Passive Programming Presentation at Boss Librarian's PD!

 Here is the presentation from the PD! 

Year in Review

 I won’t lie, I had big dreams for this school year. I also had to go back through my Google Photos to remember what happened when! My memory is bad these days.

 This blog post started with a month by month run down…. But that was entirely too much! I am going to try to hit the highlights from this school year. 

I held my first of many Library Pop Ups in the Commons during all lunches. These pop ups were a quick way to grab students attention with books while they were in line to pick up lunches… if they wouldn’t come to me, I took the library to them!

I did these a few times during the school year… I will be more intentional about having a set schedule for this upcoming school year. 

This is the first year I set up a Banned Books display at the Middle School and the 6th graders were INVESTED! They couldn’t believe the reasons behind why some of these books were banned. I advertised on Instagram & TikTok. 

My biggest idea that I had that got a lot of attention from others…. But not much from our students was the Pick a Genre Eyeball activity. I purchased everything at Dollar Tree. The balls were basically ping pong balls and I wrote genres on them. The idea is that a student could pick an eyeball if they needed an idea of what to read. I will do this again in October and I think it will be a bigger hit this time :-)

November and December seemed to fly by with Thanksgiving and Christmas! We came back in January ready to hit the road running.

In January, I did get to meet THE Lauren Mobley. She visited my library and we had the best time getting together and just talking all things library! 

In February, I started focusing on passive programming. I have students that WANT to come to the Media Center but don’t always want to read a book. The Make Your Own Book Heart activity was a hit and it is one that I will use year after year!

February is Black History Month and while I had a display inside the Media Center, I also created graphics for our social media and our lobby announcements to celebrate the accomplishments of those that our students may not know. I chose folks like Billy Porter, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dr. Patricia Bath, and the list goes on and on! This is one of my favorite activities to do each year. I am challenged to find new individuals for my students to look up to.

I also created Valentines for students that I felt wouldn't be celebrated (I know that sounds bad, but you know who won't be getting a teddy bear and a rose, or a box of chocolates). These were quick to make and the students seemed to like them. I just attached a small piece of candy.

March, April, and May were all a blur. At the beginning of March, I learned that I was chosen as the District Media Specialist of the Year! What a surprise! 

We also celebrated our first National Library Week AND Poetry Month. Library Week was so much fun and I may create a separate blog post for it. The students seemed to enjoy all of the activities and I think it will be even bigger next year! 

                                                                                    

I am going to end this loooooonnnnnng blog post here. It has taken me at least a month to put it all together. I don't think about it when I am at home. 

A School Librarian's Summer

This summer is different that the others.... while I have New Teacher Orientation on my calendar, along with dates for Open House and First Day of School - the future really is unknown.

By now, I should be getting excited about going back to work at the end of July, but I'm not. I can't make any plans because I have no idea what my role will be in this "new normal". Will students even be allowed to visit the Media Center?

I haven't been able to decorate my new space because it has become the staging area for Chromebook distribution. Which is totally fine. I am not upset about that at all. I guess I am just not used to having so many loose ends at this point in the summer. I have put together a resource document to share with my teachers and I will assemble "Pop by to Say Hi!" gift (microwave popcorn with a cute note attached - see image below) and that is about it.

I have been working on a Titlewave list of books that need to be added to the Media Center, so that has been fun! Moving to middle school means that most students have devices to read ebooks, so I am adding lots of them to our collection. I am also trying to figure out what needs to be added to my supply list.

Onward and upward! 

Library Google Classroom?

March 13.

The last official day in my Media Center.

When "all of this" (the way Southerners say quarantine) started, the only thing I knew for sure is that I would be running tech support for teachers, students, and parents. That is exactly what I did for the first week.

But now? Going into week 8?

I am not doing a lot of tech support. Everyone seemed to hit their stride going into week 3. During this time I have recorded a million read aloud videos and put them on my YouTube channel (all unlisted), created some assignments for different grade levels, and joined classes for Google Meet read alouds.

In my Media Center classroom, I have created only a few assignments and students seem to complete those (I have a flexible schedule) when they get bored. I just want to stay connected to my students! Especially those that came by daily, just to say hello.

Here are some screen shots of the types of things in my Media Center Google Classroom.

As you can see, I have a few topics set up and when I add "assignments" they go under these topics. Lately, I have just added links on the stream (the main page) like the one below.

I also will post Google Meet links in the Classroom for students that want to hop on and say HELLO! Some days, my Kinders just want to lay on their pillow and just watch everyone..... and I don't mind a bit! I try to do it on Mondays at 10 am and I will have teachers pop by and even my district's Coordinator of Media Services came by! 

I am not sure that you will get much participation with your Google Classroom when you don't see classes and assign grades, but I do feel like it is important to have one to let your students know that you are still there and that you are there for them!

Using Epic! to Expand Your Collection

While I have an impressive collection in my school library (it has taken three years for me to update it properly), it never fails that there is something that I don't have and need to stretch my resources.

This is where Epic comes in to save the day! Our 5th grade students must complete a Social Studies Fair project every Fall. After they chose their subject area, the teacher emailed the list to me. I had plenty of books about some of the subjects, but in others, I was sorely lacking. I was able to find the other books on Epic! Most of my teachers have their own Epic classroom, but for those that don't, I created "classes" and gave out the class code to teachers.

We are an AR school, so I have also created collections for each AR Reading Level! Students have access to so many more books because we are taking advantage of Epic in our building.

Click the link to see my SS Fair Collection -----> Social Studies Fair

PS: Epic is FREE for Educators!

Donors Choose Project #1

I have had a few folks ask about my Donors Choose project, so here goes....

My idea is that I will ask 3rd grade teachers for a list of 10 students that need the most help when it comes to reading. These are students that don't enjoy reading, can't read (we all have them) or just struggle with the idea of spending time reading a book instead of playing a video game or watching YouTube videos for hours on end.

Fast Forward to yesterday (8/30/18)... students took their STAR tests and I have identified who will be invited to join the book club. What was so surprising to me were some of the names that ranked so low. Many of the students are frequent library visitors, so I hope that they will enjoy being apart of LIT LUNCH and will improve their reading skills!

BOOK SWAP!

My goal as a school librarian is to get books into the hands of my students. Also as a school librarian, I personally buy LOTS of books and most of the time, they just collect dust on the bookcase at home.

I have new books that I know my students would love, so why not plan a BOOK SWAP?! It cost nothing to set it up and the students and teachers loved it.

I ran the idea by my Principal last week and began advertising the next day. We talked about the BOOK SWAP on our morning news show and I put posters in all the hallways. The ONLY thing I regret is not sending a small flyer home with students. I will do that next month.

I set up 3 tables in front of our cafeteria and brought about 30-45 books with me to start the swap. Our lunch periods run from 10 am until 1 pm, so many students saw the tables and were sad that they didn't bring a book to swap and asked if I would be set up on Monday! I told them that we would set up a BOOK SWAP again next month and to save up their books to trade. They were satisfied with that answer.

BOOK SWAP tables in front of the cafeteria.

Each book that left the BOOK SWAP tables had a note attached that the student visited the BOOK SWAP and that the book was theirs to keep. I did this in case any parents wondered where their kid got a "new" Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.  I printed out 33 (not sure why I chose this number?) sheets with 4 notes on each page. By the end of the SWAP, I ran out of notes, but it was during 5th-grade lunch and those students can verbalize how they got the book.

The only issue I had was with students that didn't understand the concept of the BOOK SWAP. Some brought their library books to trade for another library book - I don't think this will happen next time, but you just never know! 

Our first BOOK SWAP was a huge success and we will definitely do it again!