OLA SUPER dee duper CONFERENCE!!!

The highlight of every librarian's year is just around the corner... Over 5,000 librarians from all over Canada and the United States will be converging on the Toronto Convention Centre this week.

Mrs. Dassios has the privilege of being the Vice-Chair of the Forest of Reading Programs for Ontario. There will be many opportunities to meet fantastic Canadian writers. Stay tuned for all the news on the new publications for Kids' books!

SILVER BIRCH READING CLUB--- WILL BE CANCELLED THIS WEEK.
Sorry, kids! But come by any afternoon and take out new titles to keep up
your quota for the week.

A la semaine prochaine! Mrs. D.

Silver Birch Reading Club @ Noon Updates

Silver Birch Updates from Mrs. Dassios:
Today we held our Silver Birch meeting in the Learning Commons today at noonhour. We discussed more of the Silver Birch books, the Fiction, Non-Fiction and Express titles. Last week's winner of a poster was Reese. Today's winner of a poster was Emelia.

For the first time, the students had the opportunity to go on the Internet to explore the books, authors and biographies on the Silver Birch website organized by the Ontario Library Association (OLA). Students started writing letters to their authors, which they will email to them and hopefully receive replies in the near future.

http://www.accessola.com/forest2011/SilverBirch/

We discovered an interesting series of videos on Youtube.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut7ci-SJKRk

Eric says of the site, "The Youtube website has videos about the books. They are made byCitizenkidstrailors. Today I watched How to Build Your own Country, by Valerie Wyatt. It was telling you like the steps in a short way. The voice was by kids. It was kind of like, It wasn't too much like the book because it has some different steps. It didn't have some of the steps.. like make your own passport."

Students can access both sites from home.

First of all, I'd like to share with you a Science Unit Partners in Action project we did with Mr. Martynowski's Grade One class!! They spent many weeks studying and buiding air powered cars. Then they filmed their experience of racing their home-made cars to see WHO could GO THE DISTANCE!!! Please check out our video posted down the side of this blog.

Happy New Year in the Learning Commons!

Hello to everyone! After a very hectic first term at Chine Drive P.S., I'm happy to be back at the computer to finally keep you all up to date via our Learning Commons BLOG!

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.