la biblioteca
well i thought i´d get one last entry in before may 2008 is gone forever. i can´t believe june is practically here..... may was supposed to bring a bunch of rain and it really hasn´t yet. the weather has been really odd this year. right now as i sit here and type this entry, clouds are rolling through the pueblo and into the windows and doors here at the internet place, making it look like i´m in a haunted house. the past couple of days have been dry and really windy, which is not that normal for may in apaneca. we were on alert yesterday for tropical storm alma, but it never really materialized here, which is good. of course, right after i typed that it hasn´t been raining here, it starts pouring. anyway.....
we finally got the school library up and running. well, not completely up and running, but the kids can at least now come into the classroom where the libary is and read. it was actually quite a lot of work to get the libary ready. we had to cover all the books with plastic to protect them. then we made up cards to put in the fronts of the books so that when the time comes to introduce the borrowing system, we´ll be able to take the cards out of the pockets and keep a physical record of what books have been taken out without having to write all the info down. we´re planning on making i.d. cards for the kids so that when they want to take a book out to take home, they can leave their card with the card from whatever book it is at the school. i drew some pictures and stuff to put on the wall to make it less industrialized. we still have a couple things to do yet, but for the most part, it´s a wrap.
this system may sound arcane to you, but this whole library system is completely new to the teachers and the kids. they´ve never experienced being able to take books home with them, and i will admit, i´m a little nervous about the whole thing. but i guess my feeling is that they can´t be prohibited from doing this forever. kids don´t really care for books here like we do, or like most of us do. they write in them and tear the pages and steal them. but not all kids do this, just like not everyone who is familiar with a library takes care of the books they take out. but i guess my feeling is that maybe they don´t know how to take care of books because they´ve never had a lot of books around them. i don´t know. it´ll be a learning experience, that´s for sure. and i know some books will be lost or whatever, but that just goes with the territory.
anyway, after getting all the books covered and put on the shelves, i looked at the library and i was like ¨it´s so small!!!!¨ we have maybe 200 books in all, including some reference books as well as some books in english. 200 books doesn´t sound like much for a library, in comparison to what we have available to us in the states, but believe me, 200 books to these kids is a lot! so i think all in all it can only be a good thing.
mirna and her first graders were the first to have ¨lectura¨ in the library. it was fun to hear all the kids reading. the plan is to have some kind of project where we work on comprehension, because a lot of kids just like to look at the pictures. there´s nothing wrong with just wanting to look at the pictures, but they also should be reading. so i´m gonna help mirna with some kind of comprehension project where she can get the kids to talk or write about what the book was about. i´ve been doing this a bit (last year and this year) with the first graders. i take a group of like 5 kids and we read a book together, then i ask them questions about the book and they write the answers in their notebooks. hopefully, she can start doing this with the whole class.
anyway, so here are some pictures from the new library! adios for now...... (oh, p.s.....i´ve finally learned how to add video! i added a video to the ¨carrera de cinta¨ post at the end to show exactly what happens there. hopefully i´ll be able to upload more videos of more stuff in the future.)
first graders reading
leydi telling everyone why she liked her book ¨¿Qué ve el sol?¨
we finally got the school library up and running. well, not completely up and running, but the kids can at least now come into the classroom where the libary is and read. it was actually quite a lot of work to get the libary ready. we had to cover all the books with plastic to protect them. then we made up cards to put in the fronts of the books so that when the time comes to introduce the borrowing system, we´ll be able to take the cards out of the pockets and keep a physical record of what books have been taken out without having to write all the info down. we´re planning on making i.d. cards for the kids so that when they want to take a book out to take home, they can leave their card with the card from whatever book it is at the school. i drew some pictures and stuff to put on the wall to make it less industrialized. we still have a couple things to do yet, but for the most part, it´s a wrap.
this system may sound arcane to you, but this whole library system is completely new to the teachers and the kids. they´ve never experienced being able to take books home with them, and i will admit, i´m a little nervous about the whole thing. but i guess my feeling is that they can´t be prohibited from doing this forever. kids don´t really care for books here like we do, or like most of us do. they write in them and tear the pages and steal them. but not all kids do this, just like not everyone who is familiar with a library takes care of the books they take out. but i guess my feeling is that maybe they don´t know how to take care of books because they´ve never had a lot of books around them. i don´t know. it´ll be a learning experience, that´s for sure. and i know some books will be lost or whatever, but that just goes with the territory.
anyway, after getting all the books covered and put on the shelves, i looked at the library and i was like ¨it´s so small!!!!¨ we have maybe 200 books in all, including some reference books as well as some books in english. 200 books doesn´t sound like much for a library, in comparison to what we have available to us in the states, but believe me, 200 books to these kids is a lot! so i think all in all it can only be a good thing.
mirna and her first graders were the first to have ¨lectura¨ in the library. it was fun to hear all the kids reading. the plan is to have some kind of project where we work on comprehension, because a lot of kids just like to look at the pictures. there´s nothing wrong with just wanting to look at the pictures, but they also should be reading. so i´m gonna help mirna with some kind of comprehension project where she can get the kids to talk or write about what the book was about. i´ve been doing this a bit (last year and this year) with the first graders. i take a group of like 5 kids and we read a book together, then i ask them questions about the book and they write the answers in their notebooks. hopefully, she can start doing this with the whole class.
anyway, so here are some pictures from the new library! adios for now...... (oh, p.s.....i´ve finally learned how to add video! i added a video to the ¨carrera de cinta¨ post at the end to show exactly what happens there. hopefully i´ll be able to upload more videos of more stuff in the future.)
first graders reading
leydi telling everyone why she liked her book ¨¿Qué ve el sol?¨
posted by laura v. at 3:38 PM
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