Award Winning Children's Books In early late January each year the American Library Association announces the newest winners of the prestigious Caldecott and Newbery Medals, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Awards, the Theodore Suess Giesel Award, and the Coretta Scott King Award. These awards are chosen by committees of librarians, educators, publishers, and even students. Books are chosen for their excellence in writing, artwork, the powerful messages they portray, and their popularity among children. By choosing award winning books to read with st...

Winter Break Reading Challenge 2013 Over the Winter Break the Elementary Library challenged students to read every day! Research shows us that in order for students to be readers, daily reading needs to be a habit. By challenging students to read every day we hope to create the lifelong habit of reading for fun. We want our CMS students to enjoy reading, and to pick up books for fun. Parents can support this goal by having a library of books to read at home, and teachers can support this goal by having a large selection of reading materials in...

New Spanish Books Our Spanish librarian, Ms. Aybar, has put many new Spanish language books on display in the Elementary library. Spanish classes have been coming through and checking out the new books and hearing stories. Come and see our new Spanish Library books! ES Library After School Hours Just a reminder, the Elementary Library is open after school Mon-Thurs from 2:15-3:45. We are happy to check out books to students accompanied by parents, drivers, or nannies. Students are welcome to use the computers to do homework and research. ...

The Library Has a New Look!  Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and staff, the Elementary Library has a new look! We have completed Phase One of our renovation project. There is new shelving placed along the walls and in the Story Steps area of the Elementary Library. We have new chairs and seating areas as well!  By increasing the shelving in the library, we were able to open up a lot more space. There are now several clear work areas and areas for classes to gather, in addition to the story steps areas. The Spanish section has its ...

The new shelving for the ES Library has arrived to our campus! This shipment is the first of three that will arrive over the next three years. This shipment includes furniture for the walls of the library from end to end, some display shelving for the Story Steps area, and some new seating for students near the doors and circulation desk. Our furniture is supplied by the library company DEMCO. We choose the line 'ColorScapes' because it is sturdy, safe, and kids friendly with rounded edges and fun colors.   It's going to be a lot of work, but...

Changes to the ES Library If you have been to the ES library you may have noticed some of the changes we have been making. Over the summer workers installed a new glass partition, to create a story steps area. The library was painted in vibrant, kid friendly colors, and the basic layout of some of our furniture has changed. The goal is to create a lovely, kid –friendly space that will be flexible to meet the needs of our students. There are more changes to come! In early October, we will start receiving our new furniture! The first shipment o...

E-Books Available soon! The Library Staff is hard at work getting our new e-book system, OverDrive, ready! Starting this Friday you will be able to check e-books out from anywhere in the world to read on your e-reader. It’s a great way to have summer reading with you anywhere you go. In 2009 the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, described the summer learning loss as devastating... a 'summer slide' of reading loss that compounds with each summer. A study of 1600 sixth-graders in 18 schools showed that reading just 4 - 6 books over the summe...

E-Books Available soon! The Library Staff is hard at work getting our new e-book system, OverDrive, ready! Starting this June you will be able to check e-books out from anywhere in the world over the summer. The system works with iPads and iPods, computers, Blackberries, Sony e-Readers, Nooks, and a variety of other e-readers. We are still waiting on approval from Amazon to allow international e-book check outs on Kindles. We are ordering a wide range of e-books for all levels, from Elementary to adult. We hope the e-books keep you and your ...

3rd GRADE ENCOURAGES DOMINICAN TOURISM The 3rd grade has been working on a PBL.The guiding questions was 'How can we encourage more foreign tourists to visit our country?". Students talked about the pros and cons of tourism, researched parts of our country, found photos, found music, and filmed short videos. Then they put all of their work together into Animoto, a program that animates photos and videos. Special thanks to the Photographer Pedro Genero, for allowing us to use his photos in the projects. Here are some examples of our finished...