The Importance in Teaching Coding

         In the Mountain Meadow Media Center the Alders and Cedars have been working on coding projects for the last month. You may have a few questions as to what it is and why is it essential to teach our children to learn to code. First, coding is a set of algorithms or inputs that make it possible to create software. It is a series of commands that makes it possible for your browser, or any app on your phone, etc. to work. Why are we teaching this skill at MRA? According to an article in the Wall Street Journal the future statistics prove that our children will need these skills to become successful in the future job market.

        "It has become essential that we prepare our students to have the skills to succeed in the 21st Century which will include programing. It doesn’t hurt their cause that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be one million unfilled jobs for programmers in the U.S. by 2020. And that may be an underestimate, says Mr. Partovi. He adds that the more software and hardware humans create, the more jobs in software there are, as new platforms like smartphones and drones spawn their own software ecosystems.” (Mims, Why Coding Is Your Child’s Key to Unlocking the Future, www.wsj.com)

      Currently, we are a using a website, scratch.mit.ed, for our students to start at their level of coding. I would encourage you to check it out. The students were given a set of expectations that included a focus on using the “Shrek” fairytale. We have had some innovative games of mazes, interactive story scenes, retelling of a fairytale with a twist, and much more. Here is a sample project done by Caelan Erickson. His game takes Shrek and Donkey through the volcano to find the fair princess, Fionna! Please check out his work at https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/89627132/#editor.

Shrek Project

Our Alders and Cedars are working on creating code to develop a fairytale scene based off of Shrek.  Our returning students got right to work using https://scratch.mit.edu/.  Our students who are new to Scratch have made an account and are busy learning how to write code.  Please encourage your students to work on this project at home if there is a computer available and watch what they can create.    I have been impressed by their imaginations and creativity.  I hope to post some of the finished projects on this blog as they finish.  

A Visit From Brownie

A couple weeks ago we had another visit from our therapy dog!  We love Brownie and everything she adds to our library time.  The students were all very excited to get a chance to read with her. Here are a few pictures. The students have already been asking when she gets to come back.

Folktales

In our Trillium through Clarkia library classes we are preparing for our all school field trip to the "Shrek" musical.  It's been very exciting.  We have pretended we are sitting around a campfire surrounded by trees, stars, friends and families, and NO technology.  How would we entertain ourselves?  What would we do to save memories with little writing technology?  One of our Trillium students suggested we needed s'mores and were shocked to learn marshmallows weren't invented yet.  All the classes realized that storytelling would be a powerful way to spread memories and be entertained by.  We discussed the inventions of folktales and read one of our favorite fairytales.  We learned that fairy tales have certain characters:  royalty and animals,  specific settings: castles and forests, a common conflict:  good vs. evil, and a common resolution:  good overcoming evil with a happy ever after.
 

A Monster Of A Book Fair!

We made our $3,000 goal in sales!  Way to go MRA!   We will have close to $1000 to spend on new books for our library.  Please send me your ideas of new titles you would like to see.  Thank you so much for all your support.  Jayla Slinger was our award winner of our $100 gift certificate.  Thank you to the MRA Boosters for making this happen.


In our Trillium through Clarkia library classes, we have continued to identify fiction and nonfiction literature.  Ask your Clarkia students about the Dewey Rap.  I think most of them can rap it from memory.

In our Alder classes we have been working in Google Draw and are creating thank you cards for our amazing volunteers during our Roots Day.

In our Cedar classes we have been researching strategically and learning how boolean operators work.  

Over Half Way There

Please remember to stop by our book fair Monday, November 2nd and Tuesday, November 3rd!  We are little over half way in reaching our goal.  Remember you can order online!  Thank you for checking it out!

Why Our Book Fair Is Important To Our Library?

This week we will be hosting our book fair in the Wildwoods Gym.  The book fair will be open every day before and after school and during parent/teacher conferences.   This is a great way to get a jump on Christmas shopping and a great way to introduce some new books to your child's home library.  We also have teacher wish book baskets set up for you to see what books your child's teacher would love to add to their classroom library.  Please check them out and think about donating to their class.  

This fair is so important to our school library because it is our main fundraiser for our Mountain Meadow Media Center!  We are short on many non-fiction titles and young adult fiction books.  If we meet our goal of $3000 we can receive 25% of the total in cash to buy our much needed books.  

If you can't make it to the fair, you can always click on the following link and order online.  The orders will be shipped to our school and given to your student.  If it is a gift we can keep them for you until you have time to pick them up.  

See you at the fair!  Thank you so much for your support!

Digital Citizen Experts

Our final Digital Citizenship Posters are on our Media Center Walls.  The Alders and Cedars evaluated each other's work and learned the importance of all our digital citizenship rules.  

Thank you to all who came out to our parent night.  It is so important that we help our children navigate the wide world of the internet.  To the right of this post, I have included three links that are great resources for parents to use when having conversations with your child about their time on the internet.  I believe it's a very important issue that often gets ignored because we simply don't know where to begin.  We are charting new waters as we try to parent in the cyber domain.  There are great videos, a digital glossary,  real life testimonials, and a list of age appropriate apps.  

Wrapping Up...

We are wrapping up our digital citizenship projects this week.  The Alders and Cedars have come up with inspiring ways to stay safe on the internet.  I have been pleased to see how well they are working as a team to organize their thoughts and ideas.    The creativity of coming up with their own slogans and logos has been fun to watch.  Please be watching for their posters going up along our media center's walls.  

The Clarkia are well on their way in becoming accurate typist.  This week they took their first "timed" test.  We stressed the importance of accuracy and proper form.  I told the Clarkia that I was not interested in their speed at this time, that will come with increased practice.  We are focusing on accuracy and proper finger placement.  

In our Trillium library class we are discovering the fiction and nonfiction genre.  They are sorting notecards that have snippets of either a fiction or nonfiction story into the right genre.  We will continue to practice this throughout the year.

In our Huckleberry and Clarkia library classes we are learning the importance of the parts of a book.  Ask your student if they can find the copyright date or "birthdate".  They were very thorough in pointing out how old their books were to me.  The Clarkia are competing to beat their time in naming all the parts of a book in a round robin naming game.

Please help your student to remember to bring back their library books!  You should be getting an email reminder if their books are overdue.  I will also be printing out paper reminder slips to come home as well.

Don't forget to sign up to help out at our upcoming Scholastic Book Fair!

Mountain Meadow Media Center Schedule

In case you are wondering when your child's books are due back!  They have two weeks until they are due.

Responsibilities As Digital and Print Citizens

This week all of our Mountain Meadow Media classes worked on learning and exemplifying good digital and print citizenship.  The classes are learning how to explore and access our resources in our media center.  The Trillium and Huckleberry classes will be making their own illustrations to our own version of the "Shelf Elf" explaining their understanding of library etiquette.

The Clarkia are experts on finding different types of genres throughout our library.  They started their typing classes this week and have learned the importance of proper typing posture and the importance of the home row keys.  I hear many comments of, "This is fun!  Can I do this at home?  Can I do this in aftercare?"  The answer is yes!  Typing.com will save all their hard work and keep challenging them to become better typists.

Finding different types of genres of books on a scavenger hunt

Exploring Shelf Elf Rules

The Alders and Cedars have been working hard at researching, taking notes, and learning how to be diligent and safe digital citizens.   They are working on creating posters for our Media Center that clearly lay out ways to be safe in cyberspace.  I am excited to see what they will come up with.

Introducing Our Mountain Meadow Media Center

Here's A Look At Our Mountain Meadow Media Center

Library StoryTime Center

Added space for reading and researching

   

New Chrome Book Center


Your student should come home with a letter  this week from the Media Center.   The letter gives details to our check-out policies, internet use, and other important information.  Please check your child's backpack.  Our 3-8th grade students need to have their internet agreement forms turned in as quickly as possible so they can start their computer usage.

We have been learning the importance of being a responsible print and digital citizen, how to respect our space, and what good book care looks like.  In Trillium and Huckleberry classes we read our favorite "Shelf Elf" book by Jackie Mims Hopkins.   Skoob, the shelf elf has been dancing around our shelves looking for things to smile about and possibly be sad about if there is improper book care.

The Clarkia have read, "The Library Dragon" by Carmen Deedy and reviewed all the book care and library citizenship guidelines.  They completed their review with a fun scavenger hunt.  They are anxious to get started on their typing skills and we hope to start next week.  There will be a letter coming home next week about typing.com and your student's username and password.




The Alders and Cedars  have been exploring what digital citizenship is and will be working on a research project.  They will be designing posters to place in our Media Center that explains the importance of the responsibilities we have in our digital world.

Please come visit our Media Center.  We would love to see you.

A New Look!

Stay tuned for  a new look for our media center...it's in progress! 

Here are some of our newest titles added to our library this summer!

Land of Stories Series

FableHaven Series

Alex Rider Series

Complete Ranger Apprentice Series

Congratulations MRA!

We did IT!  We made our Scholastic Book Fair Goal!  Our total sales were $2,775.48 and our goal was to reach $2,750!  Thank you for all your support!  We can't wait to spend our funds on getting new books for the 2015-16 school year.   We are able to receive $487.74 in Scholastic Dollars and will be able to take $450 in cash to spend on books that Scholastic does not stock.

I will keep you posted as to what books we will have added.

Don't forget that our summer book swap will be going throughout the summer.  I look forward to seeing books being swapped in and out all summer long.  The book case will be located right outside the Mountain Meadow Library in the breezeway.

Spring Book Fair Is Coming Soon!

Our Spring Scholastic Book Fair is coming to the Wildwood Gym on Friday, May 29th through Friday, June 5th!

Online shopping opens this Wednesday, May 20th.  This is a great time to stock up on books for our summer reading program!  Our summer reading program will be a fun way to get your family reading with a few incentives.   There will be more details coming soon.

We hope to reach $2,750 in sales this spring.  This helps us fund our library for the next year.  We hope to add new titles and have OBOB (Oregon Battle of the Books) readily available for the fall.

We are looking for volunteers to help run the book fair.  Please contact me (iquinlan@mra-k8.com) if you would like to help.  Sign ups are located in the front office.

Let's meet our goal!

Recipe For Research

Independent Project Research

For the next couple of weeks we will be discussing the important ingredients for researching in all our library classes.  As a parent of four students at MRA, this time can be hectic as I help coach my children in their research.  I just wanted to pass along a reminder that we have an incredible free research tool that as made our lives a little easier.  OSLIS is a huge database of information where your students can easily access most subjects.  I have a link on the side bar that will take you right to the site.  Remember our username is:  molalla and that our password is:  oslis.  Please contact me if you have any questions.   Happy researching and I can't wait to see the projects your students have come up with.

Legends and Tall Tales

This week our Trillium and Huckleberry classes listened with a few chuckles and grins as rabbit tricked Coyote multiple times and discovered what may be the cause of coyotes howling at the moon.  Through the use of this story, we filled in our interactive chart about the important elements that we find in all legends.  One of those elements being that all legends use creative ways to explain how things came to be in nature.  It's been a fun way to introduce so many different types of folk tales in this unit.  Our students are becoming experts at determining which genre of folk tale they are reading.

Everyone loves a tall tale!   Some of our Clarkia and Alder classes got to enjoy the wild adventures of Pecos Bill and Mike Fink this week.  The exaggerations of these superhuman characters added lots of laughter and enjoyment to our reading.  The students were able to pick out the bits of truth peppered throughout the stories and realized that these stories were set in a historical time period.  They also discovered that often times the problem was exaggerated and that the solutions had to involve magic to solve such ridiculous scenarios.    These books were a great way to end our folk tale unit as we will be moving on to a bit of poetry.

Fantastic Fairy Tales and Fables!

 Here are a few of the fairy tale books we have been exploring in our library classes!  We have discovered what elements belong in fairy tales.  For example, the characters are often animals or royalty.  We have learned that often the settings of fairy tales are in either forests or castles.   The plots are centered around the conflict of how good overcomes evil and that the solutions to the problems often involve magic.

Aesop Fables have been another genre of literature we have explored.  The students have loved listening to the animals learn their lessons and have been able to apply it to their own lives.  One the favorites has been the "Lobster and the Crab" by Arnold Lobel.  The humor that Lobel uses in this fable connects with the students.

A few of the classes have jumped into learning about Greek Myths.  We read "The Golden Touch" and discovered that greedy King Midas got more then he bargained for when his wish was granted.  We explored the characters, setting, plot, and solution of these myths and defined these elements.

We are looking forward to learning more about legends and tall tales in the weeks to come.  

Auction Items for Mountain Meadows!

We would love your help in filling a bag for the auction!

When you are out and about if you could pick up one of these items and then we will auction off the bag! A MRA student will be delighted to have these items to be successful in the Mountain Meadow classes!

Mountain Meadow Auction Bag Items

Wireless headphone

Wireless Mouse

Mouse Pad

IPad

Flash Drive

Digital Camera

E-reader

Shelf Marker

OBOB Books :

3-5 Division

Diamond Willow by Helen Frost

Escape From Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park

No Talking by Andrew Clements

The Sasquatch Escape by Suzanne Selfors

The Shadows by Jacqueline West

Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Mission Unstoppable by Dan Gutman

What Was Ellis Island by Patricia Brennan Demuth

What Was the March on Washington by Kathleen Krull

6-8 Division

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

The Great Trouble by Deborah Hopkinson

Return to Sender by Julia Alvarez

Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Jinx by Sage Blackwood

Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

Strike Three, You’re Dead by Josh Berk

Written in Stone by Rosanne Parry

Dr. Seuss Day Success

We had a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss Day!  The students enjoyed the day by dressing up as a Dr. Seuss character and reading celebrations happened throughout the day.   Here are a few highlights to enjoy.  Don't forget to bring in your completed Dr. Seuss Passport Books for a prize!

Read Across America

MOLALLA RIVER ACADEMY WILL CELEBRATE READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY ON MARCH 2ND FROM 1:30-2:30!

The students and staff can dress up as a character from a Dr. Seuss story all day.  At 1:30 we will be joining our buddy families and rotating through different classrooms to read an assortment of Dr. Seuss stories.  The Trillium thru Clarkia students will be filling in their Dr. Seuss Passport Books with stickers.  The Alders and Cedars will help the younger students read to get all the passport stickers.  The students who finish their passport books can come to the Mountain Meadow Library to receive a prize!  Happy Reading!  We can't wait to see the creative dress and the reading frenzy!