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Sora

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P.S. I am putting this PS at the start to help you avoid frustration. PLEASE e mail me, kimbra.power@saschina.org to find out your school ID number, the number on your SAS ID card, or your students ID number that they use on the bus and for lunch, if you do not know it.

Sora is our way of giving you access to digital books, both e books, and audio books, predominantly in English, but with a growing selection of books in Mandarin too.

*ALL SAS Parents have been signed up to SORA by us, so the account is just waiting for you to activate it.

*ALL students from Grade PK-12 also have their own account, ready for them once they do the following.

To access SORA, you need to go to your app store, and download the Sora App.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, open it, and search for your school, Shanghai American School (it will have the Puxi campus address) Click on that please. (see videos below)

Your username AND your password are the same, they are your SAS ID number. For parents and students, there will be a letter P (for Patron) in front of their ID number. You do NOT need to put the P into Sora, just the numbers. For parents, there are 6 digits, for students, there are 7. Faculty will use the letters (in all caps, either PRC or EXP) in front of the digits as well as the digits please (therefore, they have an 8 character username and password)

Now you have entered the Sora App and thousands of digital books are available for you to read.

If you are worried about too much screen time, make sure your preferences say audiobooks, then click on apply. The same goes if you only want books in Mandarin, click on the language section, choose Chinese, and only Chinese books will show up once you click on apply.

Check out these short videos showing you step by step how to use Sora.

Sora Overview Video

How to Login to Sora Video

Explore books on Sora Video

Search for books you want on Sora Video

Renew and Hold Books on Sora Video

Returning Books and Book Achievements on Sora Video

Sora Interface

Library News

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Welcome to December. Thank you for all the excellent feedback we’ve received about our Visiting Author Elana K Arnold. We don’t have any authors with us now until late April, but there are still plenty of things going on in the library.

December 2nd– Celebrate that we have checked out over 28,000 books since school started in August. Yes, 28 THOUSAND.

December 17-Try to get as many of the 931 overdue books returned to the library before Winter Break. 

January 14th-March 5th Ms Stella and I will be running After School Activities for English and Chinese Panda Book Awards

March 6th-We host the Elementary division of Battle of the Books on Pudong Campus (more info to follow)

March 15th-April 15th-Voting for Panda Book Awards

April 13th, 20th and 27th–Books to Eat Competition in ES Library (more info to follow)

and THEN

April 20th-April 24th Le Uyen Pham and Meg Medina are on campus as cross divisional Visiting Authors and Illustrator

Libguides

You can find out more about Authors, Battle of the Books, Panda Books and Books to Eat by clicking on some of the links below. I have Libguides full of information for you to read, including photos of your students, our volunteers, and the wonderful books we are reading. 

Book Lists

If you are looking for some great holiday reading, there are plenty of links to ‘Best of’ Book lists on my 2019-2020 Award Winning Books or Book Lists Libguides. 

Remember to read for pleasure, read with your children, in front of your children and listen to your children read. That is what makes a reader a reader.

Remember to check out some photos of what happens every day in our Elementary Library, we have photos of our volunteers, our students and the books they read on our Welcome to the Elementary Library Libguide

Here are some links for you to check out more resources from our Elementary Library

Battle of the Books Libguide

Panda Books Libguide

Le Uyen Pham Visiting Author Libguide

Meg Medina Visiting Author Libguide

How To Hour

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How To Hour Follow Up

Thank you to the parents who attended How To Hour in the Library on Friday. To follow up on some things we discussed, below is more information for you.

While we don’t have a list of recommended reading lists for each grade level in the library, that is not because they don’t exist. We don’t actively promote them as our philosophy is that when students are in the library, they are guided in book choice firstly by what they choose to read, with ample guidance from me as their librarian, Ms Stella and Ms Joji and from 2nd-5th grade, their classroom teacher who is an active participant during this check out period.

Book lists for children of all ages are plentiful on the internet. Here are some of my go-to sites for such things:

Pernille Ripp https://pernillesripp.com/our-favorite-books/

Pragmatic Mom https://www.pragmaticmom.com/

A Mighty Girl https://www.amightygirl.com/books

Nerdy Book Club https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/category/book-lists/

Picture Book Blogger https://picturebooksblogger.wordpress.com/

Imagination Soup https://imaginationsoup.net/book-recommendations-age/

What do we do all day https://www.whatdowedoallday.com/books-for-kids

Books to Eat Fact Sheet

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Hey Friends

If you’re considering running a Books to Eat event in your school or community, here are a few pointers to start you off.

Books to Eat Fact Sheet

Decide on dates for your Books to Eat Competition

Send announcements out with homeroom teachers and present to your community i.e. parent association, PTSA about the event.

Decide which grades you would like to go first, depending on the size of your school, this event could be over in a day, a few days, or spread out over a number of weeks.

Things to consider…

  1. Do you want the event on a Monday so that students have time to work on their entry with their family or a Friday, as it is a fun way to head into the weekend?
  2. Will you start with older grades first so that younger grades can see how it is done, or younger grades first to build up excitement for the older kids?
  3. Will anyone be able to take their whole entry home or will all entries be distributed and eaten on the day? How will you make sure there is enough for everyone?
  4. Do students need to get materials back, if so, who will label them and when?
  5. Will there be categories for your entries? If so, what will they be?
  6. Will there be prizes? If so when will entries be judged… by whom? When? How and when will this information be disseminated?
  7. PS I don’t recommend prizes…it is a ‘competition’ only because….well, what else would I call it? Sometimes we say Books to Eat Event…to take the edge of the competitive notion. EVERY participant receives a certificate, I( wrote out 70 yesterday, and about the same last week; it takes time, and creativity to come up with ideas for their entry)…some include ‘Greenest Entry’ ‘Tallest Entry’ ‘Brightest Frosting’ ‘Best Props’ ‘Best Book Cover’ ‘Students Choice’…you get the picture.

Helpful Hints

Make sure to label every child’s materials as they come in (or better still, ask for only disposable plates/trays/pans to be sent in with the entry)

For more information on the Books to Eat competitions we’ve successfully run at SAS, type Books to Eat in the search window above and scroll through some of the ideas. Students, parents and teachers NEED to see examples, then they can witness first hand how simple, fun, silly, creative, serious, amazing or complex their entry can be. I don’t bake…or cook…My ideas are the simple/silly/creative ones.

Alternatively e mail me on Kimbra.power@saschina.org I’m always happy to help.

Cheers

That’s a Wrap

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Third week of books to eat is done, and was wonderful. This year there were so many creative kids and families involved; students worked with siblings, with friends and parents, and teachers got creative with their students in the kitchen. Well done to everyone who contributed. For our final week, there were many sweet entries.

Here are all our entries from Monday the 30th of April, as well as the individual and group entries from 5SM and 5DN on April 23rd. Take a look!

Books to Eat Round 2

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Well done to over 70 students who participated in Books to Eat last Monday Our final round of deliciousness and creativity is tomorrow, April 30th, with contributions from 4th and 5th graders as well as anyone else who is interested.

Here are some of the creations from Monday, thank you to everyone for inspiring us in the Elementary School and making our library such a fun place to be.

 

Show me the books

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Today we checked in over 400 books…but we still have over 633 books checked out.

Please…return your books! We are looking forward to Summer and don’t want to be looking for your books right up until when we leave here in FOUR.MORE.SLEEPS!