New York Times Best Selling Author, Rick Riordan, will be visiting Trident Academy on February 11 to talk to our 4th-10th grade students about his popular middle school series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The first book in the series, The Lightning Thief, was a middle school selection for summer reading last summer and is on the South Carolina Association of School Librarian’s nominee list for the Best 2007 Junior Book Award. The main character in his series is Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old with dyslexia and ADHD. From his Hyperion Books biography: “Making Percy ADHD and dyslexic was my way of honoring the potential of all the kids I’ve known who have those conditions,” says Riordan. “It’s not a bad thing to be different. Sometimes, it’s the mark of being very, very talented. That’s what Percy discovers about himself in The Lightning Thief.” Mr. Riordan is also the multi-award-winning author of the Tres Navarre mystery series for adults. Mr. Riordan is retired from the teaching profession but continues to keep his hands in education by conducting author appearances in the USA and Europe. We are very honored by his selecting Trident Academy to visit while he is in Charleston. Rick Riordan
South Carolina Book Awards - Summer reading for Trident Academy students last year was selections from the South Carolina Junior Book Award nominee list and the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award nominee list. Students who read three of the titles will participate in the voting in January for the best book. Students who read three books had their photos taken holding their favorite book and are anxiously awaiting their posters which will be made for them just like the famous people on the ALA posters.
Middle school students in the seventh grade finished their rotation through the library in December. They worked on evaluating websites, how to conduct a proper search using a variety of search engines, and they finished the semester with a scavenger hunt on the Internet for answers to forty questions.
Photo: An upper school student reads a funny book about a senior who has to interview 24 girls in 7 days for his prom date.
A group of sixth grade students will be starting their library rotation in January. We will be studying how to use print and electronic data bases.
Smart Board
I am pleased with the installation of a new Smart Board in the library. Our students are enjoying using the interactive features that are available during their library classes. We will be working on the Smart Board throughout the year as I convert several of our regular lessons into interactive lessons!
We are looking forward to the annual "Drop Everything And Read" Day in the library. All lower school students and teachers will drop what they are doing and come to the library to read for 30 minutes. This annual event is sponsored by several national organizations. To read more go the the DEAR website. We are looking forward to holding our third annual DEAR Day in 2008. DEAR. For some pictures of students reading, check out the teacher's web pages.
The two Trident Academy community discussion boards have been updated and are now open for use. This method of communication serves many purposes including extending the classroom learning experience beyond the Trident Academy walls. Students may be asked to continue a classroom discussion or answer a question that relates to what was discussed in the classroom that day. Teachers may respond individually to the students or to the group as a whole. The middle school board is the SeaHawks. The upper school board is located here.
I hope that by now most of our parents and students have familiarized themselves with the new Trident Academy web site. The library has it's own special location due to the quantity of pages that I have created over the years. The transfer of all this information to the new web site would have been too time consuming. I do hope that you will also check the teachers' pages to see what the teachers are doing in your student's classes. Since I also teach middle school classes, there are library pages that relay information to those parent's and students. They may be viewed here.
My second year on the SCYAB committee has ended. After starting in May with an initial 70+ young adult books to read, and after our first meeting, the committee has reduced the nomination list to the best 20 titles. The top twenty finalist's titles will be presented during book talks at the South Carolina Association of School Librarians' convention in Columbia, South Carolina in March 2008. I will present book talks on two of the final titles. The book talk I gave last year can be found on the web site "Booktalks Quick and Simple". I am looking forward to reading the nominated books on the 2008 list, and again, working with the wonderful high school librarians in South Carolina.
One of our own upper school students completed her term on the YA committee as a student representative. Senior Julia Maggiari attended all four committee meetings in Columbia this year. She read the nominated titles this summer and fall and participated in the voting on the nominees at the final meeting in December. The committee and I wish to thank her and the other students who joined the committee this year. The 2007-08 nominated book titles are available for upper school students to check out in the library along with the Junior Book Award nominees for middle school students. The 2008-09 list will be announced in March.
Access to the South Carolina Virtual Library at home or at school is free. Contact Ms. Silgals for the school password. Click on logo. National Science Digital Library - More than 500 science related Web sites.. the full story...
Linking Libraries and Academic Achievement - Suggested activities tied together with technology and literacy standards...the full story...
Exploratorium: Digital Library - The various collections of this online library include digital media..the full story....
