{"id":32223,"date":"2025-01-18T00:01:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T05:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=32223"},"modified":"2025-01-15T09:13:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T14:13:45","slug":"teaching-the-sibert-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2025\/01\/teaching-the-sibert-medal\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching the Sibert Medal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the great joys of being a working librarian during your service on an award committee is getting to excite and fascinate your young readers with the promise of an exciting new medal on a book cover come January. It\u2019s also inspired my teaching as a school librarian to utilize these medals – including the Sibert Medal – which they now recognize and gravitate towards, as a chance for further learning and exploration in our space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter: my three week unit on the Robert F. Sibert Medal. I read Sibert award winning books with my students in PreK3 all the way up through third grade, and I would have done this unit with 4th and 5th grade as well if they weren\u2019t almost done with their novel studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see each of my classes for 45 minutes once a week, and while some classes only saw me once or twice due to winter concert practice, I am excited to see the fruits of this unit blossom in January and the excitement on their faces when the 2025 Sibert Medal and Honor Books are announced later this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s break down what these 3 weeks of Sibert study looked like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Week 1: Introduction & Fry Bread<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our first week started with an introduction to the medal\u2014what it\u2019s for, what nonfiction or informational books are, what the medal looks like, and what the criteria are. I especially noted to my students\u2014who know mostly about the Caldecott medal through me\u2014that this award goes to the author AND the illustrator, so the judges must care about BOTH and so should we. They also were intrigued about the fact that being of interest to student readers was one of the criteria.\u00a0All grades watched an animation of the book Fry Bread<\/em>. We discussed the cover during purposeful patterning and students noted that it had won other awards (An American Indian Lit award!) and that it didn\u2019t \u201clook\u201d like an informational book. After we read the core story, we talked about backmatter and all of the information at the back of books\u2014glossaries, maps, author\u2019s notes, timelines, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Week 2: Jumper & Mock Ballot<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During week 2, we refreshed our memory about the Sibert Medal by answering some trivia or giving examples of informational books, and then we jumped into reading Jumper<\/em>\u2014which all of them took to immediately. Students felt that the backmatter was very accessible and had me zoom in on different parts of the book as we learned about spiders and their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students in 2nd and 3rd grade were then given a Mock Ballot that had 4 criteria of the Sibert Medal for them to judge against, and they filled out the ballots on their own giving Jumper<\/em> 3 points for a YES, 2 Points for a MAYBE, and 1 point for a NO in the four categories. It was a fun way to include a little math opportunity in the library. Students in 1st grade and kindergarten did this activity as a group with the ballot on the screen using their fingers to hold up their scores. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Week 3: Wrap Up & Funny Bones<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During our final week, the preschoolers read A Seed Grows<\/em>, while the other grades read Funny Bones<\/em>. Both felt very unseasonal as a teacher preparing for winter break, but for the older kids, it felt like perfect timing because they had learned about Day of the Dead in Spanish class the month before. We watched the animated movie of Funny Bones as well, and I was surprised by how attentive the kids were! Most classes colored sugar skulls afterwards as we discussed how we learned about Day of the Dead from the book as well as about Posada, his art techniques, and the Mexican Revolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The preschoolers also appreciated a chance to color a beautiful sunflower!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Bonus Project: Design New Covers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I had one third grade class that I tried something unique with during this unit as they really took to the idea of the SIbert Medal not being just for boring textbooks. On notecards, I wrote the TITLE and only the title of a Sibert Medal winning book. The students then got templates of book covers and designed a new cover that they thought fit the title. It was a great exercise in the way that titles and cover images do not always go hand in hand, and encouraged them to think outside the box as they learned about the Sibert Medal.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Have you ever done a SIbert Medal unit, project, or activity with your kids? I\u2019d love to hear about what books really found homes in the hearts of your readers! (And don’t forget to check out the 2025 Mock YMA Elections Results page<\/a> to discover which titles are being chosen for the upcoming Awards! To add your mock election results to this page, please use this form<\/a>.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(All photos courtesy of Guest Blogger)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aryssa Damron is a school librarian in Washington, D.C. She serves as the co-chair of the Children and Libraries Editorial Advisory Committee and is a member of the 2025 Caldecott Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the great joys of being a working librarian during your service on an award committee is getting to excite and fascinate your young readers with the promise of an exciting new medal on a book cover come January. It\u2019s also inspired my teaching as a school librarian to utilize these medals – including the Sibert Medal – which they now recognize and gravitate towards, as a chance for further learning and exploration in our space. Enter: my three week unit on the Robert F. Sibert Medal. I read Sibert award winning books with my students in PreK3 all the way up through third grade, and I would have done this unit with 4th and 5th grade as well if they weren\u2019t almost done with their novel studies. I see each of my classes for 45 minutes once a week, and while some classes only saw me once or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[25,134,34],"tags":[1424],"class_list":["post-32223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evaluation-of-media","category-guest-blogger","category-awards","tag-mock-sibert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}