December Library News

Late November & December DDS Library News 

   

As a combined project between Swigert and Denver Discovery School the library will be hosting a celebration of quilting the end of January.   

The project is being launched this month.                                      

 Our vision is to combine campuses in the effort of displaying and learning the ethnic and historical stories materialized in quilts. The library provides the perfect space for displaying all types of quilts: family, societal, Amish, historic and rare slave, Hmong, etc.  The quilts will be displayed hanging with ‘museum-style’ information boards.                                                                                                                

 Combining with the quilt project, Christy Jones will be guiding her Swigert, after-school groups, through a story-quilt making project that celebrates important events and circumstances in her student’s lives.

The library was a comfortable setting for the City Year Association Board meeting on November 21^st. They brought donuts so I hope they come back!

We are following up our “Day of Poetry” with a raffle that involves poems for prizes! DDS students turn in poems they wrote and get a raffle ticket. On December 6^th we will pull two tickets and the students will win either a cool NBA basketball or a mesmerizing Smithsonian plasma lamp for their desk at home.

Thursday afternoons in the library are being set aside for the important work being accomplished by Wanda Lenox and her team of reading interventionist as they tutor sixth grade reluctant readers and strive to bring them up to grade level reading and beyond. Joining Wanda are adult reading coach volunteers from the community as well as DDS staff members and City Year members.

A DDS National History Day team is forming and will be using the library space and extensive resources as they embark on scholarly research that meets this year’s NHD theme “Breaking Barriers in History”. Assisting them, the DDS library has been awarded a grant to offset the myriad of costs involved in bringing our team to competition in May. A big thank you to Eileen Finnegan for organizing and sponsoring the team!!  Go DDS National History Day Team! 

Park Hill Community Book Store has graciously donated middle school level books, many of them designated YA, to add to our collection at DDS. Thank you Park Hill Community Book Store!

Our classroom sets of Cricket literary magazines have finally arrived and they look great! They will be used by Allyson Marisch in her classroom, and then be made available for use by Ms. Lenox in the library for her Thursday reading group. The literary magazine subscription was a gift from Julie Meyers and her faith-based community group. The magazine sets, after use, will rest at home in the library and will be available as supplemental reading after testing etc.

Through the combined efforts of East High School’s librarian and Denver Public Library we have been able to furnish one of our support teachers with a classroom set of the book The Skin I’m In.  The students are happy reading an authentic and relevant book with their dedicated teacher. Thank you Frank at Denver Public Library AskALibraria!

December notes

We have been very busy checking in our new books from DPS library services and our Boost Grant award!

The last couple weeks the library has been hosting 6th grade reading tutoring with a dedicated group of community volunteers. All of this has been organized and facilitated by Ms. Lenox who is one of our reading intervention teachers, and is a retired teacher and principal in Denver Public Schools. The students are responding and welcoming, in the best way possible, the one on one attention. We truly feel this is a beneficial approach and, after the holidays, we will resume the tutoring every Thursday afternoon.

Nov. 5th DDS Reader's Guide

DDS Library Reader’s Guide 11/5/2019

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. 
     

 Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
Ms. Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk We Should All Be Feminists has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014. Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.
A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Ms. Adichie divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
What we have … brand new! An anthology of poetry; New Daughters of Africa (contains poetry by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

October DDS Library News!

DDS Library news 10/28/2019, Monthly update for October by Kathleen Kavet, DDS Librarian The big news in October has been that DDS library has been awarded two important grants!   We are very fortunate to be the recipients of both a three thousand dollar “Boost” grant from DPS Library Services and a generous grant from Westerra Credit Union … which was structured to enable us to successfully host our DDS “Day of Poetry” coming up on Nov. 14 in the library. The DDS Library is continuing on its journey to develop as an integral part of Denver Discovery School. We have supplied high interest graphic novels to our district literary interventionist, Ms. Lenox, as she works to establish a culture of reading and literacy with some of our reluctant readers. In addition, Ms. Lenox is in the process of organizing a group of caring adults to read one on one with some of our struggling readers in the library … where we will provide a comfortable setting for each student to build literary relationships and excel. Thank you Ms. Lenox. Mr. William’s morning class is at home in the library and progressing from the funny and entertaining Kid President inspirational videos, to watching/ and reading (with close captioning) short TED Talks that focus on leadership challenges, skills, and spending quiet and quality time discussing how to recognize and dispel bullying.                                                                                                                                            During the Scholastic Book Fair week (10/14-10/18), Coach William’s Advisory class took the opportunity to browse and check out books from the stacks. We have issued official wooden signed passes for up to five DDS students at a time to come to the library during lunch and check out books. The new DDS library books that have been purchased with our mill levy money have arrived and are in the library ready to be checked out!   Teachers have been supplied with a focused tutorial intended to help prepare the 7th grade students for language arts/social studies CMAS testing coming up this fall. The DDS library nominated Coach Aaron Williams for the MVT Avalanche and Nuggets Award. Go Coach Williams!  Mr. Miles, DDS math teacher, has been supplied with a micro-library of student-friendly “math in the real world” books to help bridge math concepts with future high school curriculum that emphasize everyday economic literacy. Mr. Miles is a degreed, and licensed librarian, having graduated from Emporia State University, one of the finest library science schools in the country. The DDS library community is in extremely capable hands as we work to build and nurture our hearth and provide the best in directed instruction for our students. During Parent/Teacher Conferences on 10/3 and 10/8 a large number of great donated books (from another school) have been made available and free to parents and guardians to browse through as they wait to talk to teachers. The books were attractively displayed in a central location with clear signage to help them find a good home!                                                                I’m happy to say most of books were ‘placed’.  During the inclement weather the second week in October the library stepped up to provide ‘shelter from the storm’ for anxious 7th and 8th graders during lunch recess.  Through a generous gift from Julie Meyers and her faith-based group, we have subscribed to Cricket literary magazine both in print and digital. The print magazines will be serve as an enrichment activity for our English classes especially drawing in our reluctant readers. The magazines will be at home in library – for DDS library use – when not being used in the classroom. Thank you Julie! The library was happy to organize and host a presentation on “digital citizenship” on October 24th. All DDS classes shared a rewarding and fun morning learning how to be “smart, safe and knowledgeable” about the internet and social media from Mr. Brian Dino of DPS Technology Services. Mr. Dino engaged the students with music, real life examples of the complexities of today’s ‘connected ‘world and truly awe-inspiring magic tricks. In honor, and to honor, Veteran’s Day 2019, the DDS library has sent out information to augment the DPS suggested resources. The TED Talk by Wes Moore sent via email to DDS staff is a current and sensitive fourteen minutes that brings our veteran’s invaluable contributions a little more home. Making our students aware of the risks and costs of being a free democracy is a cornerstone in our government … and we have a duty as educators in that regard. The library has applied for a grant from National History Day to supply a team from DDS with the materials needed to research the “Breaking Barriers” theme for 2019-2020. Our vision for this project involves the world of music as it applies to the theme. We are enlisting the help of our music teacher Joe (David) Winans to take his team to competition in March of 2020! Along the journey, the DDS library will be there every step of the way for space, research, and veteran help (I’ve been a judge for NHD for years!) Eileen Finnegan will be assisting Joe because simply, she has done NHD before. Go team DDS! Kathleen