Welcome to IST’s Elementary Campus Library

Welcome to the International School of Tanganyika’s Elementary Campus Library information site. Here you will find what’s happening in the library, student activities and much more. Please check back often and feel free to leave us a message with your ideas, links and good thoughts. Asante!

The golden rule

The Grade 5s are currently studying “I Believe, You Believe” and there has been much discussion in classes about similarities of different religions. The grade 5s have shared the very meaningful book The golden rule by Ilene Cooper and illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska. We learned how the golden rule of being considerate of others is taught in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and the Shawnee Tribe of North America.

We also watched the “Charter for Compassion” based on the golden rule and you can watch it here:

Are you interested in listening to audiobooks?

This week, all elementary classes have listened to a sampling of age-appropriate audiobooks. If you are travelling to your hometown for the holidays, ask at your local library if they have downloadable audiobooks. You may be able to download and borrow audiobooks (for free) anywhere in the world. Ask your local librarians to show you how to do this on their library website.

If not, there are many places on the Internet that you can buy excellent audiobooks. The Itunes store has some excellent stories like the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan, Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling and many more. Go to books>audiobooks>top children and young adult books, or search for a title or author.

http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/store.html has a list of many online vendors of audiobooks, but some books are not available if you don’t have a U.S. credit card. Just check which ones are available for your region.

You can also get some audiobooks for free at http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/genre/Children

Hope you enjoy listening to stories during the holidays!

The giraffe who was afraid of heights

This week EC-Gr 2 classes read the amusing and meaningful book The giraffe who was afraid of heights by David A. Ufer and illustrated by Kirsten Carlson. This entertaining book shows us that sometimes it helps to have a friend to help us overcome our fears.

You can see a preview of the book and some activities related to the book at the publisher’s website.

We also watched an interesting short video about Giraffe Manor in Nairobi and you can watch it here:

Chee-Lin

In this week’s library classes Grade 3-5 have shared the amazing story Chee-Lin: A giraffe’s journey by James Rumford. It was interesting to learn about Chinese exploration before the time of Christopher Columbus. It was also incredible to think that giraffes and other animals were taken from the wild in East Africa and transported all the way to India and China. We were feeling for the poor animals, far away from their family and home!

We were also talking about how giraffes communicate in sounds that we can’t hear, and you can learn more about that from this video:

Final X in the library

Wow, what a transformation in the library this week! The library was host to half of the grade 5 PYP final exhibition displays. Many people commented on the high quality of projects this year, including meaningful action projects.

The photos below show how much work was put in to make this year’s exhibition such a success:

8am – visiting schools:

11:40am – packing up:

1pm – back to lending books!

Tico and the golden wings

This week has been very busy in the library with the Grade 5 Final Exhibition setup and hosted in the library on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week.

However, Ms Stella and Mrs Toms were able to go to most of the classrooms to read the beautifully illustrated Leo Lionni story Tico and the golden wings. Most of the class discussions centered around us realizing that we are all different, not only what we look like, but that our thoughts are different from each other because of our different experiences.

We made our own Tico birds and put them up in the library and classrooms.

The Sugihara Story

At the end of last week and the beginning of this week, Grade 5 classes read the story Passage to Freedom by Ken Mochizuki and illustrated by Dom Lee. This very powerful story tells of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986) and how he saved approximately 10,000 Jewish refugees during WWII.

We had some very interesting discussions about the moral dilemma he and his family faced when confronted with a difficult decision. We also learned that the ‘Golden Rule’ is universal among all people.

The Day-Glo Brothers

This week Grade 1-5 library classes have looked at a very interesting book about Bob and Joe Switzer, the inventors of the fluorescent colors that we know so well. The Day-Glo Brothers written by Chris Barton and very brightly illustrated by Tony Persiani, tells the little-known story of the Switzer brothers and how they turned tragedy into opportunity to create some very eye-catching and useful colors.

To see an animation of how regular fluorescence and daylight fluorescence work you can go to the following website:

http://www.charlesbridge.com/day-glo-animation.html

After reading the book, we had fun decorating our own bookmarks with fluorescent highlighters.

Where’s the gold?

EC and KG classes this week have really enjoyed the fun book by Pamela Allen called Where’s the gold?

The quote at the front of the book is a very important lesson for all of us to remember:

“Happiness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you’ve got.”

Hachiko

Grade 1-5 have really enjoyed the story of Hachiko written by Pamela S. Turner and cleverly illustrated by Yan Nascimbene. This true story of a loyal Akito dog, set in Japan in the 1930s, touched our hearts and made us remember how important it is to always remember our friends.

There is a movie version of this story, set in America, and you can watch the trailer here: