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 

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

Internet Safety Series
Session Four: Cyberbullying
Thursday, April 22, 2010
View the event flyer!
View the Session III Materials


"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 and are available at our local bookstores 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
Last Updated Decmeber 7, 2009

• The Spooky Old Tree - The Berenstains
• Michael Recycle - Bethel
• Chicken Cheeks - Black
• The Tale of Two Mice - Brown
• We Are Extremely Very Good Recyclers - Child
• Pick a Pumpkin, Mrs. Millie! - Cox
• Marley Goes to School - Grogan
• Harold and the Purple Crayon - Johnson
• Michael's Golden Rules - Jordan
• I Spy...Various Titles - Marzollo
• A Fly Went By - McClintock
• I Need My Monster - Noll
• Moonlight and the Magic Flute - Osborne
• A Good Night for Ghosts - Osborne
• It's Not Easy Being a Bunny - Sadler
• The Eye Book - Seuss/LeSieg
• I Wish That I Had Duck Feet - Seuss/LeSieg

• Recess at 20 Below - Aillaud
• Max's Words - Banks
• Nic Bishop Spiders - Bishop
• I Lost My Tooth in Africa - Diakite
• The Gingerbread Girl - Ernst
• Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella - Fleischman
• The Perfect Nest - Friend
• Andy Shane and the Very Bossy Dolores Starbuckle - Jacobson
• What to Do About Alice? - Kerley
• Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything - Look
• Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly - Madison
• Once I Ate a Pie - MacLachlan
• On the Road - Nolan
• The Cheese - Palatini
• The Little Red Hen -  Pinkney
• My Dog Is As Smelly as Dirty Socks - Piven
• Chicks and Salsa - Reynolds
• A Day With No Crayons - Rusch
• Scaredy Squirrel - Watt
• Baa-Choo! - Weeks
  

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
- View the AR quizzes by title
- View the AR quizzes by grade level

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. For a book valued at 10 AR points, such as Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, a student would receive 10 points for a score of 100 percent, 9 points for 90 percent, and so on. However, the student must score at least 60 percent on the test to earn any points at all.

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