Summer Renovations

Some great things happen in the summer.  Most folk get time to relax, to hit the beach, go on vacation, and enjoy the great outdoors.

Summer tends to be the time where people want to maximize all the advantages of the warm weather and take time to be outdoors, but at SCS some great things were happening indoors, too, right here in the LMC.  We had a new carpet and moulding installed in the Elementary Room, A/C in both the Elementary and High School Rooms, and our floors were waxed to a nice shiny finish.  We even had our door painted!

Come into the room and you will see some new pillows and a new dog bed!  There is a timeline of history from a biblical perspective, starting with Adam and Eve.  We have a theme of "Read Between the Dots" on our door and our walls, so if you haven't had a chance to see what's new, stop by.

Our Book is Published!

You can preview We Are Thankful: A Poem by SCS K-6th grades with Miss Tricia Gleason and Mrs. Stacie Edmonson by clicking on the arrows at the bottom of this widget or order by clicking on the shopping cart link.

Upgrades to the LMC

Since the February break, the LMC has had a few notable "upgrades" to both the Elementary Room and the HS Room. Over the break our ceiling fluorescent lights were all changed out, making the lighting in the Elementary Room much brighter. Also, Mrs. Fenimore brought in some computer and office chairs to allow us to replace some of the old folding chairs that had been in there for the last few years since the Library Media Center moved.

More recently, about two weeks ago, some very nice conference style oval tables were moved into the HS Room, a donation that came through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Fenimore. With them, also came some more chairs, allowing for the rest of the folding chairs to be moved out. The chairs received were all used, but sturdy and more comfortable than the folding chairs. The HS Room space and new tables have already provided invaluable workspace for students doing project-based learning, those needing a quiet place to study during lunch or study halls, resource teachers working one-on-one or in small groups, student leadership meetings, and for teacher meetings.

Just in the past few days, some newer chairs were brought in to replace the used chairs that came in the past few weeks, giving the room a more refined look, and allowing the library to now have a matching set of newer student chairs to go around the conference tables. All in all, the changes have served to make our Library Media Center a space that is more conducive for the business of teaching and learning that goes on around here each day.

Read the Latest Library News...SchoolNotes 2.0

SchoolNotes 2.0

Pizza With the Principal - October 6, 2010

On October 6th ten elementary students were honored to have Pizza with the Principal. In a tradition begun some years back by retired elementary principal Mr. Pedersen and our former librarian, Mrs. Famiglietti, three times a year, after each marking period, 12 students are selected from a pool of those who have presented book reviews in front of their class during their class’ library time. The presenter is honored by acknowledgement of his/her peers, and by having his/her recommendation displayed on the “Books We Recommend” wall. The presenting student also fills out a ticket with his/her name and class on it which gets put into a special jar.

After the marking periods end in November, March, and June, twelve students’ names are randomly selected from the jar by Miss Gleason. Those students and their parents are notified of the upcoming pizza party, hosted by Elementary Principal, Mrs. Golden in the HS Room of the Library Media Center library, and takes place in the middle of the elementary lunch periods. The October 6th gathering was for students whose names were selected in June for the last marking period of the 2009-10 school year. This most-recent round of Pizza with the Principal honorees were: Bethany(2A), Jayson (2A), Vincent (2A), Cheyenne (3B), Loraine (3B), Vincent (4A), Kayla Smith (4A), Carizma (4B), Alexa(4B), Samuel (5A), Tyler S(5A), and Dylan(6A). Congratulations to our pizza winners and to all who recommended books and have been honored on our Books We Recommend wall.

It’s a new school year, and tickets are beginning to fill the jar again with the names of book-recommending students who themselves eagerly hope to be selected for Pizza with the Principal.

It All Started in The Library by SCS K-6th grade

Follow our story which was written by this year's kindergarten through sixth grade library classes. Each class contributed one sentence during each library time, building on what was previously contributed, and the developing story was displayed on our wall in the library. This is our story with illustrations created by our authors during during library time during the last weeks of school...

It was a bright, sunny, first day of school when the whole thing got started in our library. We were all looking at books, when suddenly, a comic book sucked us in.

We found ourselves back in 1776 where there were no people, only jellybeans that yelled when we bit into them.
When we ate the jellybeans, more jellybeans came out and jumped on us.

Then, NCIS came and saved us and we started frolicking through the meadows.


More jellybeans started coming down from the sky on parachutes and landed in our mouths, so we ate them. Agent Jelly Bean came and used his laser watch to laser all the jellybeans.

Out of nowhere, we found a hotel in the meadow, and these huge jelly beans were there and it took 100 days to eat them all. After walking through the meadows, we found a basketball court and played with a gummy bear who had a pie for us.

We ate pie then the gummy bear began to walk down the street until he tripped over Donald Duck’s foot. When the gummy bear tripped, Jimmy the Magical Unicorn saved him then flew all of us to Mc Donald’s. We ate, left, and walked into a rainstorm of unicorns, then fell into a drain. It started raining ice cream with toppings. Unfortunately, we were all lactose intolerant, and so we threw up.

Mr. Incredible came out of nowhere and threw us all the way to the hospital where The Wiggles and Elmo entertained us.

At the hospital, there was a pool of soymilk which we swam in and ate cookies.

In the hospital waiting room we found a magazine that sucked us out of the comic book, and back to the real world, where everything came true. Some gumballs fell in the drain and people went in to get them.

After the gumballs, Elmo came out and jumped on everyone. We came up out of the drain to get away from Elmo, so we went to find a house to sleep in. While sleeping, we randomly saw hippos in our dreams and we rode them through the meadows. Our dream actually came true, and one of the kids screamed, making the hippo mad. A giant Asian sewer rat came by, riding in a helicopter and started dropping stink bombs on us.

We got sucked into 1776 again and a jelly bean attacked us. Spider Man came and saved us from the jellybeans. Although we thought it was Spider Man, it was really Kermit the Frog, and he had come to get revenge on us for eating his minions, the jellybeans. Kermit began shooting us with his icecream cones, and then Domo came out and took us to a world of other little domos. We were acting like clowns and riding on an elephant, who took us to Africa.

Meanwhile, we found Mr. Famiglietti in a library and fell into a Pearl Harbor book he was reading. We saw Japanese planes and Mr. Fam told us to “duck and cover”. We dodged the planes, and they fell in the garbage can. Then, a gummy bear jumped and the ground shook. After the ground shook, Barney came out and got Bowser. Bowser tossed Mario up in the air and Mario said, “Let’s – a go.” (Bowser was really Ms. Richter playing a joke on us). Then, the real Spiderman came with the captain of the jellybeans and one of the jellybeans fell in the toilet. Miss Martin reached into Barbie’s ear and pulled out a feather and said, “It’s an antique.” Then Waldo took the feather from Miss Martin’s hand and turned it into Barbie’s best friend so they all started dancing with Miss Martin and Miss Gleason.

Then a bee came and stung Domo, so he jumped so high he landed on a space shuttle. A jellybean fell from the sky and an airplane caught it. Then one more airplane came and landed on us. After that plane landed on us, Iron Man came out and threw the plane on the jellybeans. We traveled off on our cats wall and saw a house where corn was watching a scary movie of popcorn being popped. Then, Mrs. Turuta came into the library with candy and 3A asked her to give it to them, but when she did, they were very happy and thanked her.

The Doctoroctagonapus took us to his secret lair and put us in jail where he started to shoop da whoop us with his giant blue beam. We all leaned back against a wall, and the wall fell back, turning into a waterslide that slid us to Disney World. Barney came out, and one of us accidentally hit him on the way down, and he flew all the way to China. Then Barbie came out with Ken and said, “I love you.” Ken and Barbie turned to stone and a SWAT team came and flew them to the military underground lab in Iceland.

One jellybean came parachuting down and the SWAT team shot at him with cherries.

Meanwhile, some Chinese people started speaking to Barney in Chinese, and he was like, “What? What? What?” While the Chinese people were trying to talk to Barney, the real Bowser came and threw him onto a satellite. In space, we saw Barney and Donald Duck floating, and domos eating pizza. One Domo shared his pizza with us, and then Barney, Domo, and Donald Duck went back to Earth. Hannah Montana came out of nowhere and started singing, “The Best of Both Worlds”.

The first thing Barney did on earth was find a port-a-potty but when an alligator jumped out of the toilet and bit his tail off, he said, “I needed to buy a new one anyway” and the alligator hugged him.

Barney took a time machine and went back to when God led the Israelites to the Promised Land. In the Promised Land, they found a fountain of Gushers and they got really sticky. All of a sudden, they started singing, “The phone, the phone is ringing, the phone, we will be right there.” It was Barney speaking, but then suddenly Garfield came out and the phone exploded.Garfield, of course, began eating pizza and lasagna. Garfield told us to go to Haiti to help people there or he would put us in a chocolate pie.

We went to Haiti and then we saw Mickey have a gas attack and we rushed him to the hospital. Mickey Mouse got better and said, “Let’s have a party!” so he got Garfield, who called his jellybean friends and the jellybeans started doing a disco dance. Barbie and Ken went to a park and fell into a bunny hole where they were transported to Wonderland and met the Red Queen. Alice gave Ken and Barbie a rocket ship and sent them to the moon.

Then the Sesame Street gang came and crashed the party with their awesomeness and sucked lollipops the whole time. There were more jellybeans arriving on parachutes and Spiderman came to dance.

Then Agent Jelly Bean came back and started to dance like crazy. Wall-E came out and threw the jellybeans to China. After arriving in China, the jellybeans were dancing like crazy and said, “Is that OK?”

Elmo came and had a dance off with Jaden, and Jaden won the biggest trophy, so went off to McDonalds.

When he got to McDonalds, we got him a cheeseburger for $2,000.

Mario bought cinnamon buns at 7-11 and Luigi came and stole them right out of his hands.

Then 5B went on a field trip and their bus fell into the water, leaving Aydin, King of the Sharks, Katherine, Queen of the Jellyfish, Steven, Prince of the Clams, Victoria Justice, Princess of the Starfish and Danielle to get stung by a starfish…(to be continued).

Then 3B jumped with a big jump all the way to Egypt, back to the time of Moses and they blended in with the Egyptians but changed their minds and decided to swim to NY and get McDonalds.

But the McDonald’s disappeared and they were in China eating dumplings.

Elmo came into the building and took off his costume, revealing his true identity.

Suddenly, we all woke up in the library. We looked at each other and breathed sighs of relief. "I'm so glad that's over!" we shouted simultaneously. We checked out our books and went back to class.

What's YOUR Favorite Childhood Book?

Let me share a story with you. It is called "What's Your Favorite Childhood Book?" That is the question that I got to ask our faculty and staff and graduating seniors recently. Why? In further celebration of "Get Caught Reading" month, I wanted to inspire our young readers to new ideas for books to check out for themselves by allowing them yet one more way to connect with the people they look up to and admire around SCS. With the responses that were received, I created a hallway display with names and pictures of the individual respondents and of the title and author of their particular favorites.

The fun part was watching the reactions of those who participated and those who stopped to look at the display. As individuals were asked, so many began to smile as they remembered back to a particular story that brought them much joy as a child. Discussions were sparked spontaneously in the Teachers Room as faculty members shared about their personal favorites, and the books they enjoyed reading to their children. Students would look at the display to see which books their staff member parents or teachers liked and come in to ask for those books to read. Reports were regularly coming in from parents who said favorite books became a topic at their dinner table at home. Quite a few times, clusters of individuals -- from custodians to pastors to office staff to teachers to students to parents and visitors -- were found gathered outside of the Library Media Center, with necks craned upward commenting and smiling as they recalled their own favorites, or as they found they had something new in common with another person in the school community. Many times, individuals were spotted thoughtfully looking up at the display as they pondered the question of which book was their own favorite when they were little.

Part of what makes this so special is that so many times, I have seen that the favorites of older staff members are also the favorites of some of our seniors and also of our youngest students. When one looks at the hallway display, and listens to the squeals of delight from those who pass by it is apparent that there is no clear cut distinction that certain generations like some things and other generations like others. The moral of this story: Good literature is timeless, and worth passing on!

6th Grade SCS History Project

What can we learn about SCS History to share with our community and the world? Using a WebQuest, the 6th graders are doing research to discover all that they can in order to share the information with others on the web. http://questgarden.com/102/06/5/100501210852/

In learning about doing internet searches, our 6th graders have discovered that there is very little on the web about our school. It became our mission to do something about that. It has meant doing deeper internet searches, digging through old yearbooks and photos, interviewing people who have been part of our school history, and making a visit to the Smithtown Public Library to learn to use the microfilm readers and get more information on local history.

The two classes are collaborating on the project, and each class has been divided into small groups of 4-6 students, with each group responsible for a different area of the research. When we are finished collecting our data, we will use it to write a more in-depth article for wikipedia to expand the information already there on our school, and to write an article for the history page of our soon to be released new SCS website.

Spring News

Long time, no posts, but plenty of fun happening in the SCS Library Media Center. What's new? Well...

...May was "Get Caught Reading Month" and Children's Book Week. Mrs. Nunez and I (Miss Gleason) got matching "Wild About Reading" t-shirts and wore them twice during May as part of our celebration. The first time we wore them to stir up enthusiasm for our Children's Book Week festivities. K-2nd graders received special bookmarks and 3rd through 6th graders were given the option to enter a puzzle contest where they had to complete a library word search and an author crossword puzzle. The crossword required students to use the SuffolkWeb or Amazon to find author last names to match the book titles that were given. There were about 15 winners who were announced over the PA system in morning announcements, and received credit for a trivia question win and earned a candy prize as well.

The second time we wore our t-shirts to tip students off about our "Get Caught Reading" contest week. I went to elementary classes unannounced at various times during the week to "catch" students doing reading for fun. All those caught were awarded with Silly Bandz. Quite a few readers were caught and given little animal and holiday shaped rubber bands to wear on their wrists. Even a few teachers and secondary students got caught reading, and received bandz for their effort.

SCS Story Night -- January 26, 2010

Miss Gleason, Mrs. Edmonson, Mr. Thies, and Pastor Dave read to an enthusiastic crowd of over one hundred elementary students and parents at our first SCS Story Night. The Story Night was the finale to this year's Project Timothy reading challenge, a two week reading contest where kindergarten through sixth grade students read for fun, information, edification, inspiration, and prizes.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand/awkh

http://www.answersingenesis.org/media/video/ondemand/awkh

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The Family Behind Babar

The Family Behind Babar

Wireless Access and Shortcuts

There's always something exciting happening around here! The latest? Our library has wireless access. Seniors or faculty members who come in with their laptops or netbooks can easily access the internet in the LMC.

Also, our library e-resources are all in a folder on student desktops to make accessing them easier. Any student who logs on to an SCS computer can click on the "SCS Library Shortcuts" folder to gain quick access to BrainPOP, the Library Blog, our NewSchoolnotes page, the SCS school website and more. This will help students who want to try the trivia question or do Information Literacy assignments get where they need to be much more quickly.

Floor Waxed, Heat Fixed, New Books, Discards, and other news...

The Christmas Break brought gifts from our custodial and maintenance department. Improvements to our floor, the heating system, and carpeting all brought us much cheer. The floor in the Elem Room was cleaned and waxed and is now looking much brighter. It is a temporary fix as the floor will ultimately be replaced, but it gave the room such a face lift. The heating system, which was overworking and keeping us in tropical conditions for months now, has been redone, and we now have a working thermostat, that we can control! Imagine my glee when I checked in just before school started up again in January and saw the temperature reading about 71 degrees F. We had been consistently at 86 degrees F for a long while. Funny, but we got used to that, and I have found the need to dig out my boxes of winter clothes and keep an SCS sweatshirt on the back of my chair for when I feel cold now, and I have been wearing sweaters and long sleeves regularly again.

The pillows all came back to my house for a run through the washer and dryer, and our office rug got a cleaning too.

The floor waxing resulted in an unintentional mishap as 42 books were accidentally damaged when they came in contact with a floor wax spill. God has a way of turning losses into gains, and we have been humbled to see the book, video and DVD donations pouring in this week from multiple sources, beginning on the very day we got back from vacation and started to assess the damage. Useful, gently used items valuing easily as much as or probably significantly more than the amount of what we lost have been coming our way without any recent pitch from us. Our state allocation order also came in, all pre-processed, and in short order Mrs. Nunez has those 172 new books ready to hit the shelves, as well as some of the donated materials.

Other newsworthy events...

...The Picturing America exhibit has been "flipped" to show the images on the "A" sides of the posters. If you haven't seen them, come in and take a look.

...Our BrainPOP subscription was approved, and students had a chance to be our "beta testers" over vacation. Since we have been back, several teachers and classes have already been making use of the wonderful educational resources on there. BrainPOP is a web-based educational site, with resources for grades k-12. We have 24 hour access for BrainPOP (gr. 3-12), BrainPOP jr., BrainPOP espanol, and are beta testing BrainPOP ESL.

...We added to our Bible study materials with great Bible reference materials, and are looking to add more.

We Can Hear the Announcements!

The latest of our innovations has been in the area of audio: We can now hear the announcements that are made throughout the day and we can hear them from any room in the library. Last year, in order to hear the bell between classes and the PA announcements, one had to be near the library door or actually standing in the hallway outside of our door. A special request was made last spring and we came into school in September with a new speaker on the wall above our door. This was a big help, as it allowed us to hear announcements that were being made throughout the day, and to hear the bells as well.

This would have been sufficient, except that it quickly became apparent that the HS Room was too far from the speaker to hear either, and so it was a regular occurrence that our hard-working HS independent study students would be so engrossed in their studies that they would miss the bell and end up needing a pass to their next period classes. Mr.Zuber came to our rescue again and arranged for another speaker to be installed in the HS Room, so the students and teachers who work back there could get to their next classes on time.

The SCS Library's Latest

School started, and the construction/renovations continued. Here are some of the latest newsy items...

...The bookshelves in our office space are in use

...the HS Room has been set up and decorated with our Picturing America exhibit showing the "B" side of the images. We received 40 images with Picturing America, but because they came as 20 double-sided posters we can only display 20 at a time. The "A" side images were previously on display, and now the "B" side are showing. We will switch them back around sometime in December.

...The new room has been set up as our HS Biography Room.

...We now have a PA system speaker in the Elementary Room which allows us to hear announcements and bells.

...We were privileged to host the last Faculty Fellowship meeting on October 1st in the HS Room. It was our gallery opening, an opportunity for faculty to get a close look at the Picturing America exhibit and teachers resources. Refreshments were served so teachers were able to peruse the gallery while sipping sparkling cider, and nibbling on grapes, cheese and crackers, and Milano cookies. It was a squeeze to get so many in such a small space, but an enjoyable time anyway.

...there is a new folder accessible to students and faculty when they access their SCS accounts. When they log in and get to their desktops, they can find a folder for SCS Library Shortcuts. The folder provides icons to get to the newschoolnotes page, the SCS website, the Picturing America resources, and this blog. Soon, we will be adding a link to the Alexandria Researcher, so that faculty and students will be able to access our database and search for materials in our collection even from outside of school.

Views of the Summer Library Construction