Destiny Quest

Summer Reading Lists and Online Reading Activities

These lists are compiled by teachers and experts in children's literature. They are to be taken as guides to interesting titles, not as a school endorsed 'must read' list.

Every child has different abilities and interests so please use these lists as starting points in helping your child find a book within which he or she can escape!

The Bookbag UK

The Guardian UK

The American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Books

The Horn Book- US

The Children's Book Council of Australia

Reading Rockets- US

Red Dot 2012-13 Long List

Below are links to some online reading activities.

If you have an email address you can sign up to play free reading games.

Create a Wimpy Kid style avatar, play the Cheese Touch game, find out more about the author.

Actors reading children’s books

The New York City public library resources- links, booklists, activies, holidays

Write to your favorite fantasy characters and wonderfully, those characters write back!

A children’s digital library

Dr. Seuss games and activities

Games, info, activities, videos

Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard magazines

BBC news for kids

Time magazine for kids

100s of poems to read and rate.

Mysteries to solve, scary stories, and magic tricks

Sunglasses Image Credit: http://www.jpsblog.org

June in the Library

The library will be closed (no classes and no students during break times) for the last 2 weeks of school, June  4- 15. No, this doesn't mean that the library staff are going on holiday early!

We really want to get a head start on organizing class libraries for next school year before the new book orders arrive. To do this, we need as many books returned to the library as soon as possible.

We realize that you will still need books to continue running an academic program. However, (I won't name names but... :) some of you still have books that were checked out way back in September. We would like the majority of books checked out to you, your class library, GCCs, etc returned by Friday June 1. Don't panic! We will be flexible and reasonable.

However, here are some incentives:

Be the first teacher (who has books checked out) to return all books checked out in his/her name and receive a bottle of wine.  

Congratulations Julie Day!
The first class with all student books returned will receive chocolates.
Congratulations Helen Killen and K1HKi!

The first class with all class library books returned will receive ice cream. 

Congratulations Sharon Martin and K1ShM!

• Books with a sticker like this, do not need to be returned:

(except for K2- sorry but we need all your CL books back.)

• Book sets with a sticker like below, should be returned to your grade's book cupboard. 
• Any book sets in your book cupboard without this sticker, need to be returned to the library. 

 

Student Info-

• All books due June 1. 
• Overdue notices will be sent via email to students in grades 3-5. Please remind students to check their email and forward the reminder to their parents to help locate all books as soon as possible.

**I'm sure the last thing you need is such a long blog post to read. So, be the first person to email me that you've read it to then end and you'll get a bottle of wine! Congrats to Anne Marie Chow!

Readers Cup Winners!

Congratulations to our Younger Readers team who tied for first place in the Singapore Red Dot Readers Cup competition on May 24!

Our teams members are:

Younger Readers:

Avni Tohani

Divya Kartik

Aishwarya Santosh

Kina Takahashi

Abha Panchdhari

                                                                    Rhea Shrivastava

Library Catalog How To...

Want to know....

1. Check your library account?

2. Search the library catalog?

3. Search using Destiny Quest?

Image courtesy of  http://www.prosofteng.com/blog/drive-genius-3-how-to-guides/

1. 
   

The Readers Cup 2012

UWCSEA East will host the Singapore Red Dot Readers Cup competition on Thursday May 24 4:00-6:00 PM in the the auditorium. The Readers Cup is where teams from different international schools will test their knowledge of books from the Red Dot awards in two categories: Younger (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and Older (Grades 4, 5, and 6).

Nineteen students in grade 2-5 have been preparing after school for 5 weeks. Our team members are:

Older Readers:

Alice Tay 

Tanya Cukierman 

Siona Mitra 

Siddhant Dahiya

Jaiveer Nalwa

Lucy Cooper

Younger Readers:

Avni Tohani

Divya Kartik

Aishwarya Santosh

Kina Takahashi

Abha Panchdhari

Rhea Shrivastava

Alternates:

Amrita Singh

Arhan Singh

Arjun Gore

Arya Bhandari

Austin Bennett

Naia Corbett

Sahej Anand

Sara Matsubara

Rukhsana Khan

Rukhsana Khan is an award-winning author and storyteller. She was born in Lahore, Pakistan and immigrated to Canada at the age of three. 

Rukhsana has eleven books published including The Big Red Lollipop which was on the Red Dot short list. 

She has appeared on television and radio numerous times, has been featured at international conferences in Denmark, Mexico, Singapore, Italy, and South Africa, and has presented all across Canada and the U.S. 

She tells tales of India, Persia, the Middle East, as well as her own stories. Rukhsana will visit UWC East on May 24th and present to students in grades 1, 2, 3, 6, and 8 .  

Databases

On our library catalog (Destiny) homepage, you will find links to the databases that we subscribe to.  

Finding an online space to keep logins is a bit tricky. Since these are paid subscriptions, we don't want to publish them online unless the site is password protected. To help alleviate the frustration of not knowing where to find this info, Katie has set up the following:

Send a blank email to: 

database_passwords@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

and all the logins/passwords will be automatically emailed back to you.  

(NB: Only works for people with an @gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg email address.)

Save the email and you're all set. Thanks to Katie for setting this up!

Earth Day 2012

Earth Day snuck up on me this year. I can't believe it is almost April 22! I apologize that I didn't post this earlier but it's never too late celebrate Earth Day.

We've created a display in the library of fiction and nonfiction books that you might want to use with your classes.

The Lorax on youtube

The new Lorax trailer


Also, here are a few websites with information and resources.

Huffington Post

DOGO News

Planet Pals

Green Living

The Lorax Project

US Environmental Protection Agency

DLTK

Kaboose

Image courtesy of Michelle at http://qreateandtrack.com/2011/04/22/happy-earth-day/

Read & Recycle @ UWCSEA East

Need something to read over the spring break? 


Feel free to take a book from the "Read & Recycle" bookshelves outside the Kishore Mahbubani Library on the main plaza.  

We have books for all ages -- board books for babies, picture books, early readers, beginning chapter books, novels, nonfiction, travel guides,  business & economics textbooks, cookbooks, old Readers Digest magazines, etc.

The shelves outside the secondary library are part of a new service activity for handling second-hand book donations and supporting literacy.  High school students will be supervising primary school students in managing the process and keeping the shelves in order.

We only ask that you return the books that we have labeled specifically "Read & Recycle" (see photo below of the label) when you are done reading them so others may enjoy them.  But if you don't, we'll never know.  This is a total honor system.  We just want books to circulate.

NB:  Books with NO label are free for the taking.  You can take them home for good or read and pass on to others. 

How it works

Deliver your book donations to one of the libraries -- or place in the secondary library's Return Box outside the front door.

Books will be sorted into four categories.

• Suitable for the school library;
• Suitable for a global concern;'
• Likely to be of interest to several people -- these books will get a "Read & Recycle" sticker and we expect people to return them after reading -- or pass them on to someone else;
• Unlikely to be that popular -- these books will not get a sticker and will be free for the taking.  (These books are ones that need a good home.)

Money donations in appreciation of this service will be accepted, with proceeds going towards new books for children in Cambodia and Indonesia.  Twice a year there will be a book sale when all "Read & Recycle" books will be cleared.

Questions?  Contact Ms. Katie Day in the secondary library (kda@uwcsea.edu.sg / 8233-2922).

And the Red Dot Book Award winners are....

With 14 schools participating in the voting and over 7,000 votes cast in total, the winners for the Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore as a whole are:

Early Years

Younger Readers

Older Readers

Mature Readers

Within our campus, the winners were almost identical to the Singapore-wide ones.  The only difference was in the Younger Readers category, our students liked "Lunch Lady" better:

and in the Mature Readers category, "Stitches" was tied with "Ship Breaker".

The Readers Cup competition will be held on May 10, 2012, at our campus.

Titles (a subset of the shortlists for Younger, Older, and Mature readers) for the Readers Cup event will be announced within the next few days (as we know you're all anxious to start working).  Watch for more details about how the teams will be selected.

What about next year's Red Dot shortlists?  Well, we've already set up Goodreads Listopia lists to collect suggestions.  And our goal is to collect and consider these long lists by June -- and announce the shortlists BEFORE the June/July break.  So you can be reading over the summer.

NB:  To put a book on the suggestion list, you do have to have a Goodreads account.

Click below to access each of the lists -- and add whatever books you want.  I've populated the lists -- to start with -- with books from the Panda Book Awards (the China equivalent of the Red Dot awards) and the Sakura Medal (the Japanese equivalent).  Books should have been published in English in 2009, 2010, 2011, or 2012.

• Early Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Younger Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Older Readers 2013 - LONG LIST
• Mature Readers 2013 - LONG LIST

Questions?  Come ask Ms. Day in the secondary library -- or email me (kda@uwcsea.edu.sg).