Check out this S'More for the latest news!

It's National Library Week and School Library Month!

Hello everyone! We are excited to share that it is National Library Week and School Library Month! It is our privilege to serve you as a part of our school community! Please some in and see us to help you find resources, create something, share an idea, read a book or an ebook, solve a problem, or any other reason you'd like to come in! Here is a PSA video to promote our school libraries! Check it out!  
Julianne Moore's School Library PSA

Girls on the Run Starting Next week!

Hello 6th and 7th grade girls!
Our amazing club starts next week and we have a few slots open for more girls to attend with us! We meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school from March through Mid-May and we will participate in the Denver area 5K race on Saturday, May 9th. Please see Mrs. Biller in the counseling office if you are interested in joining us! It will be a fantastic season--and you can be a part of it!

Here is a link to the Girls on the Run website and the 5K information!

6th Grade Ottawa Core-Guest Speaker

All across the grade level, 6th graders in our school are learning about cause and effect through the study of natural disasters and the human experience. To deepen their level of understanding of the effects of hurricanes, Mrs. Nielsen of the Ottawa core invited guest speaker, Tim Ellis to talk with the students. Tim and his family were survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the 3rd most destructive natural disaster in American history. Here are a couple of shots during his talk with the 6th graders in Ottawa. Thank you, Mr. Ellis, for your time!

                           

 

Come visit our book fair!

We will be hosting our Scholastic Book Fair in the Learning Commons this Wednesday, February 3rd through next Wednesday, February 11th! We are open a bit before school, open through the day, a bit after school, and in the evenings for parent teacher conferences! 

Come check out the book fair!!

If you prefer to shop online, please click here!

It's a great time to get excited about reading! We will have a fun "Under the Sea" theme and be giving away gift certificates each day of the book fair for answering our trivia question of the day. Please stop in and see us!  

Author, Dom Testa, Visits The International School!

On Thursday, January 15th, award-winning author, speaker, and broadcaster Mr. Dom Testa visited our school! He met with 3 groups of students and shared his love of reading and writing as well as gave many writing tips to our students!

The Battle of the Books group got to meet with him first, as he gave us the "behind the scenes" about writing his Galahad series of books! He shared how important character biographies are before writing the plot of your story. He also shared how he comes up with names for characters and other names in his books. For example, making a lis of options in naming the comet Bhaktul. Investing time researching was also a key idea he shared from an author's viewpoint. He made the distinct connection between reading and writing for our students and even showed his writing journal from when he was in 3rd grade! There was a lot of time for us to ask questions of Dom, lending the visit to be quite personal. Battle of the Books participants received a Galahad poster and bookmark from Dom at the end of the session! Each student will also be receiving Dom's first two books--The Comet's Curse and The Web of Titan! 

   

Next up, Dom met with one of Ms. Hershberger's 6th grade journalism classes. His focus here was giving tips on blogging and putting your writing on the screen of your audience. Some tips include: take your own pictures to use on your blog (do NOT use Google Images--remember his copyright nightmare story?), don't make posts too long, vary your topics and format, and post your blog on social media. Again, our students had time to ask Dom numerous questions and he gladly entertained them!

         

We ended our day in Mrs. Hyman's 6th grade Exploring Literacy class. The main topic was writing mystery books, as Dom is about to publish a new series! He talked about how authors plan out a series and often have the first 3 books tie together and then write related, stand-alone books after that. He also showed us the mystery books he read as a youngster, as these served as one of his inspirations. The most exciting thing? Dom is going to send a piece of his new, not-yet-published Cooper James mystery to the class for feedback! They will be writing literary reviews to help him with his last round of refining. How cool is that? 

As a digital literacy teacher/teacher librarian, this special day was years in the making! This is my 7th year in the library (though in our building, we call it the "learning commons") and I have wanted Dom to visit each of those years. It was well worth the wait, as careful planning made it possible for his visit to deeply impact specific groups of students.  And the greatest residual effect?  We have his wonderful books to enjoy throughout the building! The Galahad books are available in the learning commons for checking out, and his two books, Shaking Demons and Madison Cooley's Shoes will be available in classroom libraries for students to read. (These last two titles are published under Dom's pen name, Buster Blank.) 

                                               

Many thanks to you, Dom Testa, for such a memorable day at The International School at Thornton Middle!