Belmont Hills Media Center Blog

The literary world was saddened this September to learn that Colleen Salley, author of the Epossumondas books, had passed away. In honor of Ms. Salley and her wonderful contribution to children’s literature, this month we will be featuring Epossumondas as our Book of the Month. We hope you will sign your class up to hear Epossumondas and complete the accompanying organization activity. Plan to sign up for a 45-minute block of time so your students will have plenty of time to hear the story, complete the activity, and check out books.

About the book:
“Who’s Epossumondas? Why, he’s his mama’s and his auntie’s sweet little patootie, that’s who. He’s also the silliest, most lovable, most muddleheaded possum south of the Mason Dixon line!

“Better choose your words wisely when he’s around, ’cause otherwise you never know WHAT you’ll get. Epossumondas just might bring you a fist full of crumbs — or a soaking wet puppy — or a scruffy wad of bread — oh, you just wouldn’t believe it!

“Renowned storyteller Colleen Salley and Caldecott Honor illustrator Janet Stevens team up for this outrageous twist on the Southern story of the noodlehead who takes everything WAY too literally. (Or is that just Epossumondas just pulling his mama’s leg?)”

Organization activity: Help poor Epossumondas!
Let’s rewrite the story and help Epossumondas do everything RIGHT this time!

On the Promethean board, we will write down each item that auntie gave Epossumondas:
• A piece of rich gold cake
• Freshly churned butter
• A sweet little puppy
• A freshly baked loaf of bread

We will also record each of mama’s directions to Epossumondas:
• The way to carry cake is to put the cake on your head, put a hat on your head, and come along home.

• The way to carry butter is to wrap it up in some leaves and carry it down to the brook, and you cool it in the water … and then you take it up carefully in your hands and come along home.

• The way to carry a puppy is to put the puppy on the ground, tie a piece of string around the puppy dog’s neck, and take the piece of string and come along home.

This time, we will put the story in the right order by putting the directions BEFORE the items so that Epossumondas doesn’t make so many mistakes and all the goodies get home safely!

We’re very excited to announce the arrival of about 80 new videos to enhance your social studies, science, and health curriculum. These wonderful new resources cover topics such as American history, earth science, ecosystems, energy, weather, plant life, and more. Hopefully you will find these videos to be a wonderful complement to your lessons.

In the coming months, we will also be adding a wide array of new audio books and some new books that address your math standards. Stay tuned!

Here in the Belmont Hills Media Center, we’re very excited to announce a new program that Zoe (the Media Center pet) will be “leading” with our students this year. You may have heard of the “Sit, Stay, and Read” program featured recently on NBC (read about it below or go to http://www.sitstayread.org/About.aspx). This year, we will start a modified version of this program in the Belmont Hills Media Center.

Basically, I’m asking teachers in grades two through four to identify 2-3 students from their class who could use some extra reading practice. You can fill out the nomination form — available in the Media Center folder on the T drive or from Mrs. Launey directly — with each student’s name, his or her guided reading level, and some time frames during which the student could be pulled for 20-30 minutes to come to the Media Center to read to Zoe. I will be with the student and Zoe at all times, and we will work on guided reading strategies during our time together.

The number of times each student will get to “Sit, Stay, and Read” with Zoe will depend on the number of students you volunteer for this program. We’re hoping you will be as excited as we are to Sit, Stay, and Read, and that you’ll sign your students up for this program!

More information about the *official* Sit, Stay, and Read program
Reading aloud is a critical component of early childhood literacy. Children who have difficulty reading have an especially hard time reading aloud in front of peers and adults. This affects their self-esteem as they struggle with a skill their classmates’ easily master. SIT STAY READ! allows children to read aloud to specially trained and evaluated therapy dogs.

Programs like SIT STAY READ! are showing that children are more likely to interact with an animal than another person.

We’re On a Mission
Our mission is to improve literacy skills and foster a love of animals by partnering reading assistance dogs with children in our community.During their interaction with the SIT STAY READ! dogs, the children forget their limitations. In addition, even children who are already skilled at reading enjoy reading aloud to the dogs. Dogs provide rapt attention and children can read aloud without fear of criticism or interruption.

Children In Low-Income Families Especially at Risk
A report funded by the Packard and MacArthur Foundations found that the average child growing up in a middle class family has been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading before entering school. The average child growing up in a low-income family has only been exposed to 25 hours of one-on-one reading aloud during this same time period.For this reason, we are especially committed to reaching children in low-income families.

Learning while having fun is what makes SIT STAY READ! successful.
(From http://www.sitstayread.org/About.aspx)

September’s Book of the Month, Bad Day at Riverbend, encourages student response to literature and expression of ideas in creative and artistic formats and genres. We hope you will sign your class up to hear Bad Day at Riverbend and complete the visualization activity that accompanies it. Plan to sign up for a one-hour block of time so that your students will have plenty of time to hear the story, complete the activity, and check out books.

About the book:
“Welcome to Riverbend, a sleepy Western outpost where nothing ever happens and, it seems, nothing ever will. But one fateful day the stagecoach rolls into town, its team of horses covered with an unidentifiable substance. As the strange stuff spreads into devastation, the terrified townspeople turn to their leader. Whatever this evil is, Sheriff Ned Hardy aims to put an end to it. He mounts his horse and leads a posse to hunt down the source of the curse, but just as they close in on their suspect, the cowboys are frozen in a mysterious light that suddenly fills the sky.”

Visualizing:
After introducing Chris Van Allsburg and some pictures of his work, we will read the story and show the pictures up to a certain point in the story. After that point, students will only hear the narrative. Then each student will receive a blank piece of paper and crayons. Students will be asked to create an illustration that shows what they are personally visualizing based on the narrative. (Students in grades 2-5 will be asked to record the words or quote that prompted the visualization and describe the picture they’ve drawn.)

At the end of the lesson, students will share their illustrations with the whole class or in small groups. Finally, we will read the end of the story and shown the illustrations.