D97 Library News
January 2018
Happy New Year
We are pleased to be including the entire community of District 97 - patrons, families and staff in our monthly newsletters. Each month our teacher librarians will collaborate to bring you great information to highlight the experiences our students have in our elementary school libraries. We hope you find this information useful and value any feedback that you care to share. Please direct any comments or questions about this month's edition to Erin Howe at Hatch (ehowe@op97.org) or Sharon Pearce at Longfellow (spearce@op97.org).
Enjoy!
All families with students in grades K -8 are invited to join the District 97 Teacher Librarians and the Oak Park public librarians at CodeFest on January 17th, 2018! At this exciting event everyone will get the opportunity to explore robots, coding websites, and many other hands on stations to unlock the student's decision making, computational thinking and trouble shooting sides of their brain. The Oak Park Education Foundation Vex Robotics Program and members from the group CoderDojo will even be there! For more information please go to the Oak Park Public Library Website.
Hour of Code 2017
D97 Librarians joined the global initiative to expose every student to one hour of coding during the school year! Check out the amazing computer science opportunities the students were exposed to during their library time in December.
Holmes students programed a robot mouse!
2nd graders at Mann learned how to block code at code.org
Working on computer science skills can even be done without a computer! Look at the students at Longfellow who had to find the treasure!
Books to Inspire Coding
Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding by Linda Liukas
This exciting book introduces kids to the fundamentals of computational thinking, like how to break big problems into small ones, create step-by-step plans, look for patterns and think outside the box through storytelling. Then, these basic concepts at the core of coding and programming will be reinforced through fun playful exercises and activities that encourage exploration and creativity.
Secret Coders by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
Using their wits and their growing prowess with coding, Hopper and her friend Eni are going to solve the mystery of Stately Academy no matter what it takes! This is a great graphic novel!
Code It, Create It!: Ideas & Inspiration for Coding by Sarah Hutt
Think being creative has nothing to do with computer coding? Think again! Coding is all about creativity. This book is full of activities to inspire some amazing coding!
Reading Olympics
On Friday, December 1st teams of three 5th graders from every District 97 elementary school, River Forest Elementary School as well as a number of private schools in Oak Park competed at the Oak Park Public Library. Each team had read 9 books and were prepared to answer questions on those books. It was tough competition and all the teams did great. The trophy was awarded to Holmes Elementary School! Get ready 5th graders to read 9 new books for the Spring Competition on March 13, 2018!