Listen. Connect. Empower.

This week we begin identifying what our school rules of being "Respectful, Responsible, and Safe" look like in the library. We began by discussing why people sometimes make bad choices. Answers included They are having a bad day They are mad or sad about something that happened They are hungry They got up on the wrong side of the bed Someone did something that made them upset Next we read The Snurtch by Sean Ferrell . Students loved the final spread and we talked about our "snurtches." Interesting things we decided: A "snurtch" is your "bad side" A "snurtch" is when something overtakes you Sometimes your "snurtch" is in control, sometimes it is not A "snurtch" can make the difference between a good choice and a bad choice "My dad has a really big "snurtch"" (A personal favorite of mine) Next, groups were formed to think about what being Respectful Responsible Safe...

We had our annual Dot Day celebration this year and Emily Arrow made a huge impression at our school in grades 1-3.  All grades read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and sang with Emily Arrow.  When it was time to choose a "Dot activity" the majority of 1st-3rd graders chose to set up an iPad and headphones to practice the hand motions for The Dot Song. 4th and 5th graders migrated to the Quiver app to create 3-D dots  while other students contributed to our group dot or made trading cards  that we then traded with Ingrid Mayyasi and her school.

The Book Fair is such an exciting time.  I love the energy that comes with those carts and boxes of new books.  Students are invited to shop before and after school, during their recess time and during their class time and they use ALL of those times to carefully browse and choose just the right items. My favorite part of the fair is connecting with parents.  While the timing of the fair isn't ideal (3 weeks into school this year) for setting up expectations and routines in our year, having a fair only weeks into the school year allows me to open my doors at Open House and introduce myself to parents and invite them into our library to volunteer.  At the fair I was able to connect with several volunteers from last year that had not sent in a volunteer form yet.  Some have new jobs while another is taking care of an ill family member, but this offered me an opportunity to connect with them and offer them an opportunity to come occasionally or just for Boo...

I made two changes to our library program and introduced these to 2nd-5th grade students on our first day of library. 1. Genre-fication of the fiction section In the past I found myself moving shelf to shelf with children pulling out the "funny" books or the "animal" books to show them their options. While I was more than happy to do this, I felt that I was not building capacity in students. I showed students how to locate books in the catalog, but if they only had a few minutes to locate a book and they weren't exactly sure what they wanted, our collection wasn't all that browseable. I had made an effort to put interesting books into bins and label them accordingly so certain series would be easily identifiable but my concern was for the students who wanted a book like something else they had read. Diary of a Wimpy Kid fans knew where the "Wimpy Kid shelf" was, but did they know how to find other books like them that they might enjo...

I welcomed the entire school back with one of my favorite summer reads - School's First Day of School by Adam Rex and illustrated by Christian Robinson.  I loved how the personification of the school paralleled my emotions as I approach a new year.  When we were done reading I had students choose related activities.  On large paper students completed the sentence "If I could be an inanimate object I would be..."  Some responded in writing while others drew a response. The preferred activity was the emoji response to the statement, "On the first day of school I felt..." Responding with emojis was very motivating.  I surely will revisit this again!

I learned a great deal about our library and our community this summer.  I am hoping that these revelations will better help me shape our collection and programming. For the first time, we circulated books over the summer.  I offered students with no outstanding books the opportunity to check out up to 10 books for the summer.  With a signed permission slip, these students came to see me before the end of school and we circulated a total of 254 books to 20 students this summer.  I was thrilled to have at least SOME of our books being read this summer.  I couldn't stand the thought of a beautiful collection of books being locked up for the summer while children without books live only blocks away.  We lost only a small handful of books and I would call that piece of summer a great success. My second summer success was the genre-fication of the fiction section.  (A more detailed post will follow at some point, but a brief synopsis follows here). ...

We are back to school. I have always loved the feeling of a fresh start and the possibilities of another school year. I always feel so torn in my position - I wear so many hats and am so many things to different groups of people. I love all aspects of my position but with so many pieces I find it difficult to do things well, where I can truly see their impact on my students. I have decided to make changes this year in my choices of how I spend my time. This is the year of the building of a community of readers. My time and energy will be spent on this goal, working to really make an impact on my students. This year my goal is to engage students in their reading through oral, written, and visual means to foster a love of reading and promote critical and reflective thinking. I want to establish that we are a community of readers at our school so my first task was to reflect this on the walls of the library. Over the summer I had parents send me pictures of their children "caught re...