So the week after book fair was testing and the week after that I had 2 meetings so I had to cancel a lot of classes. But the classes that did come got to play Kahoot which is an interactive trivia game. I made a quiz based on stuff we had learned in the library this year. It gets kind of rowdy playing, but hey, it was the last week of library class. THE LAST WEEK! And last Friday was also Spring Fling so the students got to eat lots of junk and play all day! This week started off with a visit from my former boss man and local meteorological celebrity, James Spann, who came to talk to the kids about being champions in life. Some of the kids (and even teachers) were star struck! It was great! Then packing up my library for the big move down the street began. So far I've packed 9 boxes and made as many trips to the dumpster. Next week my library is being taken over for testing and then after that there's two weeks of school left to pack! Where has the time gone?! One year down, twenty four to go :)This week, I spent Monday frantically trying to get some actual work done since I knew the rest of the week would be hectic due to the book fair. I managed to catalog and process all the new books I got with my $480 library enhancement money! Tuesday through Friday was my very first book fair. Scholastic definitely knows what they're doing because it was so easy to put up and take down. Everything was very organized with GREAT instructions! We brought in about $2000 so we will receive around $800 to buy new books with! I'll definitely have another book fair next year. I just have to mentally and physically recover from this one first!After a very emotionally draining few weeks, I took it easy this week. Next week is my first book fair. I am having a book fair begrudgingly, but whatever. With the kit, they send a DVD of commercials for various books that will be at the fair along with author interviews and celebrity plugs. I made this last for the whole lesson! Then we checked out books for the last time this school year! Whew! Although I still have PLENTY to do before school ends for teachers on May 31. Friday I set up the book fair and we are ready to rock next week. I also got a few books in from my purchase card money! Very exciting, but they'll have to stay unread until next school year! This week we also found out the winner of our March Madness. Drum roll please....PETE THE CAT! Boy, was I happy to see that win! Now, onto the book fair!This is the second and final week for our digital citizenship lessons. Again I used lessons found on Common Sense Media and made Prezis to go with the lesson. K-2 talked about going places safely online. This was compared to going places in real life. You stay with an adult, don't wander off to places you don't know, and don't talk to strangers. Online you always have an adult's permission, stay on sites you know are okay for kids, and only talk to friends and family you know when online. We took a virtual field trip to the San Diego Zoo (who has a GREAT webpage for kids!) which demonstrated that by using the internet, we can visit far away places without having to really go anywhere. I think they especially enjoyed the online cameras of a few of the animals at the zoo. 3-5 Talked about "Rings of Responsibility" and the digital citizenship pledge. We talked about the overall responsibility of being a patron of the internet. At the end we made a poster with "guidelines of using the internet"suggested by the students and then all the students (3rd through 5th) signed the poster as a dedication of good digital citizenship. Next week we begin book fair prep and advertising in class with the book fair being the week after that! We are also down to the last two books in our March Madness Tournament of Books! Will it be Pete the Cat or Diary of a Wimpy Kid?I have been asked by my principal to cover digital citizenship in the library with my students. Honestly, they tell us in library school this is something we should be teaching anyway, but with the lack of technology in my library, it hasn't been possible. So what I did was go to Common Sense Media which is full of great resources INCLUDING already laid out lessons on digital citizenship for K-3 and 4-6. I bumped my 3rd graders up into the same lesson as my 4-5 graders. I also just picked out certain aspects of the lessons and combined them so we could cover multiple topics without taking up 8 weeks of lessons. I then took all this and turned them into Prezis which I love way more than Powerpoints! Last week, K-2 talked about using their ABCs to find things online, with examples of online kid-friendly encyclopedias. 3-5 talked about the power of words online and cyberbullying (two lessons smashed into one). We have been dealing with some bullying in the upper grades, especially one incident in 4th grade, so on the day my 4th graders came to library, I made sure to wear my new "Kind is the new pretty" shirt from Target. A subtle reminder. Next week we will do more digital citizenship stuff with the classes I see, which won't be many between testing and a garden project 4th and 5th graders are working on.This week we kicked off our March Madness Tournament of Books! 1st through 5th grade filled out brackets voting on their favorite books out of the top 16 circulated books from this school year. 1st and 2nd filled out theirs using the top 8 picture books, and 3rd through 5th did theirs with top 8 chapter books. They will then go head-to-head at the end to see who wins! It'll be so much fun! It was even pretty enough to utilize our outdoor library space which was great! Earlier in the week the teachers got outside and planted some spinach and kale in our learning garden. Can't wait to get some of that fresh spinach!! Kindergarten did a sequencing activity with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This was to practice numbers, ordinal words, days of the week, etc. It was really fun and they did so well. I even pulled out a little of it for pre-k, and they remember all the stuff the caterpillar ate! Which is a lot! I was VERY impressed. They even remembered he built a "raccoon" (cocoon) around himself before turning into a butterfly! Sweet kiddos. We did this because the first day of spring is The Very Hungry Caterpillar Day, and it happens to be the Sunday before we come back from Spring Break so this was our last chance! I even just so happened to put up a Very Hungry Caterpillar bulletin board earlier in the week, so I just added a note about the first day of spring celebration. Happy accident! Next week is Spring Break (hallelujah!), but with over 2 months left of school, the kiddos have already exceeded our semester word goal for Accelerated Reader. Last semester they read 3,238,397 words, so I set a goal of 5,000,000 for this semester and they went over that this week. HOW AWESOME! I also added so superhero signage to my non-fiction area and applied for a grant! It's been a busy week! Break deserved!My first Read Across America as a librarian! Hooray!! Unfortunately, RAA week was also the same week as standardized testing so I only had 5 classes (out of 17) come to the library. Luckily we had 36 volunteers from around the community come to read Dr. Seuss books to classes in their classrooms! I also had a lot of decor around the school, dress up days, a "what's your favorite Dr. Seuss book?" poll outside the library and a "guess how many goldfish are in a jar" contest going to win a Dr. Seuss book. The classes I did see, we just read Seuss and talked about the who he was. My Pre-K classes were read to by an especially handsome volunteer (I use the term "volunteer" loosely in this case as he was more or less told he didn't have a choice). So even though it was unconventional, we made it work and had a lot of fun. I can't wait for next year!!We did nothing really this week for multiple reasons. 1) I had just returned from Orlando and didn't have time to prepare anything 2) After running 19.3 miles, I got a stress fracture in my foot and am in a boot and therefore don't want to stand/walk. We just read random stories and 3rd-5th went over how to put books back on the shelf in order and played a shelving game on the computer. It was pure laziness and I don't mind admitting it!This was a short week. Due to being out Monday for President's Day and me taking off Friday, it was crazy! Kindergarten watched read alouds from YouTube (a great idea when you want to read a book to a class but you don't have the book) of Duck for President, Grace for President, and My Teacher for President. Then we voted on which they felt would be the best president. I may do this lesson again in the fall when it is actually election time! First and second grade read My Teacher for President and then we made a list of reasons why their particular teacher would be a good president. There were some interesting answers (i.e. "she's cute"). Third through fifth did a Presidential crossword as a class and we used Alabama Virtual Library to find the answers. It turned out really well! I am taking this Friday and next Monday off because I am flying to Orlando to run the Glass Slipper Challenge at Disney World...the Enchanted 10k on Saturday and the Princess half marathon on Sunday. Lord, help me! |
About MeI am a first year elementary school librarian, and let me say it is QUITE the adventure! Although I've worked in public libraries on and off for 10 years, this is a horse of a different color. Bare with me as I brave the new struggles and pure joy that this career is bringing! Archives
March 2016
Categories |