More Flat Stanley Pictures!

Here are some more little ones excited to hear how Flat Stanley enjoyed his travels! Thank you to everyone who helped our second graders learn about different places, writing letters, and mapping skills.

 

Flat Stanley flies home...

Second graders listened to Ms. Sloggett read the original Flat Stanley book a few months ago, then students created their own Flat Stanleys and sent them to people all around Oklahoma, the United States, and some even overseas! They are flying home and being received by the children who sent them out. Here are a few kids who received their Flat Stanleys back.

Stanleys returned from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Florida, Colorado, North Dakota, South Carolina, Taiwan, and Italy! Students are really excited to receive postcards, letters, photos, and maps from their Flat Stanleys' travels.

Photo album from Virginia, postcard from the Vatican in Rome, Italy, and envelope of candy from Taiwan!

Some kids even received gifts from the person who showed their Flat Stanleys around. Lots of pictures have been received from classrooms who "adopted" Flat Stanleys, as well as pictures from famous landmarks here in the United States and overseas. We'll keep posting Flat Stanley pictures as we get them!

Tammi Sauer comes to visit!

Central Oak Elementary Library hosted auther, Tammi Sauer, on November 9th. She did four programs for our students and signed autographs in her books that students purchased.

 She taught the kids songs and had students participate in several different skits and performances during her presentations. Ms. Sloggett even played the part of Oprah in one of the skits!

Students were encouraged to dress in "cowboy gear" and many took the opportunity to do so.

 

 

Mr. Larry Miller, a CO Alumni purchased a copy of every one of Mrs. Sauer's books for the elementary library. Here he is with the purchased books and Mrs. Sauer:

 

Thank you so much Mr. Miller, for the wonderful new books!

 

Thank you very much to Tammi Sauer for doing such a wonderful job teaching our students about her job, sharing her job, and books with our students.

 

The library cannot keep her books on the shelves in the library since Mrs. Sauer's visit! The students check them out just minutes after someone else has returned them. That is a testament to having an author visit a school. Not only do students get exposed to books by the author, but they get to actually see how authors do their job. Mrs. Sauer shared with the students how she comes up with ideas for her books, how she writes them, and then how she gets them published. We are all looking forward to her new book, Nuggett & Fang, which comes out very soon. Look for that book to "float" into the library soon (It is about a shark!).

 

 

 



 

A Busy Week in the COE Library!

Veterans Day Display, COE Library

We have had a very busy week in the library!

The students are learning the importance of our veterans with presentations being given to each class (on their learning level) about what Veterans Day is about and why they should be thankful to our veterans. We have looked at books, watched video,s and viewed websites with information regarding veterans.

The flag shown in the picture is one that our school received from Mount Vernon after my visit there this summer. It flew for a day over Mount Vernon and looks great in our library. I brought in a couple of uniforms to show the students. They belong to my son-in-law, US Marine Corporal Nease (on the left) and my fiance, US Army SSG David Moody (camoflauge shirt on the right). They both served in Iraq and SSG Moody also served in Desert Storm/Desert Shield and Afghanistan. They are both heroes, as are all of the men and women who have served in our nation's armed services. The students are quite impressed with the medals and insignia shown on the uniforms and have been sharing stories of their family members who are also serving our nation. Two teachers in our school also served: Mrs. Jackson was in the Air Force, and Mr. Roberson was in the Army. Thank you veterans!

Books donated by our wonderful alumni

Once again, we are thankful to our alumni group here at Central Oak Elementary School. These books were recently donated by some wonderful people who love to see our kids read! Thank you alumni!

Carol, and the books she shared

For the last couple of weeks, I have been "booktalking" books by Tammi Sauer because she will be visiting our school this Friday. I am encouraging students to booktalk a book that they have read and enjoyed. The objective is to encourage kids to share books with other kids and "advertise" the book. Carol, shown here, did a booktalk on the two books she is showing. She did such a great job that both of the books she discussed were checked out by friends in her class! Congratulations Carol!

Stick your nose in a good book!

We finally have a new bulletin board in front of the library. I hope you enjoy our new hall decoration!

 

 

 

 

Third Graders Receive Their Dictionaries

COE third graders were presented with student dictionaries today by the Midwest City Rotary Club. This club is very generous to include our school in donating the dictionaries. The students were very excited to learn what other things were included in the dictionaries aside from definitions. Each student was presented with their own dictionary to keep and use for their studies in and out of school.

In addition, the Midwest City Rotary Club donated some much-needed books to our library. We are very grateful for these donations and I'm sure the books will be used by many students and teachers in the years to come.

Thank you for your committment to education and your generosity to our school, Midwest City Rotary Club!

Thunder Up Central Oak!

Our school was privileged this week to welcome two of the Thunder Girls and the Thunder Bus!














The top two readers in each classroom were able to board the bus and choose a free book donated by the Thunder.

Mrs. Cindy Tinney, our Library Assistant and I welcomed the Thunder Girls and were able to view the wonderful books that our students would be receiving.

Thank you Thunder! We are so glad you support schools in the Oklahoma City area!

OTA/Encyclomedia Conference - Oklahoma City, OK

Last week I spent two days at the Oklahoma Technology Association/EncycloMedia Conference held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. What a wonderful opportunity to share with and learn from many other library and technology experts from our great state! Several people from our school district were representing Crooked Oak Public Schools. The COE Library Assistant, Cindy Tinney, the CO high school librarian, and a couple of others attended.  I was there with a 4th grade teacher (Laura Knight) from our school to give our presentation called "Classroom Bloggery." Here is the presentation link: http://bit.ly/PPP4gJ
 

In addition to presenting, we were able to attend other presentations about technology tools, great books to share with students, and also looked around at vendor booths. At one of those booths, I got to meet Katy Kelly, the author of one of our school's favorite books, Melonhead! Katy signed our school copy and I got to have my picture made with her (picture above).

EncycloMedia is a great way for librarians to re-charge and reconnect. Thank you, Oklahoma Technology Association for the great conference, and thank you COPS for paying for our attendance this year. It will be beneficial to our school district in ways we can't even imagine yet.

Have you attended a workshop or conference in the last year that was awesome? What was something you learned about your craft? Please share in the comment section below.
 

Captain Underpants Interview

Three fourth graders did an interview with Captain Underpants about one of his books this morning. The students posted the interview video on their blog through Kidblog.com. I am hoping to add the video to this blog as soon as it is published.

What a cool idea, Mrs. Knight!

George Washington Portrait

The front of Mount Vernon

Over the summer, I visited Mount Vernon as part of my trip to the Washington, DC area. I had planned on staying for a couple of hours and then heading back into the city for more sight-seeing. Little did I know how profoundly I would be struck by Mount Vernon! I was transported back to the 1700s while strolling the grounds of our first president's home. I was surprised at how small the home actually was, and at how nicely things have been preserved. I was unable to visit all the parts of the site due to time limitations, so I plan to return soon.

The back porch of Mount Vernon

Gardens at Mount Vernon

 As I was wandering through the new museum, a worker recognized me as a teacher (Hmmm... I wonder how he knew?), and sent me to the teacher resource center. The staff gave me a folder of resources from Mount Vernon to share with the teachers at my school. One of the things they did for my school was send a beautiful framed portrait of George Washington to be hung at our school! We finally received it last week, and it is now hung in a very prominent place in our school library. We are just as proud as we can be to have this portrait in our new library.

If you ever get the chance to visit Mount Vernon, I highly recommend it!

American Girls - The Groovy 1970s

Today, our American Girls Club met and learned about the 1970s. Ms. Sloggett showed a slide show of things that were popular during the 1970s. The girls learned about hairstyles, clothing styles, technology of the time, and listened to a few songs from the 1970s. They made friendship bracelets and got to see some funny pictures of Ms. Sloggett and her family from that time. Here's one of the pictures they saw - it is from 1972. That is Ms. Sloggett on the top right!

More New Books!

Central Oak boys and girls are going to go BONKERS when they see the new books that Mr. Roger Short, CO alumni purchased for our library! Tom Angleberger has written some very creative books for upper elementary and middle school students about a bunch of kids who know a lot about Star Wars. One of the boys creates origami characters from Star Wars and they play an integral role in the plot of the series.

Felicity is an American Girl who lives in Jamestown during the late 1700s. Since the 5th graders are studying that time period, I thought it would be nice if the girls could read about a girl their age that lived during the time.

Thank you so much Mr. Short!

Outstanding Alumni Support

Our library received a wonderful donation from a couple of alumni this afternoon - the entire series of two of our most popular books and two American Girl - Felicity books! Thank you so much!!!

All Star Book Fair!!!

We are having our book fair this week at Central Oak. Our goal is sales of $2600. I'm sure the kids will work really hard at achieving it because if it is made, Ms. Sloggett will dress up as...

 

That's right! I will - BUT only if the goal is made. I hope we make it, but not really... :)

 

Since today was Talk Like a Pirate Day, I dressed up as a pirate and read Pirates Don't Change Diapers to our three Pre-K classes. They were so excited to get to rrrrrrread alllllonnngg!!

I met up wth some shoppers at our book fair and took a picture with them. What a fun day!

 

 

Red White and Read

Red White and Read is our reading theme this year at Central Oak Elementary School.  We are promoting books about patriotism, American History, Oklahoma History, and any other books related to American studies. We came up with this theme because our year started out with the Olympics, which always brings about feelings of pride in our country(ies). Our Fall Book Fair theme is All Stars. We are all proud of being All-Star Americans!

Eric Carle Author Study

Our Second Graders recently read an Eric Carle story (The Tiny Seed) during their reading time in class. When they came to the library, I read them Walter the Baker - my favorite Eric Carle book. We talked about how Eric Carle does his illustrations with collage. The teachers went above and beyond and helped their students create beautiful bulletin boards using the collage techniques. Here are some pictures of the hallway decorations and some of the creators!

New Story Rug!

We are so excited to have a new rug in our library for kids to sit upon when they listen to stories in the library. It has rows of stars on which little kids sit and so far, it is a hit! Check out this class enjoying the new rug...

 

Weekly Weed: Modern Olympic Superstars

Since we recently finished up the Summer Olympics in London, I thought I'd showcase this book of Modern Olympic Superstars! This book has a copyright date of 1979. Boy, is that modern! The cover photo is of Nelli Kim, a Russian gymnast who earned the second "10" in the 1976 Olympics. That was the same year Nadia Comaneci received the first "10" score in an Olympics. The only other person I had heard of that is listed in this book was Bruce Jenner. Now, he is more famous for his connections with the Kardashian family than for his Olympic gold medal in the decathalon. The last checkout date for this book was in 1987. I hope someone might find this book useful as I will be giving it away!