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.