Do the Dewey!

Second grade classes are learning about the Dewey Decimal System. We read the book What Marion taught Willis, and will try to learn and educate each other about the different hundreds sections of the library in the weeks to come. What? You don't know how libraries are arranged and the story of Melville Dewey? Well check out this short video, which sums it all up pretty nicely...

Introduction to the Dewey Decimal System from Ellen Shave on Vimeo.

And if you are a glutton for punishment, or, I mean, have a great sense of humor, watch this video of the Dewey Decimal Rap!

Stories of Milltown

I always love arranging for the fourth grade students to visit the Milltown Historical Society buildings when they are learning about their community. We spend a few weeks in our library classes talking aobut the highlights of Milltown history and read from the Rod Leury book The History of Milltown. The classes also spend some time illustrating a chapter "Life On the Farm" where Anna Ochs Lindstrom discusses how life on her family farm would have been in the year 1890.

• Click to view my story.
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• Click to view my story.
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• Click to view my story.
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Is two years too long to wait to write a new post? Wow, it has been a long time. Life in the library has been exciting and rewarding. fourth graders are learning about podcasting using Audacity. They are having a blast, reading from a script. We may be a few years behind the time, thinking that the students will get much practical use from podcasting, but creating mp3s may help them in other ways. We are going to look into reading public domain texts for librivox.org.
First graders are writing stories with Littlebirdtales.com. They have a lot to learn, but I think they will be making fast progress.