summaryoakterrace

This year has been an exciting year of growth in the [|Oak Terrace Library]. The curriculum spiraled from the foundation set last year to build upon the skills that the students had retained. The wonderful part about having a flexible schedule was that the library was always available for quick visits to large week long projects. Many classes met in the library to do large scale, technology-based projects. This allowed learning in the library to go well beyond just reading books and doing research. The students learned organization and classification skills that were embedded in many projects as well as critical thinking skills that they used when troubleshooting problems.

A major purchase for the library this year was a set of ten digital cameras. This allowed students to use them during class time class rather than the previous model where one teacher in each grade housed a single camera. We hope to purchase an additional ten cameras next year so that projects can be done where each student has his or her own camera to use. Our first project using this technology was having second graders create books based on the format of [|Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny, Too by Mo Willems.]

On April 1, 2009, we were fortunate to have author [|Jamie Gilson] visit grades 3-5 thanks to a connection within our building. She generously donated her time for a visit that the students are still talking about over a month later. She offered many valuable writing tips that the teachers have been implementing in their classrooms since her visit.

[|The District 112 Foundation] provided the funds to allow us to host storyteller [|Elizabeth Ellis] on May 21, 2009. She presented unique and interesting stories to the students from a variety of countries and cultures. She told the students that the stories she told could be found in the 398.2 section. The next day, many students were clamoring to check out folktales from that part of the library! She told three to four stories per session (six sessions total), and she never told the same story twice. Many of the teachers were also refreshed at having this unique presentation offered in the library.