Friday, April 27, 2018

Red Clover winner

The Red Clover Award is a Vermont state book award for the best new picture book of the year. The committee chooses ten books and children in grades K-4 read them and vote.

My method of voting worked well last year, so we did the same thing again this year. After I read all ten books to the kids (over the span of several weeks), each kid gets a sticker dot to place on their book page of choice.





This year Whoosh, by Chris Barton, was the clear winner. It is a good book, but I'm a little skeptical of how many kids truly loved it and how many were voting for the book with the most stickers. :) I may try something a little more confidential next year!


Whoosh tells the true story of Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the Super Soaker.  Mr. Johnson grew up in the 1950/60s, competed in science fairs at colleges that had just barely desegregated, worked at NASA on the Galileo mission, and went on to invent many things, including the Super Soaker.  The book is the story of diversity and overcoming adversity. A story of grit and perseverance.

I'll send the votes to the state to be compiled with votes from all of the other elementary schools.  We'll see if the rest of the state agrees with DBS's choice.

(My husband, reading over my shoulder while I wrote this, just went on a long tangent about thermal coupling, thermal piles, and the importance of the work Lonnie Johnson did for NASA and our space program.  So, I guess this guy is well known in the engineering field!)  

Friday, April 20, 2018

Mini golf video

I was playing with a new program this evening and decided to use it to put together a video of the PTO mini golf event from last month.  :)  I'm VP of the PTO, so I thought it would be a good job for me.  Check it out!


Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Dorothy Canfield Fisher winners

Fourth and fifth graders voted last week and The Land of Forgotten Girls, by Erin Entrada Kelly, was the winner at DBS!  There were 21 kids who read at least five of the nominated books and got to vote.  One motivated kiddo read all 29 books from the list! The Land of Forgotten Girls won by a small margin.  It seems there wasn't a landslide winner like there was last year.  It was also our Battle of the Books winner in 4th grade this year.



The Vermont Department of Libraries tallied the votes from all of the voters throughout the state and the official winner is Projekt 1065, by Alan Gratz!  I loved this book! It was so exciting!  It was also a semi-finalist in our Battle of the Books in 5th grade this year.



Alan Gratz has two books on next year's Dorothy Canfield Fisher book award list: Ban This Book, and Refugee.  Check out the whole list and get a jump start on your reading!

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Kindergarten Narratives


Kindergartners in my WIN group finished their narratives this week and were thrilled to see that I bound them into books.  They took turns reading their books to the rest of the group.  They felt very special sitting in the reading chair.  :)  Next writing topic - opinion pieces!  I think they'll do very well with that! :)