Celebrating Our Readers!

 In January at the start of the new year, we challenged our middle school readers to read and explore different genres. Our library is set up by genres (Mystery, Realistic, Historical, Fantasy, Sports, Dystopian, Science Fiction, Romance, Graphic Novels, and Nonfiction -of course). The idea was for students to fill out a bookmark with the titles they read between January and May and try at least 8 of the 11 genres. 

We kept promoting through the spring semester - using it as an excuse to review genres and talk about author purpose as we recommended books. 

In May we surveyed our stack of completed bookmarks and sent out invitations for our Elite Reader Celebration. We ended up with about 30 of our top readers who we celebrated by giving them a free book that they chose, providing snacks, and playing an awesome book game called Bring Your Own Book!

Bring Your Own Book has a free online version that we printed (and read through to take out any inappropriate prompts). Each student used their free book to hunt down an answer to each prompt and then shared with the group. It was a hilarious romp through books with them looking for answers to prompts like Something you are surprised to find in a pocket or A line from a teenager's diary or Don't open an email with this subject line!

National Poetry Month!

In April, we celebrated National Poetry Month in the media center with blackout poetry! I really really enjoy teaching blackout poetry. It is found poetry, so the students usually don't find it as difficult to create and it is art! 

Most of the teachers in our school brought their classes to participate. I prepared by tearing up discarded books so that I had stacks of loose pages and purchasing black markers (we already had colored markers and colored pencils). Blackout poetry can be colorful too!

When the students came in, I took a few minutes to explain what blackout poetry was. I showed them examples. We even watched a YouTube video that showed someone creating in time lapse. At this point, I turned them loose to create. 

The teacher and I walked around to support and to ooh and ahh over their creations. We had a few students who wanted to read their poems out loud. If you can save time at the end to share out it is a wonderful thing. We were a little pressed for time, so I collected finished poems and made a bulletin board in the lobby so that everyone in the school could read them!

EOY Genre Collaborations

 The library media center is such a great place for teachers to find support, get out of the classroom, and learn. Last week we had an eighth grade teacher who reached out looking for something to engage her students for EOY review and get them thinking about genres and author purpose. My co-librarian and I happily put our heads together and bounced ideas around until we had something we thought would engage students who were dreaming of summer.

GimKit is an awesome resource, very similar to Kahoot if you haven't used it before. We found a genre quiz that had already been created there, adjusted it slightly to suit our library, and used it to open our lesson. The students and teacher jumped in, testing their skills against each other, but in a more peaceful way than Kahoot. It was great!

After they were refreshed on those genre characteristics, we had them partner with the person next to them and gave each team a genre. Using their mad genre knowledge, they had to come up with two truths and a lie about their genre. The conversations were awesome as they tried to figure out what to write to stump their classmates.

At this point, they had been sitting for long enough, so we migrated away from the tables to a circle of chairs we had set up with a stool in the middle. On the stool there was a buzzer, strategically placed so that it was equal distance from the chairs. We explained that we were going to play Two Truths and a Lie with what they had just come up with. There were interested looks between the buzzer and us.

The rules were if it was what you had written, you couldn't answer (or give the answer). Otherwise, when they heard the lie read aloud they had to stand up, spin in a circle and then dash to be the first to hit the buzzer. If they did that and were able to say the lie, then they earned a piece of candy. The candy won them over and had them listening intently to hear the answers. We did have a group later in the day who were lazy and would just rush the buzzer for each answer, but overall it did what we were hoping it would and the teacher and her class were beaming and laughing as they left. 

March Madness!

 March Madness in the AMS Library!

It was so much fun to celebrate March Madness with Ms. Grogan's class in the AMS library! I chose 8 picture books with social emotional themes and each week we read and compared 2 until the students chose their final winner - Superbuns! Kindness is her superpower! by Diane Krednesor. The students enjoyed talking about the books each week and then participating in makerspace activities including making buttons (to show their individuality), making kindness notes (to share around the school), and a leprechaun shamrock hunt around the library. It was Madness in the library - in the best possible way!

 

Getting Creative...

 I spent some time watching an ISTE webinar on Visual Storytelling and found a new technology tool that my students and teachers are really enjoying! It's called Brush Ninja. It's free, doesn't collect information, and lets you create animated GIFs. The kids are in love.

Brush Ninja is really great for showing what students know! I introduced it at the end of a digital citizenship lesson with my fourth and fifth graders. Their assignment was to make a GIF to help educate other students about caring for their computers or to help stop cyberbullying.

It was wonderful to watch them get creative! The students jumped in and started drawing right away. They figured out how to add slides, use the onion layer to trace over them to animate, and even how to add pictures from the web. The teachers were excited to see how engaged they were and I was super happy to see them on task and showing me what they learned from my lesson. This is definitely a tool to try out if you haven't seen it yet.

Always a librarian...

     Once a librarian, always a librarian. This year has seen a lot of changes for me and my family! After working in SC for the past 15 years as a school librarian, this fall my family has moved to western NC (where my husband and I are from) and I'm currently working as a Digital Lead Teacher.

    Does this mean I'm not still crazy about books? No way! I may be focusing on the technology part of being a media specialist, but I am still finding ways to be all about the books.

    So... books to share! I celebrated Digital Citizenship week last week with lessons in the classroom so of course I needed some books to go with those lessons! Reading is so important and finding a book to introduce a topic is so wonderful!

I used Chicken Clicking by Jeanne Willis with my Kinder and 1st grade students to accent the CommonSense Media website lesson on Internet Traffic Safety. A really fun technology cautionary tale told in a rollicking rhyme - it was a great intro for internet safety and privacy online.

As an added engagement, Chicken Clicking is short enough that with Kindergarten I read and talked about it, then read it again for the students to act out with all of the action words and animal sounds in the book. It is definitely a book that they will remember and think about!

Mitzi and the Big Bad Nosy Wolf by Teresa Bateman was a great intro to digital citizenship for my second graders. It was a perfect pairing with the Commonsense Media That's Private! lesson for grade 2.

I started with conversation about what information we should keep private online, following the Commonsense lesson. I found my second graders very knowledgeable about privacy already, but reading the book really seemed to cement it for them.

The students really loved the interaction during the story when they were able to join in and say "that's private!" as the wolf tried to convince the sheep to talk to him.  It is also a great movement based story where the students can add in the dance moves and wiggle a bit.

Troll Stinks by Jeanne Willis was a huge hit with my third graders. I followed the Commonsense Media Rings of Responsibility lesson with this group. 

We started by watching the video from the lesson which led into a nice discussion about how the things we do affect others. The students had a hard time connecting it to digital citizenship until we read Troll Stinks. 

After reading the book, I asked how the trolls affected their community and world with their actions and our conversation really took off. I highly recommend this story!

Fourth and Fifth grades had great conversations about Nerdy Birdy Tweets by Aaron Reynolds. This book inspired digitally fantastic conversation about what cyber-bullying is. Students debated back and forth about if it was still cyber-bullying if harm wasn't intended.

We finished up this lesson with a new tech tool that deserves it's own post - Brush Ninja!

Digital Citizenship is such an important topic to introduce at young ages so that students grasp how to stay safe as they grow into their technology skills. I had a blast finding great stories to share to expand those lessons. 

Until next time...

Digital Citizenship Week 2019

New school, new school year...it is time to get started sharing some things again!  I am super excited to be at Dutch Fork Elementary as school librarian!  It is now about 9 weeks into the school year and I am starting to feel a bit more settled.  My best advice for new librarians (and experienced librarians switching schools) is to give yourself time to get settled.  Building relationships with students and teachers is the most important thing!

...Which totally leads me into this week being Digital Citizenship Week!  Online relationships are important too and many times students don't realize that!  This week I am talking about relationships by sharing one of my favorites: Nerdy Birdy Tweets by Aaron Reynolds. 

This book is WONDERFUL for opening conversation about online relationships vs. in person relationships!  Nerdy Birdy and Vulture are best friends, but they have very different likes and dislikes.  When Nerdy Birdy discovers Tweetster and starts making online friends, his relationship with Vulture suffers.  And when Vulture discovers that Nerdy Birdy has posted a picture of Vulture on Tweetster her feelings are terribly hurt.  Please comment below and share what you are doing for Digital Citizenship Week!