Children's Book Week Activities

I didn't get to plan much like previous, but we've been having fun in the library. We have read Andrew's Loose Tooth by Robert Munsch. Afterwards, each child got a paper plate (our copiers are being changed out) and on one side they wrote a story about when they lost a tooth. On the other side, they drew a picture of themselves missing a tooth. Mrs. Burn's class read Tadpole Promise and the students used the paper plates to draw the life cycle of a frog or butterfly. Ms. Beasley's first graders listened to an Elephant & Piggie book by Mo Willems and then filled in blank speaking bubbles on a preprinted sheet! Some were very interesting! Pre-k and Kinder heard Pete the Cat: Rocking in my school shoes by Eric Litwin. Next, we sang a song about Pete's four groovy buttons. Last, they worked on a color by number paper! Tomorrow we will have a Storybook Parade!

TLA Convention

I recently attended the 2013 Texas Library Association Convention. There were many sessions, authors, and book vendors to visit. I was able to hear Jack Gantos speak. He is a very entertaining speaker. I enjoyed hearing about his life, but I cannot imagine being a parent to the child he was. Starting in 5th grade, he wrote down everything. Even his parents arguments!

The First Day of School

Ah, the first day has come and gone. It was great to see returning students and a few new ones. In the library, we got started on my goals for the students. We are working on setting goals in reading. I'm sure the students were surprised to hear about this, but a few are really excited. I discussed how I set a goal of 111 books to read in one year. You could hear the shock ripple through the room! Next, I explained that I read easy books and chapter books so my goal has been easy to attain so far.

For the next few weeks the students will put their goal into writing, read from different genres, and work on reaching a goal they have set for themselves. This will be an exciting year for everyone as we strive to become life-long readers at Hodges!

Family Night

I won a grant for my campus so I will be having a Family Reading Night to work with parents and students. I used the money I was given and purchased many new books. As they've come in I have tried to read them. I am very excited about the new books and I believe the students will love them. One that I really enjoyed was If You're A Monster And You Know It by Rebecca Emberly and Pop!The Invention of Bubble Gum by Meghan McCarthy. I try to read books that involve movement or lots of laughter when I read to Pre-K and this Friday I will read If You're A Monster and You Know It. The students will have so much fun participating by stomping their paws and snapping their claws!

Next week I will be at the Texas Library Association's annual convention. I look forward to hearing about new ideas and techniques that I can bring back to my campus. I will try to blog about each session and provide links.

Reading, Reading, and more Reading

I am still working on my goal of reading 111 books this year. I am now up to 42. The only reason I have been able to read so many is that I read lots of children's books. I just received new books and have started reading! Spring break is next week and I hope to read a few chapter books such as The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan, Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, and A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly.

A Look at Our Future?

I just viewed a youtube video that really impressed me. It is about future technologies that are probably not to far off. It is sponsored by Corning. The video is about 5 minutes long but worth the time. Follow this link to be amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38

A Must Read

I just finished reading Dirty Little Secrets by Omololu. It was a great book and perfect for young adults. It is about a 16 year old girl that doesn't let anyone come over to her house because her mother is a hoarder. One day she discovers her mother is dead after finding her buried under a pile of National Geographic magazines. The ending surprised me a little. If you have time this book is worth reading.

I am also reading Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. It is an easy to read self help book. I am hoping to follow his advice and become debt free to the point that I can purchase everything with cash including future cars!

The Ongoing Challenge

I am working towards my goal of 111 in 2011. I am currently reading Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. I must say that if Tom were one of my students I would going out of my mind. That boy is so mischievous! I am also reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I must say that I am having trouble staying interested. I started the book in November and have read about half of it. I feel that I must finish because it has received so many great reviews. However, I just can't seem to get interested, but I don't like the idea of abandoning it since is so highly recommended.

I am using Goodreads to track my reading and to follow other readers. I love to find books "to read" later.

I hear so many people say they can't imagine reading anything besides an actual book. I must say I wasn't too interested in reading a book on an ereader or computer but that is changing. I now read books on my iPad frequently and it has actually been an easy adjustment. However, I do still enjoy the feel and smell of a good book.

Time to get back to reading...

Book Challenge 2011

I am planning to read books that I feel I've missed out on during my public education. I got the idea from Much Madness is Divinest Sense. My goal is to read them all before the end of the year. For now I want to read To Kill A Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and many others. As I read each book I will blog my response to the book.

Problem Solving

I recently read a blog by Doug Johnson that I believe is relevant to all students. It is a list of mini activities to teach online research skills. It is applicable to all ages. The activities include checking the forecast and predicting what to wear the next day, locate science articles that relate to the current lesson in class, or read book reviews and make recommendations. What a simple way to teach beginning research skills. As for me, this will become part of my library curriculum.

The Book Whisperer

I cannot believe how long it has been since I last wrote a post. Hopefully, as the year progresses I will get more done on this site.

My school will be doing a book study this summer and the upper grades will be reading The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. Several teachers, including myself, have already starting reading this book. I love it. She is a huge advocate of free reading and that you can increase a child's test scores without doing worksheets. I am so thrilled that many teachers on my campus will finally realize that true reading is the best way to teach reading. I am currently working with two teachers who will be using this technique next school year. I think exciting things are about to happen at my school and I can't wait to be part of it!!

My Top Ten Children's Books

1. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems

2. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman

3. Verdi by Janell Cannon

4. Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell

5. Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco

6. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

7. The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens

8. Oh, the Thinks You Can Think by Dr. Seuss

9. Wilford Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox

10. Anything by Mo Willems

Library Circulation on the Rise

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, circulation is on the rise. As our economy spirals downward, more people are returning to libraries in record numbers. Many customers are also gettting movies because they cannot afford to rent them any longer. Some libraries have had as much as a 19% increase in circulation compared to this time last year. Hopefully, this trend will continue and library budgets won't decrease.

wiki's

I am working on getting my wiki up to date. I have had the account a while but haven't really learned how to use it. It will be a work in progress for now, but I hope to learn quickly how to make it visually appealing.

Reading & Writing

An article from NCTE was discussing the issue of teens reading books. As a librarian, this is something that always concerns me. These days kids spend so much time in front of the TV or on the net that educators worry they will not be competent readers. Well, I found a web site that may help ease our fears, fanfiction.net. This site allows users to read stories or write their own. It is organized into 8 different genres. Most are short stories. The few that I previewed seem to be well written which sort of surprised me. I guess I am getting used to hearing teens talk in "IM" language!

Things in Review

Wow, it is hard to believe I haven't posted anything since January. I have my iPod and it looks just like the picture I posted. I have uploaded music and now I am working on learning about the extras it offers.

As I think back on the 23 Things I realize I am already forgetting what I learned. I plan to take time this summer and go back over the "Things" I enjoyed most. My school has a wiki that I may work on also. I created one for the library, but I'm not sure if I will keep it going since we now have one for our campus.

My iPod

Summary

I finally made it to the end! What a journey I have been on for a few months. I have enjoyed most of the assignments and feel more aware of the services the Internet has to offer. I feel more confident with my computer skills and expect to be a leader on my campus. I am going to encourage my campus to take this course as well.

I must say Animoto was by far my favorite of all. I kept going back and creating more videos. Now my daughter wants to get started. Several things that will be useful to me and my campus are wiki's, mind maps such as Gliffy, social bookmarking, and online productivity tools. It is going to take time for me to learn these new tools and become comfortable using them. I think the one assignment I had the most issues with was creating a myspace page. I just have such negative feelings about myspace. I'm sure it comes from the negative tones set by the media, so I don't know if I will keep my page.

The "things" weren't difficult and the discovery resources were easy to understand and follow. They made the assignment easier to complete. I do think it would have been helpful to meet, as a group, about halfway through the assignments. I noticed several people had not done many assignments until the holidays and several had questions or needed help. I would love to see a PFK course later that builds upon this one or that is similar. Now that I have completed this course, I will begin sharing it with my campus.

Thing 23

This "thing" is really causing me to think hard. Copyright isn't something that is always simple to understand, but I do think it is good that Creative Commons has come about. So many people create, share, edit, and remix others peoples ideas all the time. I think CC is going to finally start giving people the credit they deserve. Frequently, we borrow, change, or share others ideas without giving credit. Maybe it is out of fear of violating laws or other reasons. CC allows users to edit content and share as long as they credit the original author. I have been reading Lawrence Lessig's blog and discovered that CC comes with several attributes. I clicked on two different attributes and the page was written in layman's terms. It described what a user was allowed to do with the work and what credit must be given.

I searched for sites with CC license and I found a helpful site. http://search.creativecommons.org/# enabled me to chose from several sites items that had CC licenses. I was even able to select it to show only items that I can modify, adapt, or build upon. I chose flickr and looked for White House photos. This would be a great way for students researching American Landmarks, inventors, inventions, etc. They could import the photos into their work as a final project.

Thing 22