Lower School Library

On Wednesday, November 20, Vashti Harrison visited with 2nd through 5th graders at the Lower School to celebrate the publication of her inspiring book, Little Legends: Exceptional Men in Black History. Vashti is an artist, author, and filmmaker with a passion for storytelling. She earned her MFA in film and video from California Institute of the Arts, where she snuck into animation and illustration classes to learn from Disney and DreamWorks legends. There she rekindled a love for drawing and painting. Now she uses her love for both film and illustration to craft beautiful stories for children. Her other books include Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World and Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. Vashti has also illustrated the recent books Sulwe by Lupita Nyong’o and Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry.

 

 

 

 

 

This Halloween our 3rd – 5th grade students had the opportunity to practice reading aloud with meaning and expression. In the Library, we turned the lights down and gathered on the rug to hear Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz. Several students took this opportunity to try out the oral tradition of story telling and told their favorite ghost stories. For our younger students we focused on making predictions using these Halloween favorites:

Friends’ Central Lower School celebrated its 19th annual Harvest Fest! This is the time of year when we celebrate our students’ connection to the natural world. Students are encouraged to bring in something they have grown themselves or something that they have observed in nature. Our activities during this week included pickle tasting, cutting vegetables to prepare our very own stone soup, and at the end of this wonderful week, our 5th graders wrote and performed a skit based on the folk tale Stone Soup!

In the library, we prepared by reading John Muth’s version of this classic folk tale. Students appreciated the change from the traditional European setting. The final line in Muth’s book, “And to think,” said the monks, “to be happy is as simple as making stone soup.” offered the perfect opportunity to connect our Harvest Fest with our Quaker testimony of Community. Author and our Ambassador for Community, DyAnne DiSalvo returned to campus to work with 5th graders on a backdrop for their performance. The skit was a success and the soup was delicious, stones and all!

On Wednesday, October 16, Raina Telgemeier visited Friends’ Central School Upper campus for an evening event. In an auditorium packed with fans, Raina discussed her career creating graphic novels and how her personal history informs her work. The most memorable quote from the evening: “Graphic novels are real reading!”

This school got off to a great start with a wonderful all-school assembly featuring DyAnne DiSalvo, author and illustrator of our all-school read, Grandpa’s Corner Store. The book celebrates this year’s Quaker testimony of Community. Each of our classrooms received a copy of Grandpa’s Corner Store and our students in Pre-K through 5th grade attended the assembly.

The community spirit shines bright in this story of a take-charge child who refuses to let her grandpa’s corner grocery quietly disappear when a big supermarket opens down the street. By organizing her neighbors, Lucy makes sure her grandpa’s small, independent business can stand up to the big competition. Grandpa’s Corner Store includes a wonderful variety of community members and a map of the neighborhood.

Before reading aloud from the book, DyAnne DiSalvo told our students about the true story that inspired the book. Ms. DiSalvo used to live near a neighborhood store just like the one in Grandpa’s Corner Store. The owner, Mr. Johnson, wore a red jacket and was a very special person who helped his neighbors. Ms. DiSalvo showed us pictures of Mr. Johnson and the store.

 

After signing books for our students, Ms. DiSalvo drew a beautiful portrait of Mr. Johnson and dedicated it to the Lower School. Ms. DiSalvo will be returning to our campus two more times this year. First, for our Harvest Fest/Stone Soup celebration and later in the spring for a 5th grade writer’s workshop. The Lower School presented Ms. DiSalvo with a special symbol of our gratitude created by our art teacher, Heather Exley. We are honored to have Ms. DiSalvo as our “Ambassador for Community.”

 

A great first week of school for Kindergarten! We read the King of Kindergarten by Derrick Barnes and Vanessa Brantley-Newton. Teacher Mari, our Assistant Head of School for Academic Program, also got a crown to celebrate her birthday! Teacher Melody, our Lower School Principal, shows off the book’s cover.

We are so excited about the new shelf signage in our library and we are getting very positive feedback from our students! The shelf signage was creating right here at FCS through a collaborative effort that included our Light Lab, the Library, and our fantastic Physical Plant.

 

It’s the 10th anniversary of the world’s best-selling almanac for kids! To celebrate the 2020 National Geographic Kids Almanac, FCS Lower School hosted an interactive comedy show by the nationally acclaimed Story Pirates! The quiz show was made up of a series of interactive games and challenges that required student and teacher participation. Students loved the fast facts about animals, science, nature, technology, and conservation and the opportunity to display their knowledge!

 

Lower School students celebrated National Poetry Month by learning about different types of poetry and then writing their own original poetry for two of our Library Poet-trees. We built one tree in the hallway outside of the library.

 

 

 

 

A second Poet-tree in the form of a sculpture made from natural materials was created by a 5th grade student with help from friends. This Poet-tree took up residence inside the library.

 

 

 

5th grade students focused on writing black-out poems: poems created by removing words from recycled book pages. Grades 3 and 4 wrote original poetry in a variety of forms including free verse, haiku, narrative, and limerick.

Students were invited to read aloud from their poems and our library class quickly turned into an authentic poetry reading with students stepping up on a library stool to make sure their poems were heard.

 

On a surprisingly snowy morning in March, Friends’ Central welcomed celebrated children’s author and illustrator Matt Phelan to the Lower School. Matt is the author and illustrator of many picture books, graphic novels, and chapter books, including Knights vs Dinosaurs (2018), an illustrated chapter book and the first installment of an exciting trilogy. Speaking to two groups of students, Matt described his artistic process, where he finds his inspiration, and shared how he came up with the idea to include both knights and dinosaurs in the same book!

 

 

Our students found plenty of inspiration in Matt’s presentation, including 1st grade students who made a BOOK of their own in the shape of a pig (Pignic, 2018) to thank Matt for his visit. Our 4th grade had the opportunity to eat lunch with Matt and several students asked him for advice on their own personal drawing projects. In describing his career, Matt pointed out that he had taught himself to draw and he encouraged students to never stop drawing!

 

Matt Phelan’s visit coincided with our Lower School Book Fair where we highlighted his books, as well as our terrific book talk books, and our library wish list.

 

 

On Monday morning, January 28, students met in the library for a reveal of our Caldecott mock election results. Cheers went up when the first envelope was opened and the book Blue by Laura Vaccaro Seeger was announced.

The second envelope revealed our honor book choices Drawn Together by Minh Le and Dan Santat and The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld.

Students were invited back to the library later in the morning for a live-stream of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Youth Media Awards announcements. Excitement mounted as several of the picture books students reviewed for our mock election received Youth Media Awards in other categories.

And the ALA Caldecott Award for the most distinguished American picture book for children goes to…

Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackall

 

The Lower School Library is buzzing with excitement about the upcoming Caldecott Awards! Students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade have been learning about the American Library Association’s award for the most distinguished American picture book for children and the criteria used to select the award winner.

Students used the same criteria for choosing the Caldecott Award winner and worked in groups to discuss and review 12 picture books. In preparation for our mock election next week, students evaluated these picture books in four categories with a point system. The evaluation process produced rich discussion and debate as well as gave students the opportunity to become intimately familiar with each book. Students are now ready to cast an informed vote for the most distinguished American picture book for children published in the year 2018.

But our preparation was not over! Students in 4th grade spent extra time in the library during lunch and recess to review the evaluation forms and tally the points by title to create a new top five list. Next week we will use this shortened list to vote for the award and honor books! On January 28th, when the Caldecott Award is announced, we will compare our winners to the American Library Association’s picks. Stay tuned!

 

Author-Illustrator Laurie Keller visited the Lower School on October 25th to discuss her newest book Potato Pants!, a wonderfully silly book about forgiveness. Using her main character, Potato, Laurie demonstrated for students in K-3 how to draw different emotions by changing the direction of an eyebrow or adding an eyelid.

Students followed along closely and created their own images of the popular characters, Potato (Potato Pants!, 2018) and Arnie (Arnie the Donut, 2003). Laurie also gave students an opportunity to use their social emotional intelligence skills to create a new story. Choosing from an array of everyday objects, students worked on character development and plot line to create a story about an ordinary baseball who, all of a sudden, becomes terribly sneaky because he is jealous of a popular football that everyone wants to play with!

After our assembly, Laurie signed books and met with fifth grade students. Last year, these students presented Laurie’s first book, The Scrambled States of America (1998), as a skit. Our students were thrilled to meet Laurie and show her the states they used for their performance. Laurie Keller’s visit to Friends Central Lower School was a delightful interactive author event that students will long remember!

 

 

 

 

           By Parker H. and Olivia A.

Reprinted from the Phoenix Press with the permission of the 5th grade newspaper club

            Have you ever wanted to meet a great author and an incredible woman? Well, we did on Monday, March 12th in the Lower School meeting room and her name is Chelsea Clinton! Chelsea Clinton is an author and also the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Senator Hillary Clinton. You might be asking yourself why such a successful author came to our school. She came here to present her new book called She Persisted Around the World. She is also the author of other books including She Persisted: 13 American Women who Changed the World, and It’s Your World. Fifth graders Sasha G. and Neha introduced her at the assembly.
                 

          Chelsea talked about her books and she also talked about how we could make a difference. Something that inspired her to write these books was when Senator Elizabeth Warren refused to be silenced while reading a quote from Coretta Scott King. Here are examples of three women in her book that refused to be silenced in a man’s world:

• When Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz was a child growing up in Mexico, it was common that most girls did not go to school, but she knew that was wrong, so Juana Ines decided to read and study on her own. Her plan was to disguise herself as a boy so that she could go to University, but her family didn’t allow her to. Still she persisted and spent lots of time looking for tutors that didn’t mind teaching a girl. Later on she became a nun so that she could focus on her writing. Her poems and plays are still being read today and her Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz was the first published argument for a woman’s right to education in the Americas.
• Nellie Bly chose her job as a reporter because a male writer had once told her that working women were “a monstrosity” and she knew she could prove him wrong. She persisted by putting herself in danger while trying to expose real monstrosities. She pretended to be a sweatshop worker and even a patient in a mental hospital to show how badly people were being treated.
• The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a PhD and become a professor at the University of Nairobi was named Wangari Maathai. Wangari was horrified by how many trees were being cut down all across Kenya, so she planted new trees. She persisted by gathering friends, family, and strangers to help her. She was the first African woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

          Near the end of her presentation, people were allowed to ask questions. Someone asked what it was like living in the White House. She said that to her, “It was home”. One Kindergarten boy named Jack asked if men can persist. She said, “Absolutely!”  Abeneezer in 1st grade asked if she will ever run for president. She said you don’t have to be a president to make a change in the world. You just have to be passionate about something and find a way to make it better. And Olivia F. in 4th grade said that she lives in the house where Chelsea’s husband grew up. Chelsea said she would tell Marc (her husband).  

           Now that you have learned a bit about some wonderful women in this world, we hope that this encourages you, boy or girl, to persist. We are so grateful for Chelsea’s appearance and we encourage you to read her books!