The Cypress Library is available to all students TK through 5th grade. Students come to the library with their class once a week for 30 minutes and are read a book that connects with their current IB unit. Students then check out books. 

Our library has four sections.  Everyone Picture Fiction is a genre-fied area where books are sorted by subject areas. The Shorter Fiction wall has books sorted for emerging readers. Then, students age into the General Fiction area. We also have a large non-fiction section.  Cypress students learn the Dewey Decimal System in third grade during their How We Organize Ourselves unit. From the beginning, students are taught that Fiction is learning through Imagination, and Non-Fiction is learning through Information. 

Books are tagged with Lexiles and students are encouraged to read slightly above their lexile in order to progress as fluent readers.  Once a student surpasses a lexile of 800, we encourage students to read any novels with a lexile over 800 or novels tagged with a Paw Print sticker, which denotes a Cub's List Book — award-winning novels, contemporary classics, and Kirkus notable books. 

TK curates a class set of books each week where each student chooses one for the classroom. Books do not go home in TK. Starting in Kindergarten, books go home. Kindergarten and first grade choose one book to bring home each week. Second grade begins the year with one book at a time and moves to two books during their Who We Are unit in January/February. Third, Fourth, and Fifth grades can have two books at a time checked out. Books can be returned during recesses when the library is open, after school when the library is open, and during their designated class times. Kindergartners and first-graders are given a two-gallon ziplock bag to keep their books in, to protect from water bottle backpack accidents. 

Expectations of responsibility are scaffolded by age. Students learn to use the library in TK and learn to remember to bring a book back to school in K. First grade begins to shift responsibility from parents to the student for remembering to bring the book back, and Second grade adds in a second book to remember. Third grade learns organization of the library, and then Fourth and Fifth graders get progressively less reminders to return books in order to prepare them for middle school expectations of responsibility. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at ayusim@conejousd.org or Principal Michele McDonald at mmcdonald@conejousd.org.

Happy Reading!

Andrea Yusim, Cypress Librarian