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You can also check out the SBPS Elementary and Secondary Library pages at http://sbps.stbenedict.com/library-home/ for our online catalog, book club info, and more.

CHECK IT OUT! WEEK OF FEBRUARY 6TH!

We have been so busy in the library this month!

 Our Booked for Recess Club met to discuss Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu. The overall opinions of the book were mixed. Some students enjoyed it, others thought it was an ok read, but nothing outstanding. The discussions are always amazing though! Our next book will be the sequel to The Apothocary, called The Apprentices by Maile Meloy. Notes will be sent home soon.

 

THE FIFTH GRADE FREEDOM QUILT

The Fifth graders read the book The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud. It tells the story of a young slave girl who uses secret codes woven into quilts to help her and her father escape to Canada on the Underground Railroad. After reading such an inspiring story, we were inspired to make our own library Freedom Quilt.

THE FIFTH GRADE FREEDOM QUILT

The Fifth graders read the book The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom by Bettye Stroud. It tells the story of a young slave girl who uses secret codes woven into quilts to help her and her father escape to Canada on the Underground Railroad. After reading such an inspiring story, we were inspired to make our own library Freedom Quilt.

Check It Out! Week of December 12th!

What a whirlwind these last few weeks have been in the library!

We started out the month of December with a meeting of our 4th and 5th grade Booked for Recess club. Our pick  was The Apothecary by Maile Meloy! Everyone, myself included, LOVED this book, which takes place in London during the 1950’s. We plan to make the sequel a future book club selection because we can’t wait to find out what happens to these amazing characters!

Last week, our school was honored to have Tom Watson, the author of the Stick Dog series, visit our school! Mr. Watson entertained us with some very funny stories about how he comes up with the ideas for his books, and even let us brainstorm suggestions for his next book. As a bonus, Mr. Watson taught us all how to draw his most famous characters! Thank you to the Book Stall in Winnetka for sponsoring this visit!

 

This trimester we have added a “Question of the Week” corner to the library. Each week a question is posted, along with a bin of books that may contain the answer. The students research the answer, write it on a slip of paper, along with the book title and page number where they found it, and place it in the box. At the end of the week, a slip is drawn and if that person has the correct answer, they win a prize. The first winner was Oliver in 2nd grade, who chose a poster from the book fair as his prize. He correctly answered the question “How many bees live in a hive?” with 60,000! Great job everyone!

Check It Out! Week of November 15th

Ready to Give Thanks!

We have been very busy in the library lately. We have been learning about how to use parts of non-fiction books to help us locate information quickly. The fifth graders had a little competition to see how many trivia questions about our past presidents they could answer as a group using only the books in front of them. The winners were Ms. Harris’ class! Congrats!

We also learned about the history of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and read about the man who created the awesome balloons we look forward to seeing each year. The book is called Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet and tells the story of Tony Sarg, a puppeteer who started the tradition of having balloons in the parade back in 1927. We learned that during the first few years, once the parade was over, they would just let the balloons go and float around for days. Once they landed, if you found one, you could claim a prize! The students thought they should do the same thing today!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Check It Out! Week of October 24th!

Twas the Week Before Halloween…

When we came into the library this week, we found out that a bunch of bats had invaded our library tree! That must mean Halloween is almost here!

The lucky Thursday library classes participated in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Day on Thursday, October 27th. We joined libraries and classrooms around the world in reading the book The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach. We are hoping the break the world record for the most people reading the same book in 24 hours. Fingers crossed!

MS. PETERS’ CLASS READING WITH OUR FRIEND BEAR!

We also met for the first 4th and 5th grade Booked for Recess book club! This month’s selection was The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. We had an interesting discussion about which character we felt we were the most like and speculated for a long time about what we hope might happen in future books. Next month’s selection is The Apothecary by Maile Meloy. I will be sending home the registration forms next week, and they will be posted on the library site as well.

 The October Booked for Recess Club!

This week the Secondary Library was honored to welcome author Peter Kujawinski to speak about his book Nightfall and to talk about the writing process and his years as an American diplomat. He kept the packed house of sixth, seventh and eighth graders spellbound with a reading from his book, which is a spooky survival story, perfect for Halloween reading! Thank you to The Book Cellar for sponsoring the event!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Wiederkehr

Check it Out! Week of October 18th!

This week all of our library classes started recording the Bluestem or Monarch Award books that they have read so far. The students are so excited to read all the books on their list and prepare to vote for their favorite in March. The books are chosen by librarians all around the state of Illinois and lists are distributed to schools to be read and voted on. Links to the 2017 titles can be found here:

http://www.islma.org/Bluestem.htm

http://www.islma.org/monarch.htm

Grades K-2 will be reading to help choose the winner of the 2017 Monarch Award. The name Monarch was chosen because of the butterfly and its familiarity to K-2 children. It symbolized the growth, change and freedom that becoming a reader brings. The Monarch Award is designed to encourage children to read critically and become familiar with children’s books, authors and illustrators.

Grades 3-5 will be reading to help choose the winner of the 2017 Bluestem Award. The award is designed for students in grades 3-5 who are ready for longer titles than are found on the Monarch list, but not quite ready for the sophistication of some of the Rebecca Caudill titles (grades 6-8). Named in honor of the Big Bluestem, the state prairie grass, the award includes both timeless classics and current titles.

Students may read these books on their own, but we will also be reading some of these titles in library class as time allows. We have at least one copy of each title in the ES library, and students are also welcome to visit their local library and check them out there. Students need to read 4 (Bluestem) or 5 Monarch books to be eligible to vote, but of course can read up to all 20 books on their particular list. They will then come to library class and tell me what books they have read as they finish them. We will be keeping track of their progress together. Then, sometime in late February or early March, the students will vote for their favorite books and we will send in our final choices.

We are very excited about participating in an event with so many other schools and public libraries across Illinois.

The third, fourth and fifth grade classes also learned about how to use a Thesaurus and found out who Peter Roget was and how he came up with the idea for a book to help you choose just the right word by reading The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Wiederkehr

Check it Out! Week of September 26th!

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed!

This week, our library classes celebrated the birthday of Johnny Appleseed on September 26th. We read the book Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of John “Appleseed” Chapman by Esme Raji Codell. We learned that John Chapman was a real person who lived more than 200 years ago. He had 11 brothers and sisters and we learned why he is depicted as wearing a pot on his head. (Easy to carry and kept the rain off!)

We then took a poll of our favorite apple treats. The winner by a landslide was the caramel apple, with apple pie a close second!

This week also happened to be National Cat Week, so we pulled a bunch of books about cats for the students to browse.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Wiederkehr

Check it Out! Week of September 19th

This week in the library we celebrated both International Dot Day and the 100th birthday of author Roald Dahl! We read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and then each student added a dot to our big dot to create a giant dot made out ot dots! Whew! That’s a lot of dots! 🙂

We also read a story written by Roald Dahl’s daughter Ophelia that told a bit about what it was like to grow up with a famous author as a father. The favorite part for all the students was the tale of how her father taught her to drive a car when she was 10 years old and used to let her drive alone around the village where they lived! We were all pretty amazed that no one seemed to think twice about it!

Have a wonderful weekend!!

Mrs. Wiederkehr

Check It Out! Week of September 12th

This week the younger classes learned some ways to pick a “just-right” book, just like Goldilocks! We can look at the cover to see if it is interesting to us, we can flip through the pages to see if the pictures draw us in, or early readers can use the “five-finger” rule: Read the first page and count on one hand the number of words you might not know. If it is four or more, the book might be too difficult to read on our own, if it is one or less, the book might not be challenging enough, and if it is two or three, the book is most likely “just-right” for reading on our own.

We also read Stella Louella’s Runaway Book by Lisa Campbell Ernst, a story about a little girl who gets the whole neighborhood involved in searching for her lost library book.

The older grades started our exploration of non-fiction biographies by reading Mr. Farris and His Wheel by Kathryn Gibbs Davis. We discovered that the Ferris Wheel has a long history in Chicago, going all the way back to the 1893 World’s Fair, and that engineering is a pretty cool profession!

The third graders worked on a special project in library this week. Each third grade class worked together to make a class book about taking care of your library books to share with the Kindergarten classrooms. The students worked very hard to illustrate both the right and wrong ways to treat your library books so that we can share the story with the Kindergartners next week. Great job, third grade!!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Wiederkehr

A Update from Ms. Susina

Hi everyone,

I have been keeping in touch with Ms. Susina over the summer and she recently sent me this update of what she has been up to!

Hello, SBPS Families!  I promised to let you all know where I ended up after leaving St. Ben’s in June.  After a relaxing (but also anxious) summer, I was offered the job of Information and Digital Services librarian in the children’s department at Franklin Park Public Library.  I will start there on September 12th.  I had a very good feeling when I interviewed there and the children’s area felt very comfortable.  I am also thrilled that they use the Dewey Decimal system!  There will be lots of new challenges ahead and I am looking forward to learning what it is like to be a public librarian.  I miss you all very much, but I know that the experiences I had with your children in the last 5 years will be with me and I know it helped to prepare me for my new role.  I do still plan on visiting St. Ben’s, as I do have vacation pictures of Ivan the gorilla to share (the book character that students voted for me to take with over summer vacation) and I will be sure to visit the book fair in December.  If you ever find yourself in the Franklin Park area, be sure to stop by and see me 🙂 I hope you all had a great start to the school year and I wish everyone well in the months ahead!  Mrs. Susina

New Beginnings

Hello everyone! My name is Lisa Wiederkehr and I am the new librarian at St. Benedict Preparatory School. I would like to say thank you to all of you for such a warm welcome! Everyone who stopped me to say hello, introduce themselves, or ask how things were going helped to make me feel very much at home. I am having a blast getting to know all of these wonderful kids and enjoying learning who they are and, of course, what kinds of things they love to read! My interests, as your children know already, includes obsessing about the Chicago Blackhawks, enjoying anything Harry Potter related, going to concerts and reading as much as I can!

St. Benedict is an amazing place and I feel very blessed to have become a part of such a wonderful community. I can’t wait to share all of the exciting things we will be doing in the library this year!