Monday, February 22, 2016

Seventh Grade Book Trailer Project

Seventh graders in Mrs. VandenBush's ELA classes have been working for over a month to create book trailers for the first time. Using Animoto, students worked independently outside of class to create a trailer that highlights a favorite book while at the same time entices others to read their selection. Prior to creating their trailers, I reviewed with students copyright law pertaining to republishing others' images and music; citing sources; copyright-free image and music sources; and technical and aesthetic aspects to consider when creating a great trailer.

View a sampling of our students' projects below. You can also view more by visiting the Book Trailers page on the DPMS library website.





Third Quarter Library Newsletter

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Friday, February 19, 2016

A Battle Victor at Last!


DPMS students have been reading like crazy and studying hard since this fall to prepare for our school and state Battle of the Books competition. This Wednesday a winning team was finally declared, and we now know who will move on to the state competition.

To prepare for our competition, teams were required to read all 20 books from this year's required reading list. They also had to study the correct spellings of all titles and authors. During our friendly online competition, students were given 20 questions about the books, and they had to correctly identify and spell both the title and author for each. Ten points were awarded for each correct title, and five points were given for the correct author. This online competition provided a nice simulation for the team who will be moving to the state Battle of the Books competition.

It was exciting and energizing to watch our teams in action. As I wandered about the library, students were heavily engaged in the process with lots of enthusiastic debates and conversations occurring as they attempted to answer each question. These students were taking this very seriously, with the end results proving that each team was determined to move on to the next level of this competition. I was so proud of each of their efforts and their commitment to taking on this extra academic challenge on top of all of their other responsibilities.

Which team came out on top? It came down to one answer. While I feel that they are all winners, here is how our nine teams ranked:
1st place: Peyton, Mallory, Violet, and Hannah
2nd place: Samantha, Olivia, Kate, and Kendra
3rd place: Mya, Naihua, Izzy, and Sami
4th place: Taylor, Anna, Shayla, and Megan
5th place: Matthew, Henry, Ryan, and Andrew
6th place: Alina, Rachel, Josie, and Jolie
7th place: Sylvia, Ashna, Alexis, and Leisl
8th place: Bryce, Nick, and Tag
9th place: Hailey, Ava, and Lauren

The state Battle of the Books competition, sponsored by the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association, will take place at DPMS on Tuesday, February 23. Good luck to the team representing DPMS!