WUSD Library Link

Welcome families to the magical world of the five Whitewater Unified School District's libraries.

Each library in our district is a warm and welcoming space.

Each is staffed with a Library Paraprofessional (or two) and managed by our District Library Media Specialist, Kathy Retzke.

• I have been a librarian and an elementary classroom teacher for over 30 years
• What I love most about being a librarian is...getting kids excited about books!
• My favorite book in the whole world is...The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
• My favorite kid book is Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Book Fairs take place in our school district in the fall and the spring. They are matched up with Parent Conferences so that parents can easily attend. Book Fairs are fundraisers. In the fall, the money that is raised goes toward helping build teachers' classroom libraries as well as supporting each building's library.

In the spring, profits are given back to the students through reading incentives they can choose to participate in. Last year, we had over 300 students participating in our reading incentive. If a student reads 400 minutes they earn $7.00 for the book fair, and if they read 800 minutes they earn $14.00. Last February, we gave back close to $4000 in books to our students.

Our next book fairs will take place at all of the elementary buildings and the Middle School.

They will run on Wednesday, February 18th from 4:00 to 7:30 pm and Thursday, February 19th from 1:00 to 7:30 pm.

Book Fair profits also help fund our classroom libraries, reading incentives, Battle of the Books program, our elementary book giveaway program, raffle baskets at events and improvements to all of our libraries. Thank you to all of the families that support us with their purchases!

Battle of the Books (BOB), is a statewide program organized by the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Association. Over 450+ teams across elementary, middle, and high school levels in Wisconsin will be competing. Our school district is proud to host teams at all of our buildings this year. Each year we have more and more students participating!

Students are placed on teams of up to 4 people. Their job is to read 20 books and be prepared to answer questions on them. They learn to take notes, pay attention to details, problem solve and work together as a team. Teams are created around Thanksgiving with team meetings taking place in December, January and early February. Each building then hosts a Battle in which the teams compete against each other to be the TOP DOGS in their building in a game show format. This year we have teacher teams also competing against the students - which they love!

This year our building wide competition dates will be on -

• Whitewater Middle School - Friday, February 6th at 8:00 am
• Whitewater High School - Monday, February 9th at 3:30 pm
• Lakeview Elementary - Wednesday, February 11th at 2:00 pm
• Lincoln Elementary - Thursday, February 12th at 2:00 pm
• Washington Elementary - Friday, February 13th at 2:00 pm

From there the winning student team in each building moves on to the online state competition to see where they will rank against the other 450+ teams in the state! Last year our High School team placed 3rd out of 65 teams, our Middle School team placed 19th out of 162 teams and Lakeview Elementary placed 23rd out of 259 teams. Watch for the results in our next newsletter!

Email: kretzke@wwusd.org
Website: wwusd.org
Phone: (262) 472-8373