Center - Media Center

Welcome to the Center School Media Center!
 

Media Center - 708/364-3248
Laurel Brunell - Media Center Specialist
Sabrina Muftic - Media Center Associate

E-mail Username: lbrunell (@orland135.org)
E-mail Username: smuftic (@orland135.org)

About the Media Center
The Library Media Center serves as the information hub of the school. Its purpose is to provide opportunities for students to become critical seekers of information, users of media in all formats, and independent, lifelong learners. The Library Media Program has three components: Literature Appreciation, Library Skills, and Resource Based Learning.
- View our philosophy and program components 
- View our policy regarding book checkout  

- Just Right Books
- Birthday Book Program
- The Monarch Award
- Learning with the Web
- Accelerated Reader Program
- Parent Reading Tips
- Keeping Safe on the Internet
- Databases

"Just Right" Books
- Choose by title
- Choose by author
- Choose by grade level


Birthday Book Program
The Center School Media Center would like to invite you and your child to participate in our Birthday Book program.  This voluntary program has been established to promote the value of books to our students, to introduce them to authors that are producing the best that children's literature has to offer, and to enhance our collection at Center for our students and teachers to enjoy this year and for many years to come.

Birthday Books may be donated at the time of your child's birthday.  A book label with your child's name and birth date will be permanently affixed to the book, and he or she will be the first to check the book out of our library.

A list of books that have been given rave reviews in library journals or frequently requested by Center School readers can be found below.  As books are purchased, we will keep this list updated. If you prefer, please feel free to select your own.  Due to the age of our students and the amount of use our books get, hard-covered books usually survive the trips back and forth to school more successfully. 

Thank you in advance for helping our library to grow.  Your support and generosity will expand the world of books and reading for our children!

Birthday Book List 2011-2012

• Fairies Cookbook - Beery
• Mermaid Cookbook - Beery
• Star Wars: Character Encyclopedia - DK
• Harold and the Purple Crayon - Johnson
• Fancy Nancy and the Fabulous Fashion Boutique - O'Connor
• Dogs in the Dead of the Night - Osborne
• Amelia Bedelia's First Field Trip - Parish
• Queen of the Falls - VanAllsburg
• I Spy Spectacular - Wick
• One Cent, Two Cents, Old Cent, New Cent: All About Money - Worth 

• The Mitten - Aylesworth
• Shark vs. Train - Barton
• A Birthday for Bear - Becker
• Butterflies and Moths - Bishop
• The Case of the Lost Boy - Butler
• Dogku - Clements
• Grace for President - DiPucchio
• Imogene's Last Stand - Fleming
• Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 - Floca
• Let's Do Nothing! - Fucile
• Never Smile at a Monkey: and 17 Other Important Things to Remember - Jenkins
• Bridget's Beret - Lichtenheld
• Otis - Long
• Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson - Robinson
• Duck! Rabbit! - Rosenthal
• Panda Kindergarten - Ryder
• Memoirs of a Goldfish - Scillian
• Little Mouse Gets Ready - Smith
• Interrupting Chicken - Stein
• Duck at the Door - Urbanovic

The winner of the 2011 Monarch Award was Rhyming Dust Bunnies.  Who will take the prize this year??


Learning with the Web
- KidsClick
- Kids Konnect
- ALA Great Websites for Kids

And here are some more great online resources!



The Accelerated Reader (AR) Program

The Accelerated Reader is a curriculum-based assessment tool that provides a summary and analysis of results to enable teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of reading practice engaged in by their students. Students administer comprehension tests voluntarily themselves, and the system is intended specifically to have strong formative effects on subsequent learning.

A student who uses the program selects a book from the more than 120,000 titles on the AR list. If a student or parent would like to check to see if there is an AR quiz for a certain book, the web site AR BookFinder can be used.  The site's address is www.arbookfind.com.  Each book is assigned a point value based on the number of words it contains and its reading difficulty, as derived from a formula based on the Flesch-Kincaid readability index that considers the number of syllables in words and sentence complexity.

After reading, the student goes to the computer and takes a multiple-choice comprehension test on the book's content. Tests may have 5, 10, or 20 items, depending on the length and difficulty of the book. The computer scores the test, awards the student points based on the results, and keeps a complete record. The student must score at least 60 percent on the test to earn any points at all.  Click here to access Renaissance Home Connect to view your child's progress in AR.  The username and password will be the same as the one your child uses in school.

As students test on more books, the AR system enables close monitoring of general levels of reading performance. The software provides the teacher with an automatically updated analysis of scores for individuals or whole classes; details include average percentage of correctly answered questions, difficulty of books read, points earned, and other diagnostic information. Computer-generated "at-risk reports" enable the teacher to guide each student's reading practice for maximum effectiveness.

- Adopted from http://www.readingonline.org.


Parent Reading Tips

Databases
Students at Center School have access to two online databases subscribed to by District 135.  Passwords are necessary for World Book Online and EBSCO and were listed in the Media Center's portion of the newsletter.  If that cannot be found, please call the Media Center at 364-3248 for the usernames and passwords.  Both of these databases are valuable tools that can be used by the student for research at home.

World Book Online
www.worldbookonline.com

EBSCO
search.epnet.com