The White Oak Media Center welcomed students back to school this week. All sixth, seventh and eighth graders visited the library to check out books and receive a chromebook (if they did not receive one during registration). We caught lots of readers! Who will we catch next?

The Roughneck Readers met today and started reading The Thirteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm.

“What if you and your grandfather were the same age?  Ellie has never liked change. She misses fifth grade. She missed her old best friend. She even misses her dearly departed goldfish. Then one day a strange boy shows up. He’s bossy. He’s cranky. And weirdly enough…he looks a lot like Ellie’s grandfather, a scientist who’s always been slightly obsessed with immortality.  Could this gawky teenager really be Grandpa Melvin? Has he finally found the secret to eternal youth?”

—The Fourteenth Goldfish by Jennifer Holm

Welcome Back to School!

Learning never stops for our students at White Oak Middle School.  Summer is a wonderful time to pick up a book and read, invent something new and create lots of summer fun.  Thanks to Wonderopolis and Scholastic books, we were able to give our students a gift to help them have an awesome summer vacation. Scholastic donated over eight hundred new books.  Every student received one or more of the following titles:

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street by Jeanne Birdsall

Scat by Carl Hiassen

Maggie Bean Stays Afloat by Tricia Rayburn

The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney by Lauren Barnholdt

Blown Away by Joan Hiatt Harlow

The 39 Clues by Peter Lerangis

War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carmen

Each student received information about Camp Wonderopolis from our friends at the National Center for Families Learning.

Keeping kids and their families learning together throughout the summer and out-of-school time, Camp Wonderopolis can help build vocabulary, background knowledge in science, reading comprehension, critical thinking, and other literacy skills along the way.

The best part was meeting with every student and wishing them well for the next year.  We will miss our eighth graders as they advance to high school, and we will see our current sixth and seventh graders next year. Happy reading!

Have you met Lunch Lady? She serves up justice and lunch!  Friday, May 6th is Lunch Lady Superhero Day based on the famous Lunch Lady book series by Jarrett J. Krosoczka.  On this day, we honor our cafeteria workers and their dedication to our students.  Our students signed aprons, and gave each of our cafeteria ladies a copy of the book Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute. 

Sixth, seventh & eighth grade students signed all the aprons.

Each of our awesome lunch ladies received a copy of Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s book.

WOMS library assistants and Mrs. Stewart’s class shared their appreciation with our lunch ladies.

WOMS loves our cafeteria ladies!

Why school lunch ladies are heroes by Jarrett. J Krosoczka.

Do you love inventing, tinkering and creating? So do we! The Great Maker Challenge was an opportunity for our students to use their imagination and critical thinking skills to create a Rube Goldberg inspired machine.

To get inspired, the students watched Audri’s Rube Goldberg Monster Trap Machine.

Teams of students were given a set of supplies and a task to begin.

All teams received the same set of supplies. And…yes, the cardboard box counted as a supply!

To begin, students designed their machines. The teams created drawings and blueprints to guide them. The goal was to build a machine that would pop a balloon. Simple, right?

Next, the fun began as students made their ideas come to life. They constructed, adjusted and troubleshooted any problems that arose.

Peace, Love & Inventing!

Car made from a domino box, cardboard and straws!

The students had the opportunity to show off their machines to real life engineers. Terrence Kelley and Jeramy Hayes took the time to visit with every team and offer their advice.

After all the construction, the moment of truth came. Would their machines work?

“Failure is not an option.”  Apollo 13

We even had a home entry from our friends the Curry Family!

Thanks to all our wonderful teams who spent their lunch time imagining, creating, solving problems, tinkering, and exploring their capabilities! The teams will have the opportunity to show off their machines at the Global Maker Day virtual event on May 17th.

April is National Poetry Month

Let’s celebrate our favorite poets and poems all month long! Do you write poetry? Use the interactive tech tools in the flyer below to have some poetry fun!

Springtime is here! Let’s share some fun tech tools for you and your students to use.

Click on the flyer below and scroll down to see all the resources!

In the news…

Round II of March Madness voting comes to an end.

Our week two winners are…

Overheard in the library…

“These are tough choices! Divergent or Lightning Thief?”  Semi-final voting will begin on Monday!

The Wonder Board is our newest addition to the library.  Stop by and pick up a wonder on the go! Have you wondered today?

The lunch time makers were back inventing with Little Bits this week!

We have also spent time watching the Bald Eagles in Decorah, Iowa.  Thanks to the live webcam we have watched the mom lay two eggs, and we, along with the world, are patiently waiting on them to hatch. Bald Eagle eggs typically take thirty-five days to hatch. We are hoping to see the babies around April 14th.  Stay tuned…
Happy reading, inventing and being awesome!