Thankful for DonorsChoose.org

Recently DonorsChoose.org had a special #FillEveryShelf day, where all projects for books were matched by donors.  Our school was wonderfully blessed by several donors, who gave toward our project, “Wild About Wimpy Kid Books.”  We have a complete set of these titles in the media center, but it is rare and very lucky for a student to find one waiting on the bookshelf to be checked out.  When I found out about this special match, I knew that my children needed more Diary of a Wimpy Kid titles in our library media center.  My students couldn’t wait to open the box to see what the donors had given.  They were shocked to find an entire set of this entertaining series, plus an extra copy of the first book.  During the box opening, the students had the opportunity to start reading one (or more) of the books and they helped me start the task of processing all of these books.  Each child stamped a book to help get them shelf ready.  We are so very thankful for our donors, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and DonorsChoose.org.

Our school has benefited greatly in the past from our partners at DonorsChoose.org and we greatly appreciate all they have done for us!  Because of this site, our school news show has lighting and a professional background.  The students’ science fair project boards at our school can have gorgeous letters cut out of vinyl with our Silhouette machine.  The kindergarten library section has forward-facing shelves that make selecting books a breeze.  A Lego Wall makes every child smile that comes into our media center through our front door.  We have been truly blessed with these special touches, which make our media center unique, thanks to our DonorsChoose.org community!

Reflecting on Stations for Orientation

Planning for the station method of orientation for grades 3 through 5 took quite a bit of time, but for the most part I think the students enjoyed being able to move around to learn about the media center.  The planning was worth it!  Before starting the orientation, I had planned about 14 different stations, which was way too many for the students to visit during our short 35 minute time period.  Sadly, some of the stations had to be cut out of the orientation experience (the Lego Wall will have to be visited another day and time, which was a disappointment for some).  At first the movement from one station to another was chaotic, but by the very last orientation class we had the transitions down pat.

The stations that remained throughout the entire orientation process were 1. a video about Borrowing and Checking Out Books from the Media Center, 2. a video about Areas of the Media Center, 3. a video about Safari (our OPAC), Lexile.com, and Overdrive, 4. a library card decoration station, 5. an online survey about wants and needs in the media center, and 6. checking out books in the media center.  We had an optional bookmark decoration station with a basketball theme, which was phased out through the course of the orientations.  If the students were making really good choices and following media center expectations (Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe), then I pulled out the iPad for the students to take a photo with the book they checked out in front of the READ backdrop for the “Photo Booth” station.  The kids really loved the photo booth!

Before beginning the station rotation, I randomly numbered off the students for groupings.  This worked well in most instances.  If I had to do this all over again, I would try to make the videos about the same length.  One of the videos was about 4 minutes long and that was almost too much; it didn’t hold the attention of the students.

As a result of the rotations, I have had a few students go to the computers to search for books independently, which is not something that has happened this early in the school year in years past.  If a student asks about where certain books are, I can pull up the Safari video and after watching they are ready to attempt searching for books on the computer and will only need a little bit of guidance to find what they desire.  I do not mind showing students where certain books are, but I want them to feel like they can find materials independently in our media center and in a public library setting.

Media Center Orientation

This school year I am trying something different for orientation.  In the past, I have made a video to show to the entire class at one time and then allowed the students to check out their library books afterward.  Last year, I showed the video and then had students visit stations (our Lego Wall, observing our media center frogs, and decorating their library cards).  At the end of last school year, I watched a webinar about using stations in the media center and I was truly inspired.

During media center orientation this year for my older students (Grades 2-5), I will have several computer and iPad stations set up for students to visit to learn more (or share more) about the media center.  One station will be a survey for the children to share about the types of books that we need in the media center.  Other stations will share resources and procedures for the library media center.  Two of the stations will be decoration stations, one for library cards (like last year) and another to decorate paper basketballs to prepare for an upcoming author visit from a local university’s basketball coach.

Here are links to the videos that I have created to use during this year’s station orientation:

Knight TV Information

Basketball Decoration

Lego Wall

Safari, Lexile, and Overdrive

Borrowing and Checking Out Books

Areas of the Media Center

An Introduction to Mystery Skype

Students try to figure out where our Skype friends are in the USA.

 

 

Our third grade students recently had the opportunity to Mystery Skype with another class in another state.  They had never participated in a Mystery Skype before and I wanted to provide them with a fun educational experience.  Typically, Mystery Skype participants have their own maps and atlases to use to work together to narrow down the options of which state we think our friends are in based on the responses to the questions that have been asked.  Before our Mystery Skype we talked about good possibilities for questions and where our state is located.  This initial preparation seemed to be helpful as we started the questioning part of our Skype.  Each class took turns asking questions about the other’s location.  Because this was the first Mystery Skype for these students, we had a map of the USA (on the web) projected to our screen, where I would point out states that were eliminated based on the answers to our questions.  For example, if my students asked if their state was in the Southwest, and the answer was, “No,” then I would point with the mouse and show the students where our friends were not located (not saying state names, but showing the general area).  As a first Mystery Skype, I think this was helpful for the students.  The next time that we have a Mystery Skype, the students will work more collaboratively, but more independently of teacher assistance in asking questions and eliminating possible states.  We look forward to our next Mystery Skype experience!

Dot Day Fun!

This year was the first year that our KBS Knights have celebrated International Dot Day.  Our students wore dots as a part of the fun, created dots in art class for a fantastic Dot Tree, and read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.  Many of our students enjoyed singing The Dot Song and a Skype visit with another class!  Our computer lab teacher, Mrs. Donna Burris, showed the students how to create dots and fill them with color using Publisher!

Students created Dot Day bookmarks to share with our Skype friends. We hope they like them!

The students, who came to The Merry Media Center @KBS to Skype, made bookmarks for our new Skype friends.  Our school connected with 15 other schools from a variety of states.  I greatly appreciate the members of my PLN, who we connected with this year!  Some of these friends included:  Jennifer Reed, Matthew Winner, Andy Plemmons, Sarah Staudt, Kathy Schmidt, Kathryn Cole, Esther Uribe, Chad Lehmann, Donna MacDonald, Sarah Wendorf, Cristol Kapp, Jenny Lussier, Shawna Ford, and Meg Allison.  Some of the great activities that we shared with our buddies were having an Elephant and Piggie Dance Party (with Mr. Winner), reading Press Here (until interrupted by a fire drill– with Donna MacDonald), creating a nifty collaborative dot (with Mr. Plemmons), Mystery Skype experiences (with Cristol Kapp, Kathy Schmidt, and Chad Lehmann), reading The Dot with many wonderful classes!  We had so much fun!

Mrs. Johnnie Skelton’s art class created a Dot Tree as a part of the Dot Day celebration this year!

New Year, New Space

This summer I took a little while to explore Pinterest in hopes that I would find some inspiration for my new media center home this year.  Crafts somehow seem to excite me!  Of course, Pinterest did not disappoint in my search for great library displays! The one site that I found through Pinterest that I loved is Hafuboti, which shows library displays in a public children’s library space.  The designs were incredibly awesome!

After looking at Hafuboti and several other sites, I decided to go with the media center theme “Read a Rainbow” for the upcoming school year.  I figure that most of our elementary school titles are bright and eye-catching and are made of a rainbow of colors, which could be helpful in drawing in my students!  Here is my bulletin board that I made for the entrance to our media center. The Read letters are made from book pages and are backed by scrapbooking papers. It was made from a book that I didn’t particularly enjoy (Yes, I did cut it up and I’ll never tell the title). The Rainbow letters are made from scrapbooking papers with book pages for the backing.  The board was initially covered with a nice teal fabric from WalMart with double borders (an apple green on the inside, which was covered by a yellow, black, and polka dot border on the outside).  I think I may still add a few photographs of book covers and place them under the color of their cover in the word Rainbow on the bulletin board.

Another little craft that I made for The Merry Media Center @KBS is a sign-in book.  This book is a necessity in tracking the number of students that visit our media center each month to help us with accurate data tracking to report for our school district.  As individual students come into our media center, it is a procedure for them to sign in at the circulation desk.  At the end of each day my media assistant and I tally the number of students beside the place where they have signed.  Having a crafty little sign-in book just makes me smile!

To make this sign-in book, I used a regular five subject notebook and some scrapbook paper.  I cut the scrapbook paper to fit the cover and added a contrasting color to the middle.  The letters are stickers that I got from a local craft store.  The star and tags were scrapbooking pieces that i already had around the house. The ribbon was tied to the spiral binding just for fun!

Before school starts back, I have a couple of other little craft ideas that I hope to accomplish in order to make our media center space a little brighter and more fun for my students!

Lexile Resources

Some of the best resources that were mentioned during a Lexile training session that I attended:

Search for books on a particular Lexile level:  http://www.lexile.com/fab/

Excellent games/center activities for reading sorted by grade level:  http://fcrr.org/for-educators/sca.asp

Find skill or strategy lessons and novel studies sorted by Lexile:  http://www.readworks.org/  Create a free account to access the most information at this site.

Scripts for Reader’s Theater:  http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=documents&JAS_DocumentManager_op=viewDocument&JAS_Document_id=9&MMN_position=34:34

I hope that these resources will be helpful to you!

 

ISTE 2014 Reflections and Plans

ISTE 2014 in Atlanta was over the weekend and if I had to describe it in one word, it would be Overwhelming.  Yes, with a capital O.  When I first arrived, a line for the first set of Ignite sessions wrapped around the Georgia World Congress Center.  There were people everywhere!  So many people that I did not even get to attend the Ignite session, but things got better.  They had televisions set up around the conference center, where the sessions were being broadcast live.

Later, there were some networking events for various groups (Librarians Network, Young Educators Network, etc.), which was fantastic because I had the opportunity to meet with some of the people that I have interacted with on Twitter, but have never met in real life.  Meeting my Twitter friends was definitely a highlight of the entire conference for me!  Some of the people that I met at the networking session were Sherry Gick, Jennifer LaGarde, Donna McDonald, Okle Miller, Andy Plemmons and Tiffany Whitehead.

The SIGLIB Playground was a great place to learn on Saturday morning.  Andy Plemmons shared how he uses Google Hangouts to connect his students with others around the country.  Sherry Gick and Matthew Winner shared their Earth Pals project and how they have sponsored Genius Hour activities in their library media centers.  There were several other presenters that I would have loved to hear, but time just did not allow (Linda Dougherty, Donna McDonald, Jenn Brower, and Tiffany Whitehead).

The poster sessions were unique.  It was fun to wander from table to table to hear about the fun ways that technology is being integrated in schools internationally.  QR codes were everywhere for participants to scan and learn more about the topic being shared.  One of my favorite poster sessions was by Pascale Gendron, who presented about a collaboration between a language teacher and a science teacher  in which the students created videos to share their learning.  Another cool poster session was by Heather Miller, who shared music videos that her students had made to tell about concepts they had learned in their history class.  The poster session was titled, “Gleek out to U.S. History by Making Rock Opera.”  The video presentations in both of the poster sessions were amazing!  You could tell that the students wanted to create the best possible video for both of these projects.  Several of the poster sessions had student presenters, who were beyond excited to share their creations with teachers.  One young student (probably a 2nd grader) approached me to show his technology “How-to” videos that he had created and produced using iMovie.  His confidence and pride in his work was inspiring!  The teachers that brought the students for Discover Cedros Tech Tips should be commended for the positive impact they are making on the lives of their students!

Some of the lecture-style sessions that I attended were by Rushton Hurley, Dr. Robert Dillon, and Dr. Warren Goetzel.  Hurley and Dillon’s presentations both dealt with student-produced videos.  Each offered an interesting and engaging perspective of getting students involved and sharing their stories in an engaging way.  Dr. Goetzel presented ideas about grant possibilities for schools and school libraries, as well as giving tips on how to write a successful grant application.  The tips given by Dr. Goetzel have definitely inspired me to pursue a myriad of grant possibilities for our school’s library media center.

The exhibition hall was huge and I visited for a little while each day, but still did not see all of the booths.  I could go on for hours about the expo.

Having lunch with some of the friends that I have met on Twitter and Skype, but had never met in person until ISTE was a highlight of my trip, too!  Getting to talk face to face with Kathy Schmidt and Shawn Hinger over lunch was so much fun!  It is not often that media specialists have time to sit and share with others within this profession.  Collaboration with teachers and book fairs were just a couple of the topics that we discussed during our visit.  The construction workers that joined us just added to our experience!

During the Genius Hour panel, Vicki Davis challenged the attendees to think of three things that you want to do differently next school year as a result of what you have learned at ISTE 2014.

Here are the three things that I want to do next year as a result of what I have learned:

1. Encourage my students to share their own personal stories (possibly through a project like the one defining moment video that Dr. Robert Dillon shared).  Dr. Dillon shared that students need to gain understanding from their peers through the stories that they write and share, which can also promote empathy.  Fostering empathy, giving students choice, and allowing students to have pride in their work is something that I think can be accomplished through promoting student video production within our school’s library media center.
2. Pursue grants often to continue to improve and develop our media collection.  Create a reading program that can be used for grant applications and make sure that the program can be clearly understood by a variety of audiences.
3. Use a variety of ways to present the positive story of learning that is occurring within my school to a wide audience.  The library forum on Marketing Your School Library gave me several new ideas to promote media resources to students, show parents that the media center is a real place for learning, and to spread a positive view of our school to outside stakeholders.  My first steps will be to develop a Youtube account for student-produced videos and as a place to showcase the learning within our school and to create a Twitter account to share photos of teaching and learning.

 

 

Answering the Real Read Aloud Questions: Parent & Child

As we lead up to celebrating World Read Aloud Day with LitWorld, my sweet little boy and I answered a few questions in an interview about reading.  I hope that you enjoy reading our answers!  We had such a great time talking about the books we love!  Visit LitWorld’s website to find ideas for World Read Aloud Day!

1.  What should everyone in the world read aloud?

Me:  Everyone in the world should read aloud an Elephant and Piggie book (by Mo Willems) with a friend.  You can take turns reading the parts for Elephant and Piggie and it is SO much fun!

My wonderful boy (5 years old):  The Inside of Reptiles is what everyone in the world should read because it shows the inside and not everyone knows what is on the inside.  They have lungs and they come up for air.

2.  Who is the one person in the world that you would want to listen to as they read aloud?

Me:  Nancy Brown, my media professor from Georgia State University, was one of the most captivating readers that I have ever had the pleasure of hearing read aloud.  I will never forget when she read Bitter Bananas by Olaleye to my Children’s Literature class.  She added a special accent as she read.  It was beyond fantastic!  She had every student in the classroom mesmerized with her voice.

My boy:  Mr. Dwayne, a guy at church, because he would make good noises for the purpose of it.

**Side note:   I had to ask him who Mr. Dewayne was because I did not know.  He admitted that Mr. Dwayne has never read to him, but he just wanted for him to read aloud.  I think he was talking about Mr. Dwayne True, who works with the Royal Rangers on Wednesday nights at church.

3.  When reading aloud, who is your favorite character to impersonate?

Me:  It is so much fun to impersonate the cowboy from Are You A Horse? by Andy Rash.  I like to change the voices for all of the different animals, too.  My students sometimes look at me like I’m weird, but it’s great!  They laugh.

My boy:  Bees. Like Bzzzzzzz Bzzzzzrzzzzrzzzzzzz.

4.  Which genre or author takes up the most room on your bookshelf?

Me:  One series that is unique that I love is Michael Hoeye’s Time Stops for No Mouse trilogy (see The Sands of Time photo below).  Hermux Tantamoq is a watchmaker who has many adventures.  The imagery in Hoeye’s writing is incomparable.  Another author that has quite a bit of room on my bookshelf and e-reader shelf is Carl Hiaasen.  I particularly enjoy his children’s titles because he writes realistic fiction that is driven toward a cause, typically conservation of the environment.  The action in all of his novels keeps most readers, even reluctant ones, engaged.

My boy:  I think I have more Arthur books.  I like to read true books.

5.  What is your favorite part of reading aloud or being read aloud to?

Me:  My favorite part of reading aloud is watching the faces of my students or my sweet boy as I get to a suspenseful part in the story.  I love shocking them sometimes by hiding the pictures until just the right moment.  Changing my voice to match a character is really fun, too!  If I’m reading to my own little one, I love cuddling up with a great pillow, blanket, and many books!  That warm, cozy feeling can’t be beat!

My boy:  I think you (Mom) reading Reptiles, too.  I like when Mom cuddles me up and fluffs my pillow and my Mom reads to me.

Is there anything else that you want to tell me about reading?

My boy:  Hot Rod Hamster says, “Which wheels do you choose?”  and they say, “the Hamster is a Hot Rod.”  5 Minute  marvels are awesome!  It has Kraven the Hunter in it and Mysterio and Electro and Doc Ock.

How do you feel about learning to read?

My boy:  Great!  It is so fun!  I love to read!

Memories of Cozy Read-Alouds

As we are leading up to World Read Aloud Day on March 5th, I decided to join Matthew Winner’s WRAD Raising Our Voices Blogging Challenge!  This weeks’ topic is to share your earliest memories of read-alouds, so here goes!

When I was about 4 years old, my parents took the church youth group on a trip and I got to stay with my sweet Nannie, my maternal grandmother.  I remember cuddling up on her couch with a crocheted blanket (probably a ripple afghan) covering us as we read through some of the encyclopedia.  Somehow I think that chocolate chip cookies were involved in this read-aloud experience, too.  I don’t really remember how we selected which volume we would read from, but on this particular night we were reading the “P” volume.

Nannie knew just how to spark my curiosity!  She would let me breeze through the pictures in the encyclopedia and I would point out an interesting one for us to read about and talk about together.  I remember my Nannie telling me all about Louis Pasteur (that’s how I know it was the “P” volume) and the pasteurization process (at 4 years old I did not have a clue about this).  At such an early age I didn’t realize that I was learning something new, only that I loved spending time with my grandmother and books!  There is something truly special about snuggling up on a warm couch with a blanket and someone that you love more than words can describe and sharing a great book (or an entry in a volume of the World Book encyclopedia).  That set of encyclopedias was often read when I visited my grandparents’ home.

My little boy (he’s 5) and I now read aloud every night.  I hope that his memories of reading aloud are pleasant and cozy, like my memories with Nannie.  Reading with children from an early age can make a huge difference in their early reading progress.  My hope is that all of my students can find a book they truly enjoy and can read it with someone they love.

I am excited about World Read Aloud Day on March 5th because my students will have the opportunity to share some of their favorite books with students across the country!  This school year I have tried to instill in my students a giving spirit by having them make bookmarks for Skype friends and write letters to senior citizens.  I would like for my students to make something simple to send to the students that we visit with via Skype, but I haven’t settled on anything definite yet.  In the past our school has shared great books via Skype with students from other schools.  I am grateful for the connections that our school has made as a result of finding other dedicated library media professionals, such as Matthew Winner, Sarah Wendorf, Jenny Lussier, and Stacy Ford, through Twitter.   The excitement and passion that these media specialists bring to students about their favorite books is contagious!  I can’t wait to celebrate together!  For additional ideas for World Read Aloud Day, visit Lit World.