Back to School 2016!

So we are back to school in South Carolina, and I wanted to share what I'm doing with the SCASL Picture Book Award Nominees this year!  I started day 1 with classes in the library and I have had so much fun sharing My Teacher is a Monster! by Peter Brown with my Kindergarten, first, and second graders.

This book is a wonderful lead into talking about rules in the classroom or library!  As I was reading, we had to stop and talk about what poor Bobby did wrong, and in every class someone noticed that the teacher started looking a little less monster-y before the end of the book which led to great discussions on how to keep your teacher (or librarian) from turning into a monster!

I also started the year with library centers and dedicated a couple of them to monsters because of this book.  The kids have had so much fun creating monsters with my legos and playing on Sago Mini's Monster App!  I love having the centers to help keep them busy at the end so I can help those stragglers find books.

I put directions and standards on the sides of my centers so I don't have to explain what to do, but I try to keep them simple enough that they don't need much explaining.

The Monsters App by Sago Mini was free when I got it and my students absolutely love making their online monster, feeding it, and even brushing it's teeth!

Spring Book Buying Club

Last week we finished off our 4th Grade Spring Book Buying Club by looking over all the books they purchased and then creating ads for them to share with everyone at school!  The students enjoyed being the first to look through the new books.

After looking at them, I pulled out the ipads and they worked in pairs to create a flyer of a few books they would recommend to other students.  We used the app PicCollage for this and then uploaded them to a Padlet that could be shared.

After two groups this year, I will definitely do this again!  The students really enjoyed the process of adding new books to our library collection.

Created with Padlet

Trying New Things

I am  trying something new in the library this week that I'm hoping will help to engage the students through the end of school.  My kindergarten through second grade students visit the library weekly for 30 minutes for a lesson and book check out.  Our usual procedure is for them to sit at the tables and read the books they check out, but as we are nearing the end of the year everyone is very antsy!

I have considered adding centers for them to do after they check out to help keep them engaged (and for those students who can't check out because they forgot their book), but I just hadn't started it up.  So I decided that the end of school was a great time to experiment and work out the kinks!  If it doesn't work well then letting it go at the end of the year isn't a big deal.  However, after a few days trial, I'm thinking this is a great thing so far!

I set up 7 centers to start with: Independent Reading, Listening, Bookmark making, Ipad word work, Ipad retelling, Creation station with Legos, and a Rhyming game station.  I'm switching out the Ipad retelling that I was doing with Puppet Pals to an Eric Carle board game today because there have been issues with that center.  The favorite  center so far has been the creation station where they get to make a duck and read duck books (I read a duck story before introducing the centers).  If you haven't seen Cari Young's website or book on centers, it is very helpful!!

Some classes have done better than others, and there is always the student that doesn't want to do anything but the center that is already full, but overall this seems to be working well!

Spring Book Fair

It is time for our spring book fair! The trees and flowers are blooming, and the excitement is contagious at Bethel!  I love running book fair.  There is something about seeing the students get so excited about new books that just makes me grin!  I also love the conversations I get to have with teachers as they preview the new books and the chance it gives me to recommend titles.

Book fair was delivered today and this is what the second grade class that was in the library did when they saw the truck drive in!  Students are excited about books at Bethel Elementary!!

Ebook Week

This week we have been celebrating ebooks with Kindergarten, first, and second graders in the library.  Many of them didn't know that ebook stood for electronic book even though most of them had read an ebook before.  We also had technical difficulties to navigate through as I was trying to show them the ebooks we have in Destiny.  I had planned on reading one of those ebooks to them, but ended up using a Tumblebook when my Destiny ebooks wouldn't load.

Despite tech difficulties, the show went on and K, 1, and 2 students got to both hear a Tumblebook and explore the Epic! app at the tables after check out to read additional ebooks.  All of them showed a definite preference for the ebooks that would read the book to them!

4th Grade Book Buying Club

This fall I had an open spot in my schedule during our clubs, so I asked if I could start a book buying club for 4th graders.  I had seen the awesome results that Andy Plemmons at Barrow Elementary School in Georgia had gotten by having students help with book buying in the library and I wanted to give it a try.

Students at our school get a list of choices and I ended up with 15 students who wanted to try me out. They were so excited when I told them at our first meeting that they would get a chance to spend $500 of my library budget on books that they chose.  We talked about what types of books to order, how to look up reviews to see if the book was good, and how to budget our money.

After they came up with a list and adjusted and reviewed it, I placed the book order.  Today, they got to meet one final time to unpack the box, set up a display, and choose a book to share on the news with the school to show what we have been doing!  This has been so much fun for me and the students and I can't wait for my second group to start in February!!

3rd Grade Book Tasting

Third graders are getting a taste of some different genres in the library this week and next to encourage them to try something different.  So often I see students check out the same thing over and over, so we are trying something new!

I pulled stacks of easy chapter books for mystery, humor, realistic fiction, biography, fantasy, and action/adventure.  Each table was a different genre.  I created a bookmark menu for them to write the title of the book they "tasted" at each table.  They got a few minutes at each table to choose a book, write the title, and read the first page or so to decide if they liked it or not.