Bruno St-Aubin from Montréal Visits Chine Drive Students!!

Bruno St-Aubin - Surprise Author Visit for Chine Drive!!Last Monday, September 27th, the Kindergarten, and Grades One and Two students were very excited to receive a surprise visit from our author friend, Bruno St-Aubin. Bruno is a well known childrens' author and illustrator from Montréal who was in Toronto to promote his books at the Word on the Street Festival. With one afternoon free, he offered to visit his friends at Chine Drive. Students were engaged in his vivacious story, George's Antlers and had an opportunity to watch as he showed them and used their ideas to create an original illustration. He gave away one illustration to Trillium H.

2010-11 NEW SCHOOL YEAR! WELCOME!!

NEWS FLASH!!! NEWS FLASH!!! NEWS FLASH!!!

The LEARNING COMMONS is the new name that has be dubbed onto our Library/Computer Lab
location. The wonderful librarians who volunteer Ontario-wide for the Ontario School Library Association, have created a new document that describes and helps teacher-librarians work in "The Learning Commons". We are very fortunate at Chine Drive to have an administration, parent council and staff who have done a tremendous job the past few years to update technology and the book collection. Together, the flexible timetable teachers will schedule their classes and small groups in the New Learning Commons, where I, the Teacher-Librarian will work as a Partner to help teach our students. Now, that doesn't seem so new to Chine, we have already been building this model for years, growing from the "Partners in Action" ideas of many years ago.
So, I look forward to continue working in this capacity with the Chine Community.

Well, it was a wonderful summer indeed! I have finally gotten around to updating Chine's Library site. It has taken some time to get back into the swing of Blogging!
I am so excited to have several new colleagues on staff who are very keen on Blogging too! It has be great helping Mrs. Lambers in the Grade 7-8 and Mr. Violo in the Grade 2 classes this past week as they also embark into the Blogging world. Looking forward to all their class postings this year!

BOOK FAIR!!! Bring in all your pennies!

Today, the amazing parent volunteer team led by Mrs. Ayres was able to set up the Scholastic Book Fair in our very own Chine Library.. all in record time!
This week from Tuesday to Thursday, all students, teachers and parents will have an opportunity to puruse and buy brand new books for their personal enjoyment.

For the generous of heart, donations can be made to classroom libraries too!
Check out the easel by the library door entrance and chose a class and title to donate.

All profits will go towards funding more books and technology for Chine Drive.

New Movie/Slideshow gadget for our Blog!

I hope you enjoyed my new movie, Blue Spruce 2009! These pictures were actually taken last May at Harbourfront during the day of the Festival. I have saved them in my computer and hadn't really thought much about how I was going to use them.

Tonight, I discovered that you can make your own movie and/or slideshow right online. This site is called ANIMOTO. Then you can "embed it" into your own blog. Embedding means that once I had created the Blue Spruce Award 2009 movie, I was able to copy the HTML computer language here into this blog's "gadget" feature.

In the customize pages of my blog, I can move around my gadgets to different sides of the site. The "Followers" is one gadget. The "Videos" is the second gadget. I also have added the link to the "Shelfari" site. As a librarian, I love my Shelfari account. It is actually a different website where I copy the bookjacket picture of the book I am reading, and the Shelfari site links it to all the publishers, comments and reviews of the book.

The one problem I have, is trying to coordinate the colours of the backgrounds and the text. I think I'm going to use lighter background than the navy blue I have now. The letters came out black and very hard to read on navy blue.

Don't be surprised if my blog acts like a chameleon over the next few postings!

Hope you enjoy my BLUE SPRUCE VIDEO!!! A bientot!
Mrs. Dassios

Graaade Super 2's visit Chine Library

Today 3 people returned books, and these lucky students got to submit to the Just Read It contest on the TDSB Library website: they are Magnus, Zoe and Colin C.
We have read 3 Blue Spruce books so far: Boo Hoo Bird - 4 votes, Bradley McGogg - 5 votes and lastly Crocodiles Play - 6 votes .....SOOOO we think Crocodiles Play so far is the best one. See you next week to find out how Farley does in the voting!!
time to read, chickdees! bye from the Grade 2's

Kindies visit Chine Library!!!

Comments from our wonderful afternoon kindie class:
From Hannah: We came to the library and I got a book called Princesses and Ballerinas!

From MacKenzie: We went to the library, uhhhh...unnnhhhh...what's the name again>?
From Mrs. DAssios: Crocodiles Play!
From MacKenzie: uhhhh... yes I liked it. They played the games and they got all mixed up.

From Danny: uhhmm.. we went into the library. We did a Blue Spruce book. A book that's a different author.

From Mrs. Dassios: Kindies will hear a total of 10 books then vote for their favourite Blue Spruce book.

From Philip: We read 3 Blue Spruce books so far, Boo Hoo Bird and Bradley McGogg the Very Fine Frog!

Happy New Year! (Belated,sorry!)

Happy New Year Chine Drive readers!
It has been super busy start to 2010, as we have been preparing for THREE reading programs @ Chine Library.
Check out the Ontario Library Association website:
http://www.accessola.com/forest2010/
The Blue Spruce program for Grades Kindergarten to Grade 3 is off to a spectacular start. The classes have already heard Mrs. Dassios read 2 nominated books, Boo Hoo Bird, by previously nominated, very talented author and illustrator Jeremy Tankard. Second book was Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog, by the first time author, Tim Beiser and illustrator Rachel Berman. The Kindies really enjoyed creating an illustration reflection on their experience of the books. The Grade 1,2 and 3 classes will be using a Memory Book to record their thoughts and illustrations. 8 books, and 8 weeks to go! Who will you vote for???

The Silver Birch Club meets Tuesdays at noonhour @ Chine Library. Many students from Grades 2-6 have had the opportunity to borrow books and started reading just before the Winter Break. Mrs. Daskalakis has been keenly reading and meeting with us. The Silver Birch Memory books will be ready to go home this week.

The Grade 7-8 classes have started reading in groups from a selection of 10 nominated Red Maple books. They will meet weekly to reflect and study the novels in 6 sessions. The students will all have a TDSB email account, which will permit them to join the Red Maple WIKI for Chine Drive. We have coordinated a WIKI online, where the students will have an opportunity to logon and post their reflections and responses to classmates postings. Parents may monitor postings, but only students can participate to the discussions as teachers admininster the site.

http://chineredmaple2010.wikispaces.com/

Tell us about your thoughts on the Forest of Reading 2010!
Happy reading!
Mrs. Dassios