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Many thanks to those who replied! You reminded me how many important lessons librarians teach young children. My original question: If you are a primary librarian (K-2) or work with those grades, could you please share with me what kind of lessons/skills you teach? Responses: PreK-1 we work a long time on care and not feeding of books, almost the first semester. We work on parts of books, story components, fantasy, folklore and fairy tales. How to do research beginning. K I usually do a unit on alphabet. 1-2 we do a unit on alphabetical order, how to shelve books and using a shelf marker. The littler they are the better! They are fun and so eager to learn what you have to teach them. They love puppets, finger plays, singing and dancing, and a host of other stuff. These are the easiest classes if you have a procedure and stick to it every week or visit. **** I have K-5. At the lowerest grades I cover: authors illustrators parts of books book care what is a library librarian read classics and new literature appropriate for the class fiction nonfiction chapter books books in series arrangement of the library checkout procedures return procedures returning items on time basic research with 2 and a bit with K & 1 we do a very basic research project with two of our first grade classes. They gather five facts on an animal and write their own nonfiction book. We only do the research in the library and the remainder of the lesson is done in the classroom **** My previous job was in a PK-5 school. With PK and K, I started working on comparing fiction and nonfiction. First grade continued with this. One first grade teacher wanted to do some research skills, so we worked in groups. For five days, I took a different small group and used the simplest encyclopedias we had. We discussed alphabetical order and guide words as well as how to find something in the encyclopedia. The topic was maps and globes, so we also looked at a globe during the lesson. It was a very successful lesson! For second grade, we did a map of the library. The map was already created; we just added the labels. In the next lesson, the students had to use the map to find specific books in the library. We did this one several years. The kids really liked it! **** I am not a librarian but an assistant. Our librarian is only at our school one day a week and does lessons for 3-5. I handle the lessons for K-2. Some of the lessons I did last year were: book care with Mr. Wiggle's Book, Library Dragon and the Shelf Elf ours is a Great Expectations school so I worked with the teachers on life principals.. I also intoduce library procedures, how to find a fiction book, nonfiction book, what is nonfiction/fiction etc. I also do a nursery rhyme unit because lots of the children have not heard them before coming to school. I usually do an author study on Eric Carle which includes days of week, persistence, etc. **** I am the Media Specialist at a K-5 school and work with all the K-2 students on a regular basis. We work on many skills at that age, some of them are: - we start the year talking about taking care of the books, organization of the library (we talk about the way many things in our lives are organized such as the grocery store, etc. and why...this helps them understand that the library also is organized in a particular way for a purpose.) - parts of a book (title page, cover, spine) - we learn what the author, illustrator and publisher are - character, setting and plot (sometimes we use story maps) - we use puppets and other activites to retell stories - I do a Nursery Rhyme unit with my K/1s - the five finger rule for selecting books at our reading level - I do a unit on picture dictionaries with my k's and review picture dictionaries and talk about "My first Dictionary" (a regular student dictionary) with the first graders. - I introduce the thesaurus and atlas to my second and third graders (we are in multiage school so my second graders travel to specials with third graders) - I introduce the concept of biographies (we pair off and introduce one another and talk about the kind of facts someone must gather in order to be able to write a book about them). They love this activity. **** K-2 lessons include, book care; parts of a book, author, illustrator, copyright date (they like to know how old the book is), publisher; fiction and nonfiction; how books are arranged in the library; genres and elements of those genres; end of second grade I introduce the OPAC. I integrate reading strategies with read alouds. I also like to get them excited about books and hereby excited about reading. I have a personal collection of pop ups and everyone loves them. Robert Sabuda's are amazing. We have even made a very simple pop up from his site. I also have other types of books (sound, movement etc). Gallop is a scanamation book and again the kids are amazed. I have used reader's theatre in both first and second grade. I am careful about what I read that I include the intersts of the boys. they love the pop ups and adventure books. **** I teach different skills like comparing fiction/nonfiction. For example, I might take a book on bears from my nonfiction and share it with the kids before reading the story of The Three Bears. We talk about the differences in the text. We talk about facts we did or did not see. We talk, too, about the fact that many nonfiction books have photos but could have illustrations. They really automatically key into the illustrations and assume that illustrations indicate fiction status. We talk, too, about anthropomorphism and fantasy in comparing the two texts. Depending on the age group, too, we talk about the features of nonfiction texts versus fiction (index, table of contents, glossary, section headings, etc.). Another lesson I taught was about telling time. I did this with my second graders, since they are moving beyond telling time to the hour to telling time to the half hour and more. I used some individual student clocks on which the kids could turn the hands. We talked about the clock, its features, the marks that indicated minutes, counting patterns (counting by 5's). I then read them Bats Around the Clock by Kathi Appelt. The kids would adjust their clocks to show the time that I had just read in the story. We talked, too, about the progressive pattern that was found throughout the story. For older kids, I have done lessons about immigration and tied in real literature with it. For example, Yin's books are beautifully illustrated and tell a good story. In addition, at the back of the text there is more historical information. We discuss that the story is written from the perspective or point of view of someone whose culture has experienced these issues. We discuss the author's purpose as well. Point of view and author's purpose are concepts the kids need to know for our state test, the TAKS. We talk about the discrimination that immigrants in the past endured. Many of our kids in this Dallas suburb are from groups deeply involved with our current immigration issues. I use websites, too, to bring home the main focus of the lesson. PBS has excellent resources that feature the voices of immigrants--not someone from the outside. I do booktalks as well. One theme that I explored was stories set in school (especially featuring fifth graders). Books like Andrew Clements writes are great for this. At other times, I might target the genre that the teacher is working on. For historical fiction I might pull books by Avi or Esther Forbes or Louise Borden. Those are two for one experiences! **** Generally with PreK-K, I teach library citizenship, and work with the teachers doing stories, poems, fingerplays, etc. related to their class work. !st grade- Story time, parts of the book (c0ver, tile page, copyright page and again work with the teachers and what they are doing in the classroom. 2nd grade- Review the parts of a bokk and teach contents page and index. Last year we also did author studies. The students chose an author, did some research and wrote a short report. Then they shared it with the class during library time. **** I do several lessons on the differences between fiction and nonfiction by using matching text - meaning, I read a picture book/story about a cow and then read a nonfiction book about cows. We then look at what is true and not true about cows in the fiction book based on the true information from our nonfiction book. The little kids really like these lessons and always try to second guess the fiction book by the second time we do this lesson. I also do a lesson on how to tell if a book in nonfiction versus fiction by looking at the call letters/ numbers. I have students in small groups with each group having a small stack of mixed books. They are then to regroup the books according to type - one stack of nonfiction and one stack of fiction. This is really great for the younger ones as they are learning their letters and numbers and it helps them differentiate between them. Those are my two biggest ones. I hope to develop more this year using the alphabet. Jen Cepuch FCS teacher Greencastle-Antrim HS Greencastle, PA jennifercepuch@embarqmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. 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