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Granite School District > Educational Technology > Blog > Driggs Elementary

Driggs Elementary

Teacher Spotlight: Katie Ricks, Driggs Elementary

Hour of Code with Katie Ricks’s 3rd Grade Students

Katie Ricks, a 3rd grade teacher at Howard R, Driggs Elementary School, is one of many teachers participating in the Hour of Code throughout Granite School District. Most of the 3rd graders at her school have the opportunity to program while using Chromebooks. Programs such as Code.org, Tynker, and Khan Academy are some of the sites where Ms. Ricks’ students learn how to drag and drop programming commands. She says that the students are really excited about Hour of Code, and that she sees it as having great benefit for increasing problem-solving skills as well as an overall learning of basic programming.

Spotlight Author: Kristen Johnson, Granite District Educational Technology Specialist

Library Spotlight: Beehive Book Awards

Beehive Book Awards

The Beehive Book Award is an annual award sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association of Utah (CLAU), given to one book in each of these five categories: Children’s Fiction, Informational, Picture Book, Poetry, and Young Adult. Committees of teacher, librarian, and parent volunteer readers create annual short lists of 10-12 books in each category. These short lists are announced in March and then school and public libraries work to get students to vote on their favorites for the following school year. The winner in each category is announced the following year in April.

Granite School District Elementary School Libraries work hard to promote the Beehive Book Award program and encourage students to vote for their favorite books. They do this through displays, community engagement, and library promotions.

Displays

At Hillsdale Elementary School, Angela Pratt has a display for the 2015 Beehive Book Awards and highlights each category on a different shelf. She uses this display when doing story time and encourage her students to check-out the books nominated. Truman, Woodstock, and Rolling Meadows have also set up displays to draw attention to the books.

Community Engagement

At Rosecrest Elementary, Vala’dee Tanner, the media assistant, collaborated with the librarian at the Holladay library to come do a book talk for all students 4th-6th grade. Each grade came to the library and the public librarian spoke to them about the Beehive award nominees and encouraged them to participate in the voting process. Many schools rely on their PTA to help them buy copies of the Beehive nominees and to help track voting. At Driggs Elementary School, the PTA buys copies of each Beehive Book Award nominee and create a plan to read them in the classroom.

Promotion

Many media assistants have set up ballot boxes to help keep track of votes. Dian Morrison and Kim Liston, the media assistants at Woodstock Elementary, have a glass ballot box set up by their Beehive Book Award display. Students enjoy voting because they like to submit them in the special box, and like to see the votes build up over the school year.

Spotlight Author: Nikki Gregerson, Granite District Elementary Media Supervisor