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Specialist Spotlight: Alanna Marcelletti

For the next several weeks in The Trailblazer, we will be featuring a ”Specialist Spotlight,” focusing on all the wonderful ways our specialists are inspiring our students on the Lower Campus. This week, we are featuring our Library Specialist, Ms. Alanna Marcelletti.  

Library provides the opportunity for students to delve deeper into books and reading as a meaningful accompaniment to our Language Arts program. Ms. Marcelletti provides a wonderfully welcoming environment in the Rubin Family Library, students happily enjoying an engaging read-through of a well-appointed story regularly. However, there is much more to the class than basking in the glow of a warm book, although this is one of the most relished moments of a student’s week.
 
Library as a class also provides the all-important underpinnings of better critical-thinking and analytical skills in our students. Her recent projects reveal the wealth of opportunities that students have to better understand their relationship with information and how it is presented, packaged, and conveyed to us. For example, Kindergarten students learn about the role of illustrators in their picture books and interpret how images augment and even tell stories themselves. In 2nd and 3rd Grades, students learn how to find a right-fit book, using the endearing Look-Sniff-Taste strategy (look and interpret cover, sniff out the summary, taste a few pages). The 5th Grade learned about research through their invention project, where they explored several young people, Boyan Slat, Greta Thunberg, and Malala Yousafzai, who saw problems as opportunities to create new ways of solving them.
 
All Lower Campus students have the privilege of going to the Rubin Family Library to enjoy weekly lessons with Ms. Marcelletti. The well-curated collection includes an ever-updated cache of books that offer many opportunities for our students to see an inclusive range of characters and topics. One of the constant goals for our students is the development of empathy. Engaging with books where students can follow the progress of a character and understand the arc of their journey is one of the most profound ways for them to cultivate this critical capacity.
 
The library features rotating sections of texts organized by a particular theme or event. Recently, there have been books for every age on Hispanic Heritage Month, including relevant characters, themes, authors, et al. prominently displayed in their own bookshelf. Ms. Marcelletti always encourages students and faculty alike to check these out to broaden students’ understanding of different cultures, experiences, and perspectives. In addition, there are the old favorites and new takes on Halloween, including learning the notion of parody in 1st Grade with Goodnight Moon and Goodnight Goon, and Runaway Bunny and Runaway Mummy.
 
There will be many things coming out of the library in the future, too, like Book Awards in January, the Book Fair, National Poetry Month in April, et al. Ms. Marcelletti is always available to guide your child on book selections and pique their interest. We encourage all students and families to take full advantage of the library and everything it has to offer both for these events and for the great and simple pleasure of enjoying a good book. Given our safety protocols, please reach out to Ms. Marcelletti to make an appointment at amarcelletti@sierracanyonschool.org.
Lower School: 11052 Independence Avenue
Middle and Upper School: 20801 Rinaldi Street
Chatsworth, CA 91311  | 818.882.8121
Sierra Canyon School is a private, independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory school for students in grades Pre-Kindergarten through 12 located in Chatsworth, California. The highly cosmopolitan campus community is reflective of the Greater Los Angeles area and the world at large. Students are empowered to realize their greatest creative, ethical, intellectual and physical promise through small class sizes, a diverse student-teacher culture and a family-like environment.