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

Check out all of the great events happening in your DPMS library by reading our latest newsletter.

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!

                

               
                
                

Practicing Spanish and Hanging Out

Eighth grade students in Ms. Bravick's Spanish classes had a unique opportunity last week to practice their beginning Spanish speaking skills with another group of seventh and eighth grade students from Hillsborough, NJ.  Using Google Hangouts via Chromebooks, students were able to meet in small groups and have a conversation related to what they have been learning in class this year.  As beginning speakers, students went back and forth asking one another questions about, for example, their favorite hobbies, sports, classes in school, and the make-up of their families.

Students were surprised at how well they could understand the Spanish spoken by their peers and how well they were able to translate their own thoughts.  Some students even mentioned that they were able to pick up some new vocabulary.  

Ultimately, this experience offered our students the chance to gain some confidence in their Spanish speaking abilities while at the same time providing the opportunity for them to meet students from another part of the country.  We look forward to future connections with our new friends in Hillsborough as well as connecting with other schools from native Spanish speaking countries who are interested joining in a Spanish-English language exchange.

3 Amazing Authors, 1 Inspiring Day

We had one great welcome back from Thanksgiving break on Monday, November 30.  Our 8th grade ELA classes had the opportunity to Skype with three exceptional young adult authors throughout the day.  Authors Rachel Vail, Stacey Lee, and Danette Vigilante volunteered to talk with our students about their work and the writing process while at the same time answering all of our students' burning questions.

Our morning began with the very entertaining Rachel Vail, author of over 30 books for children and young adults and the most recently published book Unfriended.  Funny and warm, Rachel was ready for our five classes of students to jump right in with questions.  

Our very curious students wanted to learn more about how long it takes to write a book, where she finds ideas for her writing, and even the age of her children.  Rachel's humor and enthusiasm certainly kept our students engaged and entertained during our 45 minutes together.  

Next, we met with new YA author Stacey Lee.  Stacey's debut novel Under a Painted Sky is a unique piece of historical fiction that tells the story of two girls who head West in the year 1849 to escape from two difficult situations.  Stacey was eager to tell students more about her background and her road to publishing.  After many failed guesses, students were not able to come close to figuring out that she revised her book over 600 times before it was finally published.  Stacey also wowed our students by showing us an edited page from her original manuscript; this page was almost completely covered in red penned comments and edits.  Even professional writers have to revise constantly.

Monday's Skype visits ended with author Danette Vigilante, writer of The Trouble with Half a Moon and Saving Baby Doe.  After sharing a bit about herself, Danette read aloud the first chapter of The Trouble with Half a Moon.  Students learned about how Danette went from being labeled a poor reader as a child to a professional writer.  They also heard more about how Danette's past inspired some of the story that eventually became The Trouble with Half a Moon.  

I am always in awe of authors who will take time out of their busy schedules to meet with kids, share their stories, and ultimately inspire them to grow as readers and writers.  DPMS is especially lucky that all 8th grade students had the opportunity to make such meaningful connections.  A special thank you goes out to Melinda at Penguin Publishing who worked her magic to match all of our students up with these fantastic authors.  Thank you especially to Rachel, Stacey, and Danette for sharing your important stories and showing our young readers that their voices are important and do matter.

Second Quarter Library Newsletter

Find out what has been happening in our LMC by reading our most recent newsletter.
 

One Amazing #GRA15 Comes to an End

It has been an incredible six weeks at DPMS while participating in this year's Global Read Aloud Project. Together with Literacy Coach, Peggy Rohan, I was fortunate to work weekly with a group of 7th grade students who elected to read Fish by L.S. Matthews in addition to their regular ELA class work.  During our six weeks together, we partnered with 7th graders from Tosorontio Central Public School in Everett, Ontario, Canada.  In addition to meeting via Facetime to discuss Fish, we also exchanged hand-written letters, emails, and iMovie videos.  It is always fascinating to learn more about how other kids live in different parts of the world.  More often than not (as was the case here), we find out that we have more in common with them than we even realized.

In addition to our partnership with Tosorontio students, we were also able to connect with schools from Arizona and Merton, WI through a group chat via Voxer. Voxer is a free messaging service that connects users through voice, photo, and text messaging.  Students in our group asked and responded to various questions about Fish throughout our six weeks.  As a culmination to our connection, we were able to Google Hangout with Mrs. Jones' fifth grade students from Merton, WI. During our session, we shared a bit about our respective cities and asked and answered questions about Fish.  We especially enjoyed discussing some of the more intriguing aspects of Fish as a whole such as What gender do you think Tiger is? (The author never states this) and Why do you think that the guide left so suddenly without saying goodbye?  There were so many questions that L.S. Matthews left for reader interpretation, and great discussion happened as a result.

5th grade students from Mrs. Jones' class in Merton, WI

Our last Fish Global Read Aloud connection occurred with the author herself.  Through Twitter, we were able to reach the author @LauraDron (her real name) directly in an attempt to find answers to our remaining burning questions.  She responded to us almost immediately! See our conversations with her in the screenshots below.

Overall we had an absolutely outstanding GRA experience.  A special shout out and thank you goes to Pernille Ripp for her tireless coordination and organization of this project.  As a result of her vision and dedication, we are so lucky to have this opportunity to connect with other students from across the globe to celebrate literacy and learning.