World Read Aloud Day

Today is the World Read Aloud Day! Grade 5 students had fun listening to "The Book With No Pictures" an innovative and wildly funny read-aloud by award-winning humorist/actor B.J. Novak that turns any reader, this time me, the teacher-librarian into a comedian. After that the students read books from the library out loud to friends in small group making discoveries as they were picking the stories to share. "This was the best library time I have had. We did not sit at the tables looking at our iPad" said Regitze (a reluctant reader). I completely agree! I should do that (read aloud) more often with older students.

Great fun! Give it a go!

First semester library fun - story in pictures.

We are inquirers.
All lower school students have shelf-markers with personalized Learner profile attributes.

Grade 6 summers reading reports.

Grade 6 summers reading reports. 

Grade 1 rights and responsibilities in the library.

Grade 1 rights and responsibilities in the library.

Haunted library

Where is the body?

Genre study - realistic fiction explained by grade 4.

Genre study - biography explained by grade 4.

Grade 5 library posters.
Read it to see it @ ISE Library
Welcome to smar, readitg and research

You can learn at ISE Library!

Grade 10 art work gallery

Library angel.

Grade 10 personal project corner.

QR code quest

QR code quest to learn about ISE library resources.

Winter fair for Lower school.
Give love to the Grinch.

Best place in the library.

New reading lounge and PD section.

Library day quotes.

Library Day literary apples.

Love your library!

Haunted library

At the beginning of this month ISE library once again transformed into the Haunted House. It is our school tradition that the Student Council  with the help of upper school students hosts a haunted house in the library for lower school students during their Fall Party. It is an event everyone is looking for (except maybe the librarian, me). See below what I mean:)

This year an 11th grade, new to ISE, decorating one of the rooms in the library asked sincerely: "Do you really let this happen in the library  every year?" I do... The library with its layout of 5 circularly passable rooms lends itself ideally for this event. Each room usually represents a theme and has a group of students responsible for it.

Reference area-haunted laboratory

Library classroom-haunted hospital

Lower school area-witches den

Middle and Upper school area-haunted dollhouse

It has been quite fun to look at the ideas and the execution of these over the years. Not so much fun coming in next Monday finding pieces of  cobwebs, spiders, not to mention misplaced books and furniture, and this year ... a pool of "blood" on the floor. Yet I think that next year for one night ISE library will turn into a haunted house again.

"Blood, No doubt about it!" Kalle Blomkvist 

IB Learner profiles in the library - MYP

Grade 6-8 students goal for understanding the IB Learner attributes was to explain these for younger, PYP students, using simple language and to find a picture book about that profile. Grade 6 students extended this activity into a read aloud in PYP classes during Library Days as the students wanted to share their explanations and books. They also made a picture/poster to go with the profile to take into the class they read the book to. The books chosen by all grades will be displayed in the library Lower school area for an IB Learner profile show.

"First, all of us picked one profile, and then we needed to explain it in an easy language (for PYP students). I picked Open-Minded. After that we pick one picture book, that was about that profile. Also we did a poster about it. Then Ms Kadri said, that we will read this book for lower school. I needed to read to grade 1. When I went there, I was a little bit nervous, but then it was okay. When I asked for questions, one boy asked  why we need to be Open-Minded? I answered, that so we won't have fights." Dominika grade 6

Further explanations 

• Inquirers

Ask questions to learn (Mihkel gr.6)
Wanting to find out more and asking questions (Rebeka gr.7)

• Thinkers

Think before you act (Danil gr.8)

• Communicators

Tell each other one’s ideas (Anna gr.6)
Talk with each other. Listen to one another. (grade 8)

• Risk-takers

Take on challenges and never stop (Daniels gr.6)
Try new things (Donovan gr.7)
Making mistakes is OK. (Sandor gr.8)

• Knowledgeable 

Know a lot of things about many topics (Vilja gr.6)
You are smart. (Archer gr.8)

• Principled 

Know the right and wrong things to do (Philippa gr.6)
Always do the right thing (Gustavo gr.7)

• Caring

Show respect and concern for others (Seth gr.6)
Respect humans/other people (Shahaf gr.7)
Be nice and helpful. Be kind. (grade 8)

• Open-minded

Wanting to know everyone’s point of view. (Dominika gr.6)
Understanding everyone’s point of view.

• Well-balanced

Play, learn and rest well. (Ms. Kadri)

• Reflective

Think about how things work. (Graham gr.6)
Think about stuff and yourself.

IB Learner profiles in the library - PYP

Open-minded: Never judge a book by it's cover.

At the beginning of this school year our IB Continuum team of PYP-MYP-DP Coordinators and teachers decided to focus on how to make IB learner profile visible in the school and implement the vocabulary and understanding of the attributes into daily teaching and learning.
Here at ISE I have two positions. I am a PreK-12 teacher-librarian and the MYP Coordinator. So implementing the learner profile should be natural... well it hasn't been. I was looking for ways to meaningfully include the attributes into library antics and help the students connect them to the library and things we do here.

In PYP, each year, at the very beginning each grade 1-5 student makes a personal shelf-marker for choosing books. We talks about what a shelf marker is, why we need one, how we use them. I tell a little story about books that live in the library: "Each in its own special place or house. It is very important to put a book back in its proper house or place. If the books are put to the wrong place they get lost. Just like you would get lost in a wrong house. When you take a book off the shelf use a shelf-marker to mark the place where the book has been taken from so you know exactly to where the book needs to go back to." Usually we put the student's name, grade and patron number on the shelf- marker, then students decorate it the way they want to- drawing, cutting and pasting from book catalogs etc. This year I decided to add an IB Learner profile attribute of student's choice onto the shelf marker.

First we took some time to talk about each attribute. Next we tried to explain how these profiles look like in a library contexts e.g. caring means treating books like friends and taking good care of them. Finally each students from grade 1 - 5 chose a profile they felt is important to display in the library and wrote it on their shelf markers along with their own explanation how that profile looks, feel or sounds in the library.
Here are the results.

Grade 1 shelf-markers and profiles

Grade 2 shelf-markers and profiles

Grade 3 shelf-markers and profiles

Grade 4 shelf-markers and profiles

Grade 5 shelf-markers and profiles

Principled

Caring, reflective

Reading dogs visit ISE Library during the Library Days

As part of ISE Library days activities we had visits by Reading Dogs on Thursday and Friday before October break. Lower school students had a chance to get to know Täpi and Bree and their owners Ms. Tiiu and Ms. Kätlin. Some of our students were reading for the dogs. The purpose of a reading dog is to encourage and motivate students to read. For those interested these dogs can be booked for reading (in different libraries around Estonia) through Estonian Association of Assistance and Therapy Dogs http://teraapiakoer.ee/.

MYP Personal projects 2016-2017

Image source: http://alannamunro.com/blog/the-power-of-personal-projects

For the third year year 5 (grade 10) students are busy developing their personal projects. For the third year I am busy coordinating the process:) This school year we have a substantial group of fourteen adolescent learners with a range of interests that lead their explorations and projects. I am very happy to have a team of supervisors supporting the students during their journeys, all of whom are not MYP teachers but ISE staff members.
Students have submitted their project plans, completed initial research and product criteria and are working on creating their products. I am very excited to see their products and reflective reports as we move on with the projects process.

Below are brief introductions of year 5 projects

Topic: Ragga style in dancing
Goal: Research about roots and origin of ragga dance style, ragga music, dance elements. Create a ragga dance routine with its elements, make a video, film and edit it, and use it to inform and inspire audience about that dance style.

Topic: Electrical Motors
Goal: Research about electrical motors (how they work and how to build your own), creation of demonstrator of a precise motor control, use this motor control to create something to show how to use it.

Topic: Fashion in the last century
Goal: To find out what fashion was like in the last century and what influenced it, and from that knowledge infer, what will future fashion be like.

Drawn by Elisabeth Roden

Topic: Film-making
Goal: Create an animated music video.

Topic: Screenwriting
Goal: Write a quality, 20-40 pages long script.

Topic: Programming
Goal: Learn how to programming a micro controller using c++ programming language.

Topic: Art, Psychology, Religion and Philosophy
Goal: To understand trough research, why people are afraid of the concept of death, how the humanized Death would look like, based on psychological, religious and philosophical beliefs. To create a painting, communicating the learning.

Topic: Medieval Armour and Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) Tournaments
Goal: To show how three aspects of medieval armor can affect the outcome of a (melee) medieval tournament.

Topic: Clothing and Fashion Design
Goal: To design and create few pieces of clothing that are connected together by a specific theme and manufacture few of them into actual pieces of clothing.

Topic: Ideas,technologies and innovations of humankind.
Goal: Learning information about my topic through research and creating website or YouTube channel to communicate my learning.

Topic:Website with Cooking Videos
Goal: I will research about healthy, eco-friendly, and vegan diets/foods, video making, and creating blogs/websites in order to produce a website with nutritious and vegan cooking videos for people that would like to follow a healthy diet and reduce their carbon footprint through dietary choices.

Practice video by Anjali Venkatsubramanian

Topic: Portrait Photography
Goal: To research and learn the technical aspects of my cannon rebel camera in order to take high quality portraits that reflect the personality of the subject. To take photos of my classmates, my family members, myself to demonstrate my knowledge.

Photo by Gwyneth Dodson

Topic: Making a vlogg about how teenagers act in different societies, and their reactions to different types of questions.
Goal: I will research movie making, in order to create a vlogg that shows differences between teenagers in different societies and cultures, to show to people in order to broaden their views and beliefs about other cultures.

Topic: Acquire the skill of crocheting
Goal: To acquire the skill of crocheting, to become more experienced in hand made work, which will help me to extend and enjoy my creativity.