Reading (and Writing) Resolutions

I wrote a little about one of my resolutions over at my personal blog, Reflections. I also have quite a bit of catching up to do here as well. I have been neglecting this extraordinary opportunity to reflect on my professional practice and share with other school librarians about the lessons I am teaching and the lessons I've learned in the school library. If you aren't able to follow the link to the other post, let me sum up that I'll be blogging from my iPhone and posts may not include all the elements I would love to see, but if ever there is time one day, I can always add pictures, links, videos, etc. Also, the autocorrect function may, at times, hinder my ability to express thought, but I'll do my best!

Yesterday, as we anticipated a new year, I had my 100th follower on twitter. Since I have been fortunate enough to have won a few book giveaways for the library, I thought I'd do my karmic duty and host one myself. So, from now through 1/10 (when ALA will announce this year's Newbery winners) I am hosting a Twitter giveaway of Ingrid Law's books - the Newbery honor book, "Savvy" and it's sequel, "Scumble" which I just finished reading the other day. To enter, you can follow me @ontheshelf4kids on twitter and retweet a contest tweet and reply with your reading resolution or comment with your reading resolution below.

Happy reading in 2011!

Book Fair

So, instead of going in a logical (or semi-logical) sequence, I'm going to jump to the end of that list and talk about our upcoming book fair.  Because - I am SO excited!!  We run our book fair through Scholastic and they have so many awesome aspects to their fairs.  I have a phenomenal team of PTA Book Fair coordinators and we simply wouldn't be able to run such a fabulous fair without them and their expertise.  I attended a workshop to learn more about the fair and how everything runs as well as to preview some of the selections in order to introduce those selections to students.  Fifth graders watched Book Trailers as part of a project to vote for the Best Book Trailers for K-6 students as compiled by School Library Journal Magazine.  But that will be another post.  But...one of the preview books was one that students had gotten really excited about while watching and voting for their favorite book trailers - "Closed for the Season" by Mary Downing Hahn.

Closed for the Season from SLJ Trailee Nominees on Vimeo.

Also, this fair will be one of the first that follows the release of the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid book, so we've been collecting pre-orders for the new book.  Kids are SO excited about this release.  Any time kids get excited about books, you know that great things are happening.

In order to raise the level of excitement, for the first time our school participated in a reading incentive that got the principal (or assistant principal in this case) involved in a wacky stunt.  The "What Would You Do For Reading" video prompted our school's assistant principal to propose that if kids "Read 100,000" minutes, she would dress as Captain Underpants.  I will say that it is a huge understatement to say that the kids were excited.  Many decided that they would read 100 minutes that day!  I'll blog about the program and our ups and downs with it in another post, so as to stay focused.

The theme for this year's fair is "Here's to our Heroes" which encompasses Superheroes and Everyday Heroes alike.  To celebrate this theme, students are doing different hero-based projects at each grade level and writing letters to be mailed around the holidays to military serving overseas or away from home.  We also invited military, firefighters, police officers, and other everyday heroes to come to our school to pose for pictures with students at our fair evening event.  I'm hoping this will be a fun opportunity for all those involved.

I have so much more that I could write, but...I'll be back!

It's Been Too Long

1) I apologize for my bad blogging behavior.
2) It is my goal to post about lessons and other happenings in our library.
3) I'd better get to it as time is precious.
4) I'm hoping to eventually get into the swing of things and blog once a day.  As it is I'm so behind that I could easily blog more often and still not be caught up on topics I'd like to write about.  But...I don't know that it's wise to set the bar too high.
5) A few quick updates...and perhaps I'll use this list to jog my memory for future posting.

• Pirate Fiction/Non-Fiction Lesson
• K - Ducks in a Row
• 5 - Nobel Peace Prize
• 4 - Wiktionary
• 3 - Dewey Decimal System
• 2 (and 3) - Shelf Elf
• 1 - Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians
• K - We're Going on a Book Hunt
• 5 - SLJ Trailee Awards
• 2 - Too Much Noise in the Library
• 1 - ABC Order
• K - We'll Be Comin' Down to Storytime
• Read 100,000
• Encyclopedia Brittanica Online Education
• 2 - Electronic Catalog
• 1 - Do You Know the Muffin Man?  Book Address, Book Neighborhoods, ABC Order
• K - Nursery Rhymes
• 5 - My Hero Project - website development
• 4 - My Hero Project - podcast
• 3 - My Tall Tale Hero
• Superhero ABC
• Book Fair Preview
• Book Fair
• Weeding and Policies/Procedures
• TV Studio

If You Give a Kid a Book

Second Grade started the school year learning about circular stories, like those written by Laura Numeroff. Side note - when did she drop Joffe from the middle?  I talked about the idea of a circular story ending up right where it began and talked about how a library is like that.  We check out books, enjoy them, have adventures, and then the books (fingers crossed) end up in the library, right where they began.  Students then created class book pages for a book titled "If You Give a Kid a Book" to review book care and library manners.  We used a Google Docs presentation to create each page and I typed the student's words using a wireless keyboard connected to our smartboard computer.  Similar to the Language Experience Approach, typing student's word on the big screen gives them an opportunity to see their words recorded and keeps students engaged in what is happening with whole group instruction.

Take a Magic Tree House Trip

Third Graders are re-acquainting themselves with the library shelves this fall by taking a Magic Tree House-esque trip through the Dewey Decimal System.  Well, actually the activity has now been modified several times over due to the construction and continued "debris", but here was the original plan and one I hope to execute much better in the future.  Each student would start out with a Magic Tree House Title (after discussing some of the elements of the series, i.e. Jack and Annie always find a book in the tree house that takes them to the time and place that the plot centers around) and go to the shelves to find a book that might have taken Jack and Annie to that time or place.  For example, to get to the title, "Tonight on the Titanic," they might have opened up a book about the Titanic.  Once each student has a sample non-fiction book, we can discuss in groups what the DDS numbers mean and group kids together with numbers that are close and figure out what those titles have in common.  So, I thought this would be a great plan.  Then reality hit and the shelves were still blocked by technological fallout and a huge papier machie dinosaur.  So, we did this activity in a similar fashion with cards with the titles printed as getting all the books off the shelves without tables to seat each student didn't seem entirely wise either.  Maybe by Thursday's class, we'll be able to do this activity in its intended fashion.  Maybe.  No promises.

Take a magical trip in your library - read a great book!!

Word Up

4th and 5th Graders have Summer Reading.  As a way to review what books kids read, each class did two activities, each catered to that grades list.  For the first activity, we did a circle and each student told the class his/her favorite summer reading book from the list.  At the same time, I typed the book titles into a list on a word document.  Then, we copied and pasted the list into Wordle.  And, voila!

Following the circle and wordle creation lesson, students also created a scavenger hunt that included finding students who had read certain books, the authors of certain books, or the names of characters from those books.  The students seemed engaged and voted to continue the activity during the next class period to have more time to complete as many boxes as possible.

I plan to create a bulletin board to showcase the wordle that each class created.  Pretty neat summary activity for summer reading!

Pirate Book Buddy Bag

So, I won a prize for the library - hopefully the first of many such contests/grants that help to benefit our students.  I won a Book Buddy Bag that pairs two pirate books - one fiction and one non-fiction.  I can't wait to use this with students!  When I wrote my entry for the contest, I explained that this would be used in a school library to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on and around September 19th.  I got this idea from another awesome librarian, Bev Keegan, of Mill Creek Elementary.  She used it as a fiction/non-fiction lesson with pirate hooks.  They had fiction on one side and non-fiction on the other.  Kids flipped them to display which kind of book was being shown.  I'll be trying this out with first graders starting next Friday...if the hooks are ready.  Fingers, or hooks, crossed!  Listed below is the information for Links to Literacy, the sponsor of the contest - thanks!!!


Web: www.linkstoliteracy.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/linkstoliteracy
Blog for Educators: www.teachingwithpicturebooks.wordpress.com
Blog for Parents: www.literacytoolbox.wordpress.com

Creator of My Book Buddy Bag: http://www.linkstoliteracy.com/my-book-buddy-bag.html