Weekly Reading- Fever

   Fever  by L.H.Anderson is another winner in my book. In fact, it appears on many award lists . Ms Anderson won the Margaret A Edwards award in 2009 . This award is given by the ALA for Historical fiction for teens and YA's

   Mattie Cook lives and works at her families coffee shop with her mother and grandfather in the late 1790''s. When the yellow fever breaks out, Mattie's world becomes more intense. Her mother falls ill, so Mattie is sent away  from the city. Her mother does not want her to get the fever.

  She and her grandfather go to the country but the fever is everywhere. MAttie is thrown into being  more grownup and resources in order to survive both her and her grandfathers sickness. She just wants to go back to the city and find her mother.

  Based on real events, Ms, Anderson brings the year 1794 and the epidemic in Philadelphia to life.  You can put yourself in Mattie's shoes as she travels back to the city to open the coffee shop and find out what happens to  bring her life back to almost normal,

Teaching Databases

    When is the best time to teach students how to use databases? Last year I had fixed classes and I taught the databases  in isolation.( when there is not a specific purpose the use)  This year I am teaching the databases in an as needed basis. When the students have a research project or something they need to find out for their content teacher, I work with the class  and determine when to introduce/ review the ease of use of the databases that we have available.

    For example, at the beginning of the year I worked with the FACS teacher ( Home Ec in my day) to  develop  a major unit on researching a possible career. I placed the career resources on the library web page, There was a career survey , and specific sites that she wanted them to use. These were not actually databases but government sites  that we wanted them to use. 

   The language teachers did  research projects . So I showed the student  the Culture Gram database . This database madd their project extremely easy.

    I find that teaching students  databases when the are needed  for a project much more effective  for students  to actually leann about them and then USE them in their search for information.

Weekly Reading- Bella at Midnight

   Bella at Midnight/ Diane Stanley is a story of an  girl who becomes a knight and a princess by the end of the book. Isabella's other dies  when Isabella is only days old. So she is sent to a cottage of a wet nurse. Her Father does not want anything to do with her because of the reminder of her  mother , so continues to stay in the lowly cottage even under protests from  her aunt.

   Her best friend is Julian who was also cared for by the family for a while His Father  is the King , but he is the last  one of 4 brothers.  Isabella and Julian  go  their  separate ways when it they are older because Julian is of royalty , although Bella still cares for him deeply. They are reunited in rather unlikely way to come to a very satisfying conclusion  of the story.