Earth Day Countdown

April 22nd is Earth Day.   Check out Earthday.ca or Ecokids for great ideas on how to protect our planet.  We also have some great books in the library.  Come and see Mrs. Araujo if you want to check one out and stay tuned for more details about Earth Day events at our school.

150 Nights of Reading

Just a reminder that 150 nights of reading forms are due this Friday, March 11th if you want to be recognized at the March 18th assembly at 2pm.  Keep on reading!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Our Scholastic Book Fair was a great success!  Thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped with the fair and to all the families who bought books.  Our profits will be used to support our library and other literacy initiatives.

Literacy Fair and Student-led Conferences

This week South Slope will host a literacy fair and student-led conferences.  Visit the gym for the book swap, book walk and take a tour of the amazing literacy displays.  Mr. Douglas has lots of fun planned in the Music Room with recorder stations. The Library is open for the Scholastic Book Fair.

The computer lab will also be open for you to explore online resources.  If you have an email address, I invite you to leave a comment on this blog about the Literacy Fair and/or your visit to your child’s classroom.  Here are some sentence starters you could try:

I noticed…               I liked…                  My favourite part was….

This reminded me of…                 This was the same as/different than…

I wonder…              I think…                I learned…

We hope you have fun!

150 Nights of Reading Feb 23rd

It’s hard to believe, but we will reach 150 nights of reading on Wednesday, February 23rd!  Reading Club forms may be handed into the library anytime after that date.  200 nights forms will also be available on Wednesday.  Keep on reading!

Scholastic Book Fair

The Scholastic Book Fair is coming soon! Visit the fair next week in the library from Feb 21st to Feb 24th.  It will be open during student led conferences.  Every purchase supports your school library.   Parent volunteers are needed.  Please sign up outside the library or come and see Mrs. Araujo. Hope to see you at the fair!

Inquiry: What are we curious about at South Slope?

Division 3 and Division 4 are both doing inquiry units in their classrooms and the library.

Division 3 is learning about Canadian Government.  What are the levels are government?  Who are the important people and their titles?  What services does government provide?  They will be investigating these questions and more over the next couple of weeks.  Check out these sites on the library catalogue to learn more about government in Canada.

Division 4 is investigating Eurpean countries.  In groups they have chosen a country to learn about and created questions to guide their inquiry.  Today they began using some print and online resources to answer their questions. Check out these sites on the library catalogue to learn more about countries and cultures around the world.

World Book Online

Dear Parents:

Good news! Our library now subscribes to World Book Online.  World Book Online is a valuable reference site for schools and libraries. The World Book resources for Burnaby schools include:

World Book Kids—the premier general reference Web site developed especially for younger users.

World Book Student—includes all articles from the 22-volume World Book Encyclopedia, plus thousands of additional articles and more than 20,000 pictures, maps, videos, and sounds..

World Book Advanced—tailored for the needs of older students, it includes encyclopedic content, e-books, multimedia, a vast collection of primary source documents, and a wealth of research tools that allow students to customize and save their work.

World Book Discover—designed for English language learners, this site includes reference articles, text-to-speech capabilities, research and translation tools, and multimedia.

Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos—the optimal beginner’s Spanish language reference site.

Our World Book subscription allows us to give you and your family access to this valuable reference source at your home computers 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We are providing this service to you at no charge!

We hope your children will use World Book Online often to help with their homework, special projects, and at-home learning.

To access the World Book Online, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to our school’s web site: http://southslope.sd41.bc.ca/

2. Hover over the Library tab on the left hand side and the link to World Book Online will appear.

3. Click on World Book Online to get to the World Book log in page.  You can find our school’s username and password in the January Newsletter or come and see Mrs. Araujo in the library.

Celebration of Literacy Assembly Jan. 26th

Last week we celebrated literacy at South Slope/ BCSD with a special assembly.  The agenda included a performance by the band, two powerpoint presentations about our author visits and recognition of all those students who have now completed 100 nights of reading.  Over 100 students received certificates and pencils and a few lucky students received a book prize.

A special thanks to all the student MCs: June, Geena, Graecen and Bisman. And a big thank you to Graecen, Ian, Emma, Alysha and Kylie for all their hard work on their powerpoint presentations.

Storytelling with Michael Kusugak

On January 17th, Inuit author and storyteller, Michael Kusugak, came to the South Slope/ BCSD library.  He did two sessions of storytelling for Divisions 5-11 from South Slope and Divisions 15-17, 19 from BCSD.  The students heard stories retold from his published books as well as some new stories.  We were all fascinated with his string stories, too.  Ask someone from one of the classes that were there to tell you all about it.