Moose information for the week- check out Moose by Robert Munsch! You can listen to the read aloud at his website, listed above.
Netflix has a new series highlighting Black authors and children’s stories called Bookmarks: Celebrating Black Voices. It features “Black celebrities reading children’s books from Black authors”. The show will cover topics about “identity, respect, justice and action.” Some of the read alouds so far are books like I Love My Hair, Sulwe, I am Enough, I am Perfectly Designed, The Day You Begin, and Let’s Talk About Race. You can also access some of these read alouds on the Netflix Jr. Youtube channel!
This week we observe Orange Shirt Day at HHCS. I have purchased some new books for our school library on this specific topic and also about First Nations in general, and many of the teachers including myself will be using them in their lessons this week.
Hello HHCS Community! As you will have seen on Sycamore News Nuggets, Sept. 30 we will be observing Orange Shirt Day. Teachers will be talking with their classes at different age-appropriate levels about Canada’s history of residential schools, and about reconciliation. Students will learn that “Every Child Matters” and will participate in creating a school art mural. Please prepare for your children to wear an orange shirt on that day. If you would like to purchase an official Orange Shirt Day one like above please visit https://www.orangeshirtday.org/
Moose fact of the week:
Moose are the largest of all the deer species. Males are immediately recognizable by their huge antlers, which can spread 6 feet from end to end.
HHCS, have you been spotting our various moose and moose tracks around the building? Bruce the Moose is on the loose!
Welcome back to school, Halton Hills Christian School community! It was so great last week to see the students come back to class after 6 months of being away for distance learning and summer break. I am Mrs. Baillargeon and I am the HHCS Teacher-Librarian. I am excited for a new school year and I am looking forward to writing this blog!
Here throughout the year you will find: resources for helping your children to find books that they will love, information about various authors, information about what is happening in the world of children’s literature, pictures of school reading events and classes, articles about digital and media literacy, and more! Please feel free to comment below and I look forward to being a support for all of our school families.
You’ll notice the “moose” theme on this blog- last spring we were excited to premiere HHCS’s new school mascot- Bruce the Moose!
While we cannot do our regular school library checkout this year, we have adapted our routine for 2020/21. Homeroom teachers will take bins of books that they have chosen for their classroom, and then the students will be able to choose and read from that limited selection. Please refer to your child’s homeroom teacher for the exact specifics. We will be running the AR program this year but will adjust the settings so that students can read from a more broad reading level range, since our access to books will be more limited this year because of Covid.
I will be teaching in some of your children’s classes. For the classes involved, I am teaching a class that I am calling “Information Literacy“. This class will look slightly different at each level but in general this class will be a combination of 4 different areas:
–library skills and special topics (taking care of books, parts of a book, how to find books in the library, Dewey Decimal, book genres, Black History Month, Women’s History month, etc)
research skills (creating inquiry questions, plagiarism, note-taking, using reliable websites, effective search terms, graphic organizers…)
digital literacy (finding balance in using technology, digital footprint, cyberbullying, credible news)
media literacy ( bias, Purpose and audience of media texts, interpreting messages, media conventions and techniques, produce and reflect on a variety of media texts)
As we come back to school in this time of Covid, I will be spending some time in class with read-alouds on this topic. I thought that you as parents might be interested in looking for some of these books to have at home:
I hope that you found some of this information here helpful! Looking forward to this new school year with our UNSTOPPABLE GOD! You will see this theme often in our school communications this year!
“Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift.” — Kate DiCamillo