Makerspace Club

This year the media specialists at Greenville County Schools have started talking more about makerspaces.  I have been playing with a few things already and have added some creative outlets in my K-2 library centers, but I also wanted to give it a try with some of my older students.  I now have a 5th grade makerspace club that meets once a month!

Our first meeting in September we talked about what Makerspaces are and how we want to foster creativity.  For this meeting in October, I decided to read them Going Places by Peter and Paul Reynolds and then let them explore some low-tech ideas.

They had great fun creating different lego devices...

As well as trying some origami and duct tape crafting...

And some binary coding with beads! 

Author Visit!

The highlight of my week was having picture book author Kristy Dempsey visit Bethel last Friday!  I love reading to my students, but it is rare that they really get the chance to meet an author and connect on that level.  

I was so excited last spring when Kristy emailed the Greenville County Media Specialists to let us know that she would be home in Traveler's Rest, SC for the 2016-17 school year.  She is also the librarian at an international school in Brazil.  We had just found out that our school theme for the year would be "Our Adventure Starts Here" and I thought it would be such a great connection to make between her adventures and how she uses them in her writing!

It was such a lovely visit!  Kristy talked to all 1005 of our students about her adventures and how they help her to write as well as read us her newest book The Superhero Instruction Manual (which everyone loved!!).  I really enjoyed talking to her too.  It was so interesting to compare library stories from two different countries.

After the final presentation, I snapped this picture as Kristy sat on the floor and chatted with one class as the rest were filing out and their teacher was heating her lunch.  What a nice day and a great impact on students!

Jumping into genrefication

This week I have officially jumped into genrefying the fiction section of our library.  I had been researching and even bought genre stickers last year from Demco, but I hadn't actually started until this week.  I was inspired to finally jump in by two things.  One was watching my older kids, who I have worked so hard to teach Destiny to, struggle to find books using the catalog which has led me down the rabbit hole of "how can I help them?" And "why aren't they getting it?"  The second thing was reading Andy Plemmons blog posts about genrefying his library at the beginning of the year and how much it has helped the children to find books.

Does it really help them for me to keep beating Destiny into them, or does it make more sense to arrange books in a way that makes sense to them if it helps them find books they will read?  I am getting on the wagon with those who would like the children to be able to find things to read!

So as I have been hanging out in the floor putting genre stickers on books I have made some new friends as students on passes have asked me what I am doing.  They have been so excited to explore the section I have finished and I haven't even put all of a genre together yet.  It makes me excited for when I can get it all finished!

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!!