McKelvie Library News Blog

What a great second week back from winter break! The weather seems to be slowly turning to what we would expect for spring-like NH. The first official day of spring is Sunday. It was wonderful to have the library windows open on Friday. The fresh air was wonderful. At the end of last week the library was gifted an amazing collection of Westward Expansion pieces. This is an amazing collection of nonfiction texts from the Opitz/Parnell pod including properly formatted MLA works cited documents. The collection is absolutely stunning and very informative. The book is currently in the library on our “coffee table” for the McKelvie community to read and enjoy, if they wish. Click HERE to see the front cover of hard work put into the texts by pod 5-5. As expected, as the temperatures warm up, more of our “recess regulars”  are heading out to enjoy some fresh air at recess times. However, the library remains a place for all to relax, read, connect, and play. Click HERE to see some of our...

  I hope all of our McKelvie Community had a restful winter break! Based on the steady stream of children coming into the library this week, a lot of reading took place over the break. Over break the library obtained several new titles and many of these are already in the hands of our readers. Be sure to check in with your child to see what they are reading! Have a discussion with your child about the title(s) they are enjoying. Books being published today are different from the books that were published even just ten years ago. Congratulations to our 5th “Search Slip” winner of the year! 6th grader, Alexis B., along with many others, entered our monthly library raffle by filling out a “Search Slip” with information regarding the book they were looking for in the McKelvie Library. Each month all of the “Search Slips” are collected and one winner is drawn from all of the entries. Click HERE to see Alexis (Mrs. Waldman’s homeroom), her “Search Slip,” and the envelope containing a gi...

We have just one more week until our winter break! One of the highlights from our week here in the library was our Westward Expansion Museum. The students from the Opitz/Parnell pod were able to view the work of their classmates. It was such a positive experience to view all of their hard work in the forms of Adobe Creative Cloud websites, nonfiction pieces and newspapers. We even had Westward Expansion plays performed. Google Slides images provided the backdrop scenery to the plays.  There have been several inquiries from students regarding the 2022 Fisher Cats Reading Challenge. This is wonderful! Two free tickets for reading five titles. I do not have the physical sheets this year as the Fisher Cats Reading Challenge has gone digital. Please follow this link for more information: https://bit.ly/3gMybJb Our statistics continue to be high for Sora, our ebook and audiobook platform! McKelvie readers and listeners, Sora is a wonderful resource and I continue to encourage you to use ...

Happy weekend, McKelvie! What a busy week we had here in the library. We had book tastings, note taking classes, works cited lessons using a citation generator called MyBib, and we learned how to create a web page using Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formally Adobe Spark) with our Digital Learning Specialist, Susan Cavanaugh. This was in addition to having students and staff circulate through the library getting what they needed. This is a bustling space and I love it! Our school library is extremely active. With the temperatures warming up for Saturday, I am dreaming of spring. Please do not forget about the 2022 Fisher Cats Reading Challenge. Use this URL to see a flyer sent by the Fisher Cats as a reminder regarding this spring reading challenge opportunity. https://bit.ly/3gMybJb Have a great weekend. Enjoy the warm temperatures forecasted for Saturday. Happy Super Bowl Sunday. ~ Mrs. Cote 📚

The library continues to be busy with readers and researchers! Several classes have been in to learn how to format a works cited document using the Modern Language Association style of formatting. It really is impressive to watch these children cite their sources as they research. McKelvie, Carolyn Mail (McKelvie Reading Specialist) and Julie Cote (McKelvie Librarian) are excited to present another before-school opportunity for students, a second session of Chapter Chat Club! During this before-school club, we will be reading and discussing this middle grade novel for 7 weeks. There will be no meeting on Tuesday the week of vacation or the following week on Tuesday, March 8th, due to the scheduled workshop day. This before-school club will begin Tuesday, February 8th, through Tuesday, April 5th. We have selected a 2015 publication titled Masterminds book 1 by Gordon Korman. Please click HERE to link to the registration form with additional details. This form will open Sunday, January ...

For it being a short week, the McKelvie Library was bustling with all sorts of activities. First thing on Tuesday morning, the students began streaming in the doors to return the “good fit” books they completed over their four day weekend and began to search for more! I always love this as it means our children are reading! Due to the temperatures, indoor recess at the library means an especially active time. Our school community completed yet another puzzle containing 1,000 pieces! It was especially heartwarming to see that right before the last piece was fit in, a student came to announce this! They knew it was a big deal and wanted a specific individual who had been working really hard on putting together the puzzle to have the honor of putting in the last piece. Click HERE to see the children’s picture book puzzle completed! There are no missing pieces this time.  Additionally, we continue to have many pods come to the library for note taking lessons and research! BrainPOP, on...

This week was very busy in the library! We began the week with the Parnell/Opitz pod coming to locate images related to a Westward Expansion subtopic that they are going to read and research about. The Britannica Image Quest image was imported into a Google Doc or Google Draw and then the image was cited. The students then created guiding questions that they would like to find the answers to as they continue to research. These questions were developed as they kept in mind the purpose of writing nonfiction to teach a reader. This pod then continued to research using the print titles we have in the library.  The Allen/Mazzella pod came to the library to learn the basics of Flipster (an EBSCO resource) to view our digital periodicals. This lesson included how to look at previous issues of periodicals that may tie into curriculum units. The students were able to explore one or more of the eight titles we subscribe to. We also learned how to use the Scholastic FLIX suite of ebooks. The ...