Elissa Brent Weissman and Authors 4 Earth Day

Author Elissa Weissman playing Jeopardy

We had a wonderful visit with author Elissa Brent Weissman today. She is the author of several popular books in our library. Most notably The Trouble With Mark Hopper, Nerd Camp, Nerd Camp 2.0, and The Short Seller.

She played Author Jeopardy with the boys rewarding correct answers with bookmarks. The Jeopardy game took the boys through the entire publishing process. It was creative and engaging. Our boys ate it up.

4th graders presenting to the 5th grade

She was here as a part of the Authors 4 Earth Day program. Authors for Earth Day (A4ED) is a coalition of children's authors and illustrators who mentor young readers by giving them "an authentic research project with real-world impact."  Each participant visits one school designated as the A4ED school and the author donates at least 30% of that day's speaking fee to a non-profit conservation organization as directed by a student vote. Ms. Weissman will be donating 70% of her honorarium.

Students research a list of five conservation nominees selected by the author and then vote for where they would like the donation to be directed.  The author writes a check to the winning organization in the school's name. The lower school technology coordinator and I had the 4th graders research the conservation nominees as a part of their Research and Digital Literacy class.  This year's nominees were: National Aquarium, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute, Conservation International, and Wildlife Conservation Society. 

Winning organization presenters with author Elissa Brent Weissman

They presented their research to the 3rd and 5th graders and all 3rd-5th graders voted on where the money should go.  All of the presentations were informative, interesting, and compelling.  The organization that received the most votes and which will be receiving our donation is the Wildlife Conservation Society.

As a part of her visit Ms. Weissman had lunch with the boys whose presentations had the most votes.  She was able to see and hear the compelling presentations for herself.  It was a wonderful experience for all of us.

A special thanks to our Parents' Association for providing a grant that provided the financial support for this author visit, and making this learning experience possible.

Live Like a Laker Talk

All of the eighth graders at my school give a speech to the middle school student body.  A few years ago faculty started giving speeches that reflect on the school's core values, or essentially what it means or what it looks like to "live like a Laker." 

This year I was invited to give a talk.  I was very honored, but also quite terrified.  It's intimidating to speak to 150 people even if the majority of them are middle school students, but most intimidating was trying to figure out what on Earth I could talk to them about.  I wanted to make the speech a little personal, but didn't think that they would find me so very interesting.  Since I don't teach or work with middle schoolers on a regular basis I wondered what I could find to speak about that would hold their attention.

Just the week before my talk was scheduled, my school paired with the One Love Foundation and spent the better part of the day talking about relationship violence in the upper school, respect in the middle school, and living the golden rule in the lower school.  I just happened to be assigned to a middle school group for the day.  One of the boys in my group mentioned that a good way to show respect was not to judge what's on the outside of another person, but rather what's on the inside.  Going further with this discussion, he mentioned that one needed to get to know the other person in order to learn what's on the inside.

I started to think about how important it is to learn other people's stories, and how much I love stories.  This lead me into thinking about the Humans of New York Project, and all of a sudden my Laker talk was born.  Here is a link to the text of my talk.  I followed this with a short PowerPoint presentation.  It was a wonderful experience.

Library Lock-In

Each year the Alumni Association at my school hosts a Bull and Oyster Roast.  It's a fund raiser that includes food, a silent auction and a live auction.  For the last few years I've offered a party in the library for 8 boys as a silent auction item.  Believe it or not it's been a popular item going for more money that I would have ever imagined.

This year's Lock-In was "won" by a third grader, and we recently had the party.  It begins immediately after school with a snack and a change of clothes -- as all good parties should!  We then played dodge-ball, sideline football, made duct tape wallets, ate pizza, played video games on the big screen, and ended the night with a movie.  It's fun for all!

Mario Kart

Pagemaster -- Perfect movie for boys "locked" in the library.

Sideline football

And the Winners Are...

On Saturday the winner of the Black-Eyed Susan book award was announced.  It's Maryland's children's' choice award, and each year the students at my school eagerly await the announcement of the statewide winners.

We support and participate in this program in the lower school. All of our 1st and 2nd graders read the picture book nominees, and vote for their favorites.  This occurs during library class throughout February and March.

Our 3rd-5th graders can participate in the chapter book and graphic novel categories.  This takes the form of book clubs and is completely voluntary.  They meet during lunch time, and all reading is done outside of school.  My school is a boys' school so all of our readers are boys.  They must read a minimum of 4 of the 10 nominations in order to vote.  The clubs run from November through April.  This year we had 38 participants in the chapter book club and 30 in the graphic novel club.  This is from a pool of 95 3rd-5th graders. I couldn't be prouder of our students.

Our vote aligned with the state winner in the picture book and chapter book categories.  The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein were the winners in our school and the statewide winners.

We diverged when it came to the graphic novel category.  Our boys voted overwhelmingly for Cat's Cradle: the Golden Twine by Jo Rioux, but the statewide winner was Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity by Dave Roman.  Astronaut Academy came in second among our voters, but it was a landslide win for Cat's Cradle here.

Black-Eyed Susan Graphic Novels

This is the second year of our Black-Eyed Susan Graphic Novel club.  It was a bit of an experiment last year, but has proved to be popular and participation almost doubled this year.  One thing I struggle with is making this club different from the chapter book club.  We meet more often -- every other week from February through April.  The boys read the graphic novels quickly and exchange books at a rapid rate.  Many of the boys are able to read all 10 of the nominated books.

Instead of having a pizza voting session as our culminating activity, the GN boys have lunch in the library with a chocolate fountain for dessert.  This is a big hit.  The club has grown in size such that I had two fountains running and we still found ourselves short on time.  I'll have to rethink this next year, especially if this club continues to grow.

Just as in the chapter book club our boys are passionate about the books.  In addition to discussing the story, they are also articulate and well spoken about the art in the books.  I had to cut some of the discussions short in order to be sure that we had enough time for the chocolate fountains.

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I am a reluctant convert to graphic novels, but this year's GN selections seemed especially excellent even to my neophyte eyes.  Our school's overwhelming favorite was Cat's Cradle: The Golden Twine by Jo Rioux.  This was a surprise to me, mostly because at first glance one would consider this a "girl" book.  The main character is a girl and she is featured prominently on the cover.  This book got the most votes by a landslide, which goes to show that a good book is a good book!!!  The statewide winner will be announced on May 2.