Listen. Connect. Empower.

I have been coding with students for years now.  Most Decembers we spend problem solving and students love it.  I did too.  For a while.  Then I started questioning how this authentically fit in my mission to " grow readers ."  I struggled with this significantly.  When I did a collaborative coding project several years back it made sense.  Simply exploring different coding activities didn't feel so authentic and true to who I want to be as a librarian.  So, it was time to change things up.   Student work for our introductory coding lesson The pros: My brain eats up coding and this could have been a game-changing moment for me as a student if I had been introduced to coding at a young age.   This is problem solving!  This isn't taught anywhere else in our school!   This is opportunity and exposure for students!   The cons: I am abandoning reading books to students for the month to do this.   ...

It is a joy to be back in our library and have students buzzing about choosing books and checking themselves out.  Yes, they do it themselves.  In the mornings our library is open for students to pick out new books and check in with me for a book recommendation.  I am able to match readers and books while books fly off our shelves, all because of self-checkout.  Self-checkout was the best decision I made for our library. Students help each other check out Why student self-checkout?   Self checkout helps students... have greater ownership of their library and their checkouts exercise independence respect our books, policies (how many they should be taking out), and privacy Self checkout frees me up to help other students find what they want/need! The challenges Privacy - Students were seeing the account of the person before them and sometimes checking books out to them. Solution: During 1 class have students demonstrate to me how they check themselves out. A...

Here we go! Every year I like to set the tone or create a mission to drive my planning and keep me focused.  This year's ... community and learning and being together The opening weeks of our library year are dedicated to "Building a Library Community." During this time we will  Set the tone of our library as a welcoming environment Develop/review routines  Create expectations Welcoming environment Oh, how I love/hate bulletin boards!  I love a meaningful/pretty bulletin board, but I just won't give up precious time to compete with Pinterest.  When there is no volunteer to step up, I fill them with student work.  This year I filled ours with some of the promises we made to each other after reading Lebron James' I Promise.   Students wrote promises to themselves and could either take them home as bookmarks, or leave them in the bin to be hung up. (Consent is important - I don't want to hang something that they don't feel comfortable seeing on the w...

This lesson was about making a visual representation of our reading selves.  We drew, we laughed, we learned about each other as readers, and started building a reading community.  We did this on a remote day.  *This was developed in conjunction with my brilliant colleagues.* Standards:  AASL: Inquire/Share I.C.1 . Interacting with content presented by others. I decided we needed a theme to tie a disjointed year together and settled on the question:  I spent much of my summer thinking about "identity" but needed a concrete landing place for those big, abstract thoughts.  I wondered what would happen if we thought about "identity" through a reading lens. We read Reading Makes You Feel Good We practiced looking at two options and showing our choice for where we like to read by holding up that number of fingers. Next, we moved on to our directed draw. When we were done drawing, we had a big reveal.  Students were tasked with looking for someone with ...

 This year I have been investigating the question, "Who am I as a reader?" with my students in grades 1-5.  In this 1st grade lesson we do a little wondering and investigating to dig deeper into our wonders.  I partnered a picture book and Unite for Literacy . Standards AASL: Inquire/Think I.A.1  Formulating questions about a personal interest or a curricular topic We began with this read aloud I asked students to write/draw about this question. Student wonders (animals were a common theme). We shared these with each other. At the end of the class we shared what we listened to. My takeaways I can not speak highly enough about Unite for Literacy. I love how easy it is to browse.   I love how students can listen! I love that you can read/listen in languages other than English. A picture book and some book browsing feels so good to me!  I miss the physical browsing, but Unite for Literacy makes it feel *almost* like we are doing that.  Students were...

World Read Aloud Day has a long history in our school.  We typically spend the week Skyping with students from around the country (and sometimes outside the country).  It is a week of great books and connections.  And then came 2021: pandemic, snow, power outages. Introducing: Virtual World Read Aloud Day/Week! One page of our virtual document Our staff members decided that a classroom celebration would be in order this year (not a library activity).  I created a set of virtual bookshelves with staff reading books.  Staff members read a book which included an introductory video.  This is a great way for students to "visit" with a former teacher or "meet" a future teacher.  Students are accessing it this week, at their teacher's discretion.   My takeaways:  Things look different this year, but that is not going to stop us from celebrating!  I hear it through the grapevine that teachers are very appreciative of this resource and whene...

How can we see ourselves and learn about others in the books we read? To answer this question, my 3rd graders and I went on a multi-day journey about how books can be mirrors and windows.  Standards: AASL: Include/Create II.B.1 Interacting with learners who reflect a range of perspectives. Social Justice Standards: 7. Students will develop language and knowledge to accurately and respectfully describe how people (including themselves) are both similar to and different from each other and others in their identity groups. Day 1: Books as mirrors I introduced the concept of "mirror" books.  We read and made the "me too" signal when we had mirror moments like, "my best friend moved away too."  Day 2: Books as windows I introduced the concept of window books. We read and drew "windows" in the air when we had a window moment like, "they have mud for walls and I do not."   Day 3: Applying the thinking We applied our learning to the books we ha...