- Skyway Elementary
- Welcome
Phone: 208-664-8998 x27008
Email:
Degrees and Certifications:
B.S. in Business Management. Graduated Magna cum Laude. Self published author
Mr. Nicholas Quick - Skyway Librarian
Hello Skyway Families,
February was a big month for research within the library. For older grades, we spent the first few weeks of the month doing exercises to help them learn dictionary & thesaurus navigation. Students were given a prompt and then had to find definitions or synonyms for the provided word. As our library has a variety of reference texts available for checkout, this activity was meant to spur interest in those titles – which it has.
Our secondary focus over the past month has been data review & analysis. We have a large assortment of data about library use & activity, so we dove into it all. Perhaps the most surprising element was learning that the top ten most popular books are all written by the same author, Dav Pilkey.
In addition to library data analysis, we’ve reviewed data for our book report submissions. This year Skyway Students have completed over 2,100 book reports! This is dramatically higher than last year’s amount and I am so proud of the students who take part in this volunteer program. The program will end at the beginning of May, so students are cranking up their submissions to meet the goals we set during the data review.
As always we continue our weekly reading sessions with K & 1st grades (sporadically 2nd grade too). When we start our library classes I always ask students to recite the book title from the previous week, and to explain the plot. Students generally do good at remembering all the details, but sometimes we miss a thing or two. Over the past month we’ve read the following titles:
The Big Honey Hunt | I Am a Tiger | The Great Pasta Escape | Our Library
The week of March 4 – 8 is Dr. Seuss week, so we dove into the 1954 classic “Horton Hears a Who.” To each class I’ve mentioned the dedication – “For My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto Japan” - at the beginning of the Horton book, as it marks an evolution of Dr. Seuss as a person & author. Before 1953 Dr. Seuss generally made unfavorable references to the Japanese (a by-product of serving in WW2). But after being sent to visit the post-war country by Life magazine, he overcame his prejudices and used their experience as motivation to pen “Horton Hears a Who.” The underlying message of people being people no matter how small is as relevant now as it was then.
We continue to add texts to the library’s catalog. A big thank you to Skyway PTA for extending a grant that allowed us to purchase foreign language dictionaries. We’ve added German, Spanish, French, and Japanese dictionaries and they were all immediately checked out. I continue to use funds generated from our book fairs to add in-demand genres like graphic novels, sports, and fact books to circulation. Anyone is welcome to see our new additions and search our catalog using the link provided at the bottom of this page.
We’re about six weeks away from our second book fair of the school year. Skyway book fairs are some of the best in the country (according to Scholastic) and I look forward to continuing that trend. I’ll be sending home permission slips for bookworm volunteers after we return from Spring Break. To ensure your student can properly volunteer for contributing to the fair’s setup & operation, please ensure the form is filled out and returned before April 19.
Thanks for reading!
- Mr. Quick
7th March 2024
K & 1st Grade Weekly Reading Log:
1. Put Me in the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
2. Llama Llama Mess Mess Mess by Anna Dewdney
3. Berenstein Bears & The Double Dare by Stan & Jan Berenstein
4. The Very Quiet Cricket by Eric Carle
5. Pete the Cat's Groovy Imagination by Kimberly & James Dean
6. The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid by Linda Williams
7. I Can Read with My Eyes Shut by Dr. Seuss
8. If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff
9. Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson (+2nd grade)
10. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss (all grades)
11. Pete the Cat Saves Christmas by Kimberly & James Dean
12. Click, Clack, Peep! by Doreen Cronin & Betsy Lewin
13. Snow by Uri Schulevitz
14. Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss (+2nd grade)
15. The Big Honey Hunt by Stan & Jan Berenstein (+2nd grade)
16. I Am a Tiger by Karl Newson
17. The Great Pasta Escape by Miranda Paul
18. Our Library by Eve Bunting
19. Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
Key Library Dates
Spring Break: 25th - 29th March 2024
Second Book Fair: 22nd - 26th April 2024
Last Day of Library Specials - 24th May 2024