Library Stew

SNOW!

2012-01-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

We have been blessed this year with a VERY mild winter, even for Georgia (knock on wood) so this year my unit on SNOW is even more exciting since I don't think we will see much of the real stuff this year.

My books this year are Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner and Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart - these books go GREAT together and I love when I can read some great picture book non-ficiton to the students.

For our story time activity we make SNOW. I purchased Insta snow from Steve Spangler Science (I love this guy!) and this is where the fun begins. I talk to the kids about what real snow is made of and then I tell them that since we can't make real snow in the library that we are going to use insta snow. I talk to them about how insta snow is a chemical (sodium polyacrylate) and that it is called a polymer. We talk about how when I add liquid to this it will have a chemical reaction and change into snow (I get more in depth the older the class is). Then we experiment - I add insta snow to two clear cups - I add milk to one - which results in what I like to call Massachusetts snow - it is sticky (it is stuck in the cup) and yellow. I then add water to the other and you can see it instantly puff up into white fluffy snow (Colorado snow). The reaction of the kids is awesome! Then I tell the kids they are going to experience a chemical reaction in their hands - each student comes up to my "lab" table and I make snow in their hand (see the video above).

This is by FAR my most popular story time - I have done it with my usual story time classes (grades K-2) but also with all of 5th grade (they are studying chemical and physical changes), all of our special ed self contained classes (they love it for sensory lesson) and some 3rd and 4th grade classes. I'm exhausted, but it is such fun seeing the reaction of the students - when you can get 5th graders excited about ANYTHING, I call that a good day!

bucket of snow

I'm still crossing my fingers that this is the most "snow" I see all winter!!

Marty McGuire - a 2nd grade unit

2011-12-02T09:07:00.000-05:00

Earlier this year two second grade teachers asked me if I would be willing to take their higher level kids and do something with them, they wanted me to do something with reading and they were looking at my readers theater unit that I do with some gifted fourth graders and they wanted me to do something like that. I decided that since these groups were small I could do a book group and add extras into it. I meet with each group once a week for about 45 minutes. The first book I decided to do was Marty McGuire by Kate Messner. it was the PERFECT choice on so many levels and both the boys and the girls in the group LOVED the book - they have not stopped asking me WHEN the new books is coming out - I have a feeling I will have to have the new book - Marty McGuire Digs Worms on preorder for these guys!

Here is an outline of what I did each week with the students. I used the AWESOME discussion guide from Kate and Scholastic to guide my planning of this unit. Where it says "discussion questions" below, I used the questions from this guide. The other great thing about Scholastic is, they released this book as both a paperback and hardcover at the same time - there is no way I could have purchased 17 copies of the book in hardcover, but could do it in paperback! I assigned chapters for them to read every week, but they could always read as much as they wanted to, I had some kids finished with the book by the second week!

Marty McGuire Book Study Unit

Week one: Introduce the book and the author, look at Kate Messner’s website. Give the kids bookmarks I created.

Week two: Use discussion questions for chapter 1-3 and also read a picture book version of Princess and the Frog.

Week three: Use discussion questions for chapters 4-6, use the databases (our school subscription to World Book Kids and PebbleGo) and National Geographic site to gather information on frogs. This is where I was hoping to bring in a live frog, but catching a bull frog seemed much easier for Marty then it was for me!

Week four: Use discussion questions for chapter 7-9 and talk about improve and do an improve exercise (this website has some good improv exercises for kids). Introduce what reader’s theater is and give them their parts for the readers theater. We used a reader’s theater from the book: Fairy Tales Reader’s Theater by Margaret Allen from Creative Teaching Press we used the reader’s theater To Kiss a Frog
Week Five: Use discussion questions for chapters 10-12 and practice readers theater

Week six: Use discussion questions for chapters 13 & 14 and practice readers theater (we were hoping to do a Skype visit with author Kate Messner but we had a compatibility issue, she was so willing to connect with my students, but I couldn’t figure it out this time, going to try harder next time to come up with an activity that we can connect with Kate!

Week seven: Perform the reader’s theater to classmates and start writing, as a group, a book trailer for Marty McGuire (show examples of book trailers to them before we started).

Week eight: Create the book trailer – the students drew pictures illustrating the book and we used those illustrations plus some video and audio recording I took to create the book trailer. I created the final product this time, but might have the students try their hand at it next time.

Here are the finished book trailers:

Next up we will be doing a unit using Mr. Poppers Penguins starting in January.

Letterboxing - Library style

2011-10-27T07:53:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I attended a presentation at COMO by two of my colleagues, Suzanne Skeen and Sharon Amolo about using GPS technology to create geocache's outside the school. I loved the idea, BUT I don't have any GPS units and I really don't have a space outside that I could use for this. I have also read a few blog posts about a librarians (Shannon Miller ) this year using QR codes to create scavenger hunts throughout the library and the school, but I don't have any devices that my kids could use to read the QR codes. SO I got to thinking.... While I love technology and try to use it as much as possible, I realized recently that even low tech things can be just as engaging and create authentic learning experiences.

I thought back to this summer when we visited author Matt Tavares and his family and we went on a letterbox hunt for some letterboxes that his family had created and hidden on Marginal Way in Ogunquit. Letterboxing is a lot like GeoCaching but without having to use a GPS system - the low tech version. Someone hides a box somewhere, in the box is usually a stamp and an ink pad, a notebook and sometimes a little trinket. You can get the directions to different letterboxes at sites like this one or you can just send out the directions to friends and family who might want to go on a treasure hunt.

My second graders were still having trouble understanding how to find books in our catalog (Destiny Quest) and then writing the call number down and finding the book in the library, I thought this might be a great way to create a "scavenger hunt" to show them in a fun way how to do this.

I had some old plastic video boxes that I should have thrown out awhile ago, but just KNEW I would find something to do with them - these became my letterboxes.

I filled them with a stamp, a stamp pad and a question. I added a spine label to the spine of the boxes and a sticker asking not to remove the boxes (so far only one student has removed one and asked what it was!)When the students find the boxes from the clues I give them they get to stamp the stamp on their paper and in the box there is a question they have to answer (they write the answer on the same paper that they put their stamp on). SInce I have fairly large classes this year I had the class break up into groups of three or four to do this activity.

I created 8 letterboxes and "hid" them in the library. I put the clues on index cards and each group got a clue, when they found the letterbox and answered the question they came back to me for another clue, this way I did not have more than one group looking for the same clue at the same time. Here is an example of one of the clues that the students needed to use to find the letterbox -

CLUE:
1. Go to Destiny on the computer
2. Search for a book on Hank Aaron
3. Write down on scratch paper the call number of the book
4. Find the book in the library using the call number to guide your way. You should find a letterbox near the book. Follow the instruction on your letterbox sheet once you have found the letterbox.

I hid letterboxes in all the key areas of the library (non-fiction, biographies, fiction, everybody, magazines and reference sections.) This lesson followed my lesson on how to use Destiny and a review of call numbers and areas of the library.

I am planning on doing this a few times this year to reienforce the skill so hopefully by the time they leave second grade they will be EXPERTS at finding materials in our library.

Someday when we have devices that can read QR codes, I can see using this same lesson but adding in QR codes in the leterboxes!

Virtual Storytime with Jarrett Krosoczka

2011-10-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday some of my students were treated to a "wicked awesome" virtual story time with author Jarrett Krosoczka as he introduced his new picture book Ollie The Purple Elephant.

For most of my kindergarten students this was not only the first time they had seen a virtual visit (Jarrett did the visits every hour on the hour via his UStream channel from 9am-5pm) but also the first time they had ever seen a REAL author. We were able to interact with Jarrett by posting questions using the chat function on UStream. My kids were SOOO excited when Jarrett answered our questions "ON TV" (as one of my kids told me later).

I am sure that Jarrett was tired by the end of the day, but I can guarantee you that I will be ordering MANY copies of this book, my students were already asking to check out a copy of Ollie right after the story time.

Of course technology always doesn't work, I had a group of 2nd graders in at the noon story time and we could never connect to watch, not sure if it was on my end or the fact that there seemed to be over 100 people viewing the UStream channel at that moment, but we didn't have any problems any other time (we tuned in two other times on Tuesday).

Thanks to authors like Jarrett for taking time out of your schedules to make time for our kids and give them opportunities like this to interact with authors!

Georgia COMO 2011 Presentation

2011-10-07T10:11:00.000-04:00

Welcome new visitors to my blog from GA COMO 2011. Below is the presentation I gave at GA COMO 2011 today titled: Inviting the World into Your School Library Using Web 2.0 tools.

Inviting The World Into Your School Library on Prezi

Happy Birthday!

2011-09-27T16:21:00.000-04:00

Two of my favorite people have new books coming out TODAY!

Matt Tavares' new book, Over The River And Through The Wood is a beautiful picture book of the song we all know, Matt also included some background information on the song that I didn't know about! I just love the book trailer!

Laurel Snyder's new book, Bigger Than a Bread Box is about divorce, Bruce Springsteen songs, Baltimore, Atlanta and a magic bread box. It is SUCH a great book, and I am not just saying that because she is a friend and because at her book party on Friday night at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur she is serving TastyCakes (butterscotch krimpets - YUM!) I gave the book to a 5th grader on Friday, she read the book this weekend and had the BIGGEST smile on her face Monday morning when she came in to tell me she loved it - she keep stopping me in the halls telling me more about what she liked about it!

There is also a slew of other great books out today - check out a list and book trailers at Kid Lit Frenzy.

Who says kids books are dead???

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

2011-09-20T16:28:00.001-04:00

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

Check out the animoto video of all the FUN we had in the Media Center last week celebrating DOT DAY!

Time flies when your having fun...

2011-09-12T22:40:00.000-04:00

I can't believe we are starting week six of the school year - it seems like it should only be week two or three!

I have been busy in the media center and here are a few things we've been working on:

I've been working with all five 5th grade classes on a big civil war research/technology project - we are almost done with the research and are ready to get going on our multimedia projects and get our Wiki up and running.

I am having my 2nd graders learn a little bit about the world of Roal Dahl and one of my 2nd grade classes decorated peaches to Follow that Peach - we have sent our decorated peaches to Van Meter, Iowa as part of a multi school project - the students are so excited to see where their peaches are going! Here is a blog that the schools participating will be posting to.

Today we started celebrating Dot Day (which is actually on Thursday). I have loved the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds for years, so when I heard about Dot Day from my friends Shannon Miller and John Schu I knew I had to do something. Today I showed my 3rd grade technology class the TumbleBook of The Dot then the kids made their own Dots using the program KidPix. Tomorrow I am going to show my Kindergarten classes the TumbleBook and I am also going to read them the book New York's Bravest by Mary Pope Osborne. We are going to talk about heroes and how people leave their mark on the world. Then the kids will create their own dot with paint and crayons and markers.
And finally, today I had my first Club Click meeting. Shannon Miller and Diane Cordell started Club Click last year at Shannon's school Van Meter - well a bunch of us joined in on the fun this year and started clubs in our schools. My club is an after school club for fourth and fifth graders. We will learn about digital photography, share photographs with the other schools and learn how to use digital photography to tell a story. The kids were very excited today and they started taking photographs of our school to introduce our school to the other members of Club Click.

I also had a few costumes already this year - the first one was for a little video I created for an in-service meeting of media specialist for our county - I am SUPER LIBRARIAN and my tag line for the video was 'Even Super Heroes Need Capes" this was in reference to the fact that we all need mentors and a PLN (personal learning network) to rely on as we try to be the best librarians/media specialists we can be!

And my next costume was for a contest author Jarrett Krosozka (and fellow Worcester, MA native!) was holding for the book release of the latest Lunch Lady book - Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco. Even if I didn't win, it was worth it to see my 13 yr old daughter absolutely MORTIFIED by me dressing up in the middle of downtown Atlanta (she was my photographer)! I kept telling her it could have been worse and I could have worn the cape too!

It's been a busy first six weeks and a great, if not hectic, start to our year!

Happy New School Year

2011-08-15T17:44:00.000-04:00

School actually began a week ago here in my neck of the woods, and I have about five blog posts in my head, but haven't had a chance to actually sit long enough to write them out - my own three kids started school last week also and it has been a week filled with forms to fill out, checks to be written and the start of football, dance and baseball tryouts - whew - what a week!

This year my media center schedule looks a lot different than in years past- I am teaching a fifth grade technology special (basically teachers planning period) everyday and teaching a third grade technology special two days a week. I scheduled all of kindergarten, first and second grade to come in once every other week for story time. With the success of my readers theater collaboration with our fourth grade gifted teacher, I have had two second grade teachers ask if I can collaborate with them with their gifted students twice a week. I am still working with the fourth grade gifted teacher with a reader's theater unit, only this year instead of meeting with two small groups once a week I will be meeting with one very LARGE group once a week. After I put my schedule down on paper, I realized I have very little flexible time to meet with classes for projects and special things. I am hoping that as the year goes on I will realize my schedule isn't as packed as it seems and I can fit in more special collaborations, but time will tell.

Summer Reading Bulletin Board, filled with postcard book reviews sent in by students this summer

I am excited to get a club click going in my school this year. This will be an after school digital photography club that I will be collaborating with Shannon Miller at Van Meter School in Iowa, John Schumacher at Brook Forest Elementary in Illinois, Jen Malphy at Kickapoo School in Wisconsin and the FABULOUS Diane Cordell, a retired media specialist and amazing photographer in New York. Shannon and Diane started the club last year and I am excited to see what this year will bring with all of us collaborating! I am also excited to have a fifth grade lunch book club (using books for our counties Reader's Rally list) and a fourth grade Penny Dreadful lunch book club (with books that I acquired last year from a Donors Choose grant).

I have also been looking at the possibility of acquiring some Nooks in our library. I have been working with the Principal trying to figure out the logistics and the funding and am hoping ((fingers crossed)) that we can get these in here sometime this fall.

I do admit, 5am comes AWFULLY early and I really am missing the somewhat lazy days of summer, but I think this is going to be a great year and I can't wait to see what exciting things happen here in the media center this year!

My already out of control desk

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Have you visited the library this summer??

2011-07-18T18:04:00.000-04:00

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Have you visited the library this summer??: "Can you believe that 3 weeks from today we will all be back at school?? I have had a great summer, but it did go by fast! If you are sending..."

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Summer Road Trip part 1

2011-07-11T15:30:00.000-04:00

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Summer Road Trip part 1: "I am BACK! I was hoping to blog while I was on my road trip, but Internet connection issues made it hard for me to post. So here is my wra..."

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Road Trip!

2011-06-21T12:45:00.001-04:00

I am *trying* to blog at least once a week on the blog I set up for my summer reading program at school - check out my latest blog post -

Rock Springs Library Media Center: Road Trip!: "As most of you know, I am from Massachusetts and my family still lives there, so every summer I pack up my kids and we take a LONG drive to..."

It has been a busy summer of teaching, dancing and car trouble - hard to believe only 6 1/2 weeks until I start work "officially" for the 2011-2012 school year!

Welcome GCPS Digital Conference Attendees

2011-06-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Below is the link to the Prezi presentation that I gave today at the GCPS Digital Conference.

21st Century Classroom Prezi

If you have any questions or comments about the presentation please feel free to comment here.

Thanks for stopping by!

GCPS Leadership Presentation

2011-06-09T09:22:00.002-04:00

Welcome! If you have found my blog because you were involved in the GCPS Leadership conference, below is our presentation Reader's Theater With a Technology Twist.

GCPS Presentation Reader�s Th...

More PowerPoint presentations from kathy Schmidt

This is just awesome!

2011-06-04T12:55:00.002-04:00

If you have followed my blog at all you know I LOVE to dress up, to me it really is one of the best parts of being in elementary school! Here is a blog of a dad who took it a bit farther - he dressed up everyday (so far) this school year to wave at the high school bus (which his son is riding on) as it goes past his house. Read his blog here and then make sure you watch the interview a local tv station did about him below (thanks to Mr. Schu for pointing me to this blog)

I am already thinking of what I can do with this - the high school bus doesn't go down my street (and I really think my oldest son would run away if I did this) but what could I do at school (it is my youngest son's last year at my schools, after all!) The wheels are turning - but that is a LOT of costumes... stay tuned!

The End

2011-05-28T11:49:00.004-04:00

Well another school year, my 7th as a media specialist and my 4th at my current school, has come to an end. I always have mixed feeling with the end of the school year - happy that I have a break from the alarm clocking waking me up at 5am to sadness seeing students leave our school either on their way to middle school or leaving due to a move. I am also taking stock in what happened this school year and what I can do better next year - first up was cleaning my office - I really need to get more ORGANIZED next year! I will be working on a wrap up report next week to get a handle on what we DID do in the media center this year and it will help me as I plan for next year.

I also have been busy talking about summer reading to my students. I have started a blog for the students to follow this summer, my goal is to post at least twice a week... we'll see how that goes. My hope is that I have some students who do log on and take a look, I have spent the year introducing small pockets of students to things like blogs and podcasts and I am hoping to expand that next year... baby steps sometimes work best in a VERY large school setting, but sometimes I am just too impatient for these baby steps to happen - I want ALL my students blogging and podcasting and sharing, but like I said, baby steps....

Speaking of summer reading, check out my friends (and FABULOUS librarians) Shannon Miller and John Schu's summer reading project - it will KNOCK your socks off (and I am wondering if I can enter a picture in their contest, even though I am not one of my students??)

Next week we will have end of the school year meetings and I will be preparing my web 2.0 course that I am teaching to some media specialists and technology specialists from my county in early June. I will also be tap dancing - our recital is in TWO weeks - YIKES!

Happy summer to those of you who have ended school and happy last days to those of you who are still dealing with the CRAZINESS of the end of the year.

Spring has blown right by me

2011-05-12T07:32:00.000-04:00

We have TWELVE days of school left - yep 12 - where did this year go?? And where has spring gone?? Things have been so busy here since spring break that many times I have said - Oh I need to blog about that and then 3, 4 days later I just gave up finding the time to blog about it, so here are some high lights of what we've been up to here in the media center.

Poetry Month
I wrote about Poem in your pocket day, but we also had a great Poetry Cafe in the Media Center - due to state testing we had some scheduling glitches in getting a lot of classes to come in and share their poems, but the classes that did get in here had a great time sharing poems they wrote and some of their favorite poems by others - my favorite was the first grade class that shared the Kentucky fight song as their group poem (can you tell where their teacher went to school!).

Inventory
Not very exciting, but necessary. We were lucky that it did not take too long and in the end we were only missing about 6 items - not bad for a library with over 18,000 items!

Author visits
For Children's Book Week we celebrated by having two authors visit us.
Monday we had my friend Laurel Snyder - she was GREAT - I wish more of my teachers could have listened to her, she had some great tips for my kids in their writing and was very inspiring - and FUNNY!! The best compliment to a program that you run is when you have a parent come up to you and say "Johnny came home and couldn't stop talking about the author visit"
Tuesday we had Eric Litwin, author of Pete the Cat. He was SOO FUN! His program had guitars and harmonicas and storytelling and just a lot of FUN.

Both is these authors have some AWESOME stuff coming up and if you are local, you MUST get them booked for your school for next year - I really think both of these people are going to be BIG (as in, I knew them when kind of big...)

Summer Reading

I have started to talk to students about summer reading - I am doing a program that I have done for the past three years - basically I help the kids sign up for our local library's summer reading program and I also encourage them to participate in the Barnes & Noble program (and get a FREE BOOK) and in the Scholastic Summer Challenge website. I also ask them to send me a postcard to tell me what they are reading this summer. At the beginning of school in August I display the postcards on the bulletin board outside the media center. Last year I had a great response (even getting a postcard from Korea!) and hope that this years is even bigger.

I am also starting another blog - I have tried this before and things get so busy in the summer at home that I forget to post to it (gee, same things happens here too) but I really want this to work, so I am going to try and blog about different books and tie the books to some things and places I am going this summer. I am going to try and come up with a schedule 0 like every Monday I blog about picture book, every Wednesday I blog about a chapter book (grade 3-5) and then maybe a picture on Friday - I'm still trying to figure it all out, but I better figure it out quick, I only have 12 days left!!

Tomorrow is our 4th annual used book sale (here is a story from the first sale we held) - I am so excited, I have been sorting books all week and we have some great ones to sell - I am hoping we make about $500 to donate to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

And finally, the weekend is almost here and I get to see one of my FAVORITE people this weekend - yep, Jon Bon Jovi and I will be breathing the same air on Saturday night - I just wish my seats were closer, but oh well, it will be a great ending to a VERY hectic week here!

Poem in Your Pocket Day

2011-04-18T07:33:00.006-04:00

Poem in Your Pocket day was last Thursday and I celebrated it with some pretty AWESOME folks from around the country via Skype!

First up, one of my first grade classes Skyped with a kindergarten class at Van Meter school in Van Meter, IA where the FABULOUS Shannon Miller is the media specialist. My kids shared their poems and her kindergartners shared a poem all together that they had learned.

Next up, one of my fifth grade classes Skyped with a group of students and teachers and even the Principal at Brook Forest school in Oakbrook, IL where Mr. Schu is the media specialist (and also the coordinator of this FABULOUS day). My students shared their poems and Mr. Schu had students and teachers share poems with us. Our favorite was when his principal shared a poem about picking your nose with us!!

My fourth grade gifted students (who have Skyped with me before) got to share poems with 4th grade students at Kickapoo School in Kickapoo, WI. Mrs. Malphy, the media specialist, even shared a great poem about rocks making good pets!

My last Skype of the day was with Mr. Gagnon's 4th graders in NH and one of my kindergarten classes. Of course I couldn't help but start off our Skype visit with a little Red Sox talk, but wouldn't you know it, one of his students, sitting front and center was a Yankee fan! The 4th graders shared their poetry with us and I had two of my kindergarten students share poems that they had written THEMSELVES.

It was an awesome day and one totally worth all the hoops I have jumped through this year in order to be able to use this resource. In my county, Skype is not readily available to all teachers and I went through MANY hoops and begging and pleading to be able to use it. Hopefully projects like this will show the people in my county what a great resource Skype (and/or some kind of video conference software) can be.

Check out my video with some pictures of the day and read about the celebration at Mr. Schu & Mrs. Miller's blog and at Mrs. Malphy's smilebox presentation.

Connecting with Skype

2011-03-31T10:58:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I finished up my first school to school collaboration project (Flat Stanley Project) with a Skype visit between Mrs. Archibald's first grade class and Mrs. Dittman's first graders from Kickapoo Area School in WI.

After a few technical glitches, the Skype visit went off without a hitch! My kids loved to hear from the Kickapoo students about the pool at their school and their students were interested in finding out more about the skeleton that resides in our science lab. The teachers and students in Wisconsin all had a good laugh when I told them it had been a little chilly here this week - it has been in the high 50's here!

This whole project has been an AWESOME collaboration between the four of us (me, my first grade teacher Mrs. Archibald, Jen Malphy, the librarian at Kickapoo school district and her first grade teacher Mrs. Dittman.) We were able to pull in all kinds of learning, from writing to geography and even science when we talked about the weather here and the weather in Wisconsin. I can't wait to do more school to school collaborations!

Some pictures of our Skype visit yesterday

WILD Storytime

2011-03-27T19:22:00.009-04:00

This week I used the excuse of wanting my students to use the website Build Your Wild Self (a website from the NY Zoos and Aquarium) to read one of my all time favorite books to them - Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I think I love this book because I have so many memories of my parents reading me this book when I was a child and because I LOVE reading it out loud - I have great voices for the lines "And they Gnashed Their Terrible Teeth and they rolled their terrible eyes and they showed their terrible claws" Since this classic is also fairly short, I also read Wild About Books by Judy Sierra and illustrated by Marc Brown - I love it when I have a students make the connection of Marc Brown being the author/illustrator of the Arthur books!

The best part of this story time though, is having my students use the website Build Your Wild Self. The kids are LOVING this - basically you can choose all kinds of different animal parts to add to your boy or girl avatar. When the kids are finished, they can print out their wild thing, which comes with an explanation of what animal parts they added to their wild thing. I have encouraged the teachers to then take these back to their classroom to use with their kids in their writing workshops. Some of my kindergarten students are printing these out and taking them to art where the art teacher is working on having the kids make wild things out of different materials.

Another WILD thing that happened last week - I was named Media Specialist of the Year for Gwinnett County (the LARGE county I work in). I was totally surprised when my Principal, a few people from our district media office and my husband came charging into the media center on Wednesday yelling CONGRATULATIONS! What a great honor!

My Principal congratulating me after the ambush.

Flat Stanley Connections

2011-03-20T19:57:00.007-04:00

A few weeks ago someone on Twitter mentioned doing a Flat Stanley project with their own kids - one of the teachers I used to teach with at another school used to do a Flat Stanley project every year and the kids loved it. I started thinking about how I could use some web 2.0 tools to do a Flat Stanley project with a twist. I was thinking out loud on twitter (I do that a lot) and another media specialist that I follow, Jennifer (@Jmalphy on twitter) from Wisconsin responded to me that she would love to do something. So a few emails later we had a plan - we would each choose a first grade class to work with. We would read some Flat Stanley books with them and have the students color their own Flat Stanley. We both scanned in our students Stanley's and put them up on a Picasa web album so that we could each access the Flat Stanley's to print them out and not have our tech. people screaming at us for emailing HUGE files to each other.

Before I gave my students the Flat Stanley's from our friends in Wisconsin, I showed them on a Google map WHERE Wisconsin is, how far away from Georgia it is and what the difference in our weather is (I think the day I showed them the high in WI was 40 and our high was 65!). Once I gave them to the students they went back to their class and brainstormed where they should take pictures of Stanley in our school to share with our new friends. Our school is VERY different from Jennifer's school in Wisconsin, for one her school is K-12 and about 450 students and our school is K-5 and about 950 students!

The class took their Flat Stanley's and a camera around the school for a week. After they took pictures, we had a writing session where the students, their teacher, Mrs. Archibald and I helped them to caption the pictures they took. We then did something pretty cool, we put the photos up on the Mimio board and we had the kids write on the picture who was in the picture. We were then able to save the pictures as jpegs to add to our Animoto video. It added another special touch to our project.

I took one of the Flat Stanley's to Chicago with me and he seemed to have a great time at the Follett Software user conference and at the ST. Patrick's day Parade with me!

Our finished product was an Animoto video that I produced. I just finished it tonight and sent it on to Jennifer in Wisconsin. She will be sending to us in a week or so a Smilebox presentation of her students' experience with our Flat Stanley's. My students can't WAIT to see where their Flat Stanley's went!

This was my first experience of collaborating with another school and with a teacher in my building and it was such a GREAT experience. I can't wait to do more collaborating between my school and other schools near and far. Next up, hopefully a Skype visit with our new friends in Wisconsin!

Hello from Chicago!

2011-03-10T06:39:00.005-05:00

I am in Chicago for the first Follett Software User Conference. You may remember the CHEESY video I made which won me a full scholasrship to this conference. I am so glad I have the ability to be cheesy!

The conference started yesterday afternoon with some round tables. I was in one on student engagement. It is always so great for me to hear what other schools/libraries in other parts of the country (and in this case the world since there were two people from Canada in our session) are doing. It also makes me feel SOOO thankful for what I have in my school.

The Follett people also really know how to make you feel welcome. They had a great opening reception last night with a local arts high school jazz band and free drinks and food. I am really looking forward to today's sessions and to meet some people I have been getting to know on Twitter (@MrSchuReads & @shannonmmiller ).

I will leave you with a picture of Flat Stanley in Chicago. I am working on a project with one of my first grade classes and a first grade class from Viola, WI (@jmalphy ). I will blog more about the project when we are done, but so far my kids are LOVING it! Here is what Jennifer has to say about our project so far on her blog.

Read Across America Day Celebration

2011-03-06T19:27:00.002-05:00

Because of a state writing test that our fifth grade students had to take on Wednesday, we moved our Read Across America celebration to Friday, which is actually a great day to do such celebrations, teachers are much more receptive to doing special things on Fridays!

Our reading specialist arranged to have books given to each teacher for their classroom and a guest reader to visit each classroom. Some of the guest readers included people from inside our school community (Principal, Assistant Principals, technology specialist etc..) and people from outside our school. I arranged to have the mascot from our local minor league baseball team, the Gwinnett Braves and a local tv weather man (Steve Milone from Fox 5) come and participate in our reading celebration. A tradition I started when I worked at St. John Neumann continued again this year, having the TEACHERS dress like a book character. We had some great ones, Pippi Longstocking, Captain Underpants and of course the Cat in the Hat. I gave all the teachers who participated a $10 gift certificate to our book fair (which was ending on Friday). I had been working on my costume ever since I saw the 360 theater production of Peter Pan in Atlanta, I was Tinker Bell and my costume included a light up skirt and lights in my hair - it was FABULOUS! We also had the kids participate by having crazy hair day. The students were encouraged to bring in $1 and they could wear their hair as CRAZY as they could get it. The proceeds from crazy hair day go toward our literacy team and purchasing new books for our book room.

Here is a short video of some of the fun we had on Friday!

Celebrating Black History Month

2011-02-18T14:20:00.003-05:00

In honor of Black History month, my story time this week is all about JAZZ - jazz music that is.

I read one of my favorite books about the subject, Lookin for Bird in the Big City by Robert Burleigh. I love reading this book because of the rhythm of the words as you read it. The book is about what *MIGHT* have happened when Miles Davis came to New York City to find and play jazz with his idol, Charlie "Bird" Parker.

After we read the book I play parts of an episode of Reading Rainbow - Hip Cat by Jonathan London. The books is read by the FABULOUS Ann Duquesnay, I don't think I could do this book justice after hearing her read it! If you are lucky enough to have access to Discovery Education streaming video you can download the episode from there (which is what I did). The kids love the music and it is a great introduction to jazz music.

Another thing I did this week for Black History month was with third grade, we did a webquest on Frederick Douglas. You can access the webquest here, but the links are specific to some databases that my school has access to as part of Galileo (our state database portal). I have done quite a few of these webquests with third grade in the past few weeks and they are great for two reasons, one is that they get to learn about the different databases that our school has available and how to naviagte them and two, they learn some facts about the person we are researching (the people are all part of the third grade social studies curriculum). You can take a look at some of the other webquests I created here, but realize that many of the live links will not work unless you are part of my school district.

I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend, it is 70 degrees here in Atlanta today - not bad weather for February!!

Chinese New Year

2011-02-08T07:37:00.006-05:00

Last week and this week we are celebrating Chinese New Year in the media center. Some year I am going to get brave enough and attempt to make a dragon head - but not this year! This year we are reading two books, Grace Lin's Bringing In The New Year and Janet Wong's This Next New Year. after we read the books we are making Chinese lanterns. I have done this before with kindergarten and first grade, but for some reason I didn't remember the kids having as much trouble following the directions as they have this year. I do think art projects like this are great lessons in following directions. My teachers really appreciate it when I do things like this, to reinforce the skills they are trying to teach in their classrooms.

To make the lanterns I printed out this template, I cut off the directions part of the template and enlarged just the template onto an 8-1/2x11 piece of red paper. I hand these out to the kids and they follow me step by step as we create the lantern. I think with my kindergarten students it is the following directions part that is making it difficult. My first and second graders are having a much better time creating the lanterns.
According to Grace Lin, this year, the year of the rabbit "should be a should be a gentler and smoother one" - I sure hope Grace is right!

First Skype Author Visit

2011-02-01T07:26:00.007-05:00

Last week after much wrangling with my county to allow us to do this, we had our first Skype visit with author Melissa Stewart.

I first learned about Melissa last year from Twitter - one day I tweeted about doing a reader's theater project and she tweeted back to me to check out her website, she had some reader's theater scripts on there. As it turned out, I had just ordered her books for the library that she had scripts for! I used the scripts with my class, we created a slide show/podcast with the reader's theater, which I put up on this blog and Melissa saw it. She linked to it on her blog and it made my kids DAY - I mean, how COOL to have an author put your work on her blog!!! So, Melissa and I talked about a school visit (she wasn't heading to Georgia anytime soon) and she suggested a Skype visit. Great idea, I thought, until I had to deal with my county telling me it wasn't possible.

So fast forward to this school year and I was determined to make it happen! With the help of my district media coordinator, we convinced the county technology department to let me do this. Originally they wanted me to use a different software to conduct the visit, but ended up letting me use Skype (but I have been told that any future virtual author visits need to use the other software). It helped that Melissa was on board no matter what software we had to use for the visit - and that made it so much less stressful for me to know that she was willing to work with me on this.

So then FINALLY last week was the day. I had my two reader's theater classes in the media center for the visit (about 28 students). The students had written questions the week before when we met and we had talked about what is an appropriate question to ask and what is not (not asking How old are you but maybe ask When did you start writing instead..). My partner in crime for this class - the 4th grade gifted teacher Mrs. Zawacki - typed the questions up and made copies for the whole class and we highlighted the questions WE thought were the most important to ask her. I had done a test Skype with Melissa earlier in the day and we had determined that we would mostly have the kids ask questions to her during the visit. I think the visit went FABULOUS and the kids were SOOO excited about the while thing. Most exciting for Janet and I was the advice that Melissa gave to our students about writing a reader's theater, since our students will be writing their own as our next unit. The students blogged about it after and you can read their reflections here and here.

I can't wait to do this again, I think having a smaller group (under 30 kids) works out best and definitely having a group write questions before speeds things along and makes for a better visit (I think this applies for any author visit!) I also think that since we have spent SOO much time with Melissa's books that it really meant more to the students than if we had a Skype visit with an author they were not as familiar with. I can totally see doing this again, maybe with my 4th grade book group or maybe with another class that has done an author study on a particular author.

Here is author/teacher Kate Messner's great article on author Skype visits to get you started.

Tough Times

2011-01-30T15:54:00.003-05:00

These are tough times in education - I know that phrase has been used for the past few years, but this week that phrase really hit home here in my world.

Galileo, our state database system is being threatened. Our new state education superintendent Dr. John Barge left if off the new budget proposal. The state DOE stated that while it is useful it is not necessary.

I have my students use Galileo databases on a daily basis (example here ) and I cannot imagine not having access to resources like this for my students. Martha Powell, a Georgia media specialist has a great letter up on the GLMA blog about WHY we need resources like this in our schools.

In my own school this week budgets were again cut. The good news is I will have a job as a library media specialist at my current school and I will still have a full time clerk. The bad news is we are having to do more with less staff and this includes me teaching specials next year and I am sure my clerk will be doing many things not related to helping run the library. I am not teaching specials all day, but it does cut into time when I could be collaboratively planning lessons with teachers. I am teaching a 5th grade special this year with the technology person at our school and I have seen that the 5th grade teachers have not been collaborating on many lessons or projects with me this year. A 5th grade teacher told me it was because she figured her kids were getting "what they needed" from me during the special. While, I am teaching research and technology skills during the special class, I still think it means more to the students when both the classroom teacher and I collaborate together.

I think times will get better and I am VERY fortunate to be in a school system that does value the role of the library and having a full time certified librarian in the library. I think in the mean time, we need to roll up our sleeves and do whatever is needed to help our students be as successful as they can be - I mean, isn't that what it is all about - the kids. Sometimes I think some people forget that.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day Crayon Story Time

2011-01-13T11:03:00.006-05:00

For my first story time of the year I searched for something unique to tie into Martin Luther King Day (which we celebrate on Monday - YAY another day off of school - not!) and I found this lesson plan (on an art teacher website, no less!)

I decided to use mix the lesson up a little bit. First, I showed the students the two books I was going to read to them - Martin's Big Words, The life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Doreen Rappaport (you can read any book about MLK, this just happens to be my favorite) and The Crayon Box That Talked by Shane Derolf (we do not have this title in the media center, but I did have a WORN OUT paperback copy that I bought through a Scholastic book order when my oldest was in kindergarten, see above picture) and I told the students to think about WHY I was reading both of these books, I told them that they went together and they had to figure out why. I read the books then we had a discussion about how the books are similar (and even my kindergarten students got it!)

After I read the stories we went to the tables and each student colored their own crayon. I used this crayon pattern, but in the interest of saving paper, I reduced the size so that two crayons fit on one piece of paper. For the K & first graders I had them draw a picture of themselves in the middle of the crayon. For the second grade students they had to write 4 things that make them unique in the middle of the crayon. After they were done I glued the crayons into a class crayon box. As usual, I over thought this and making the crayon boxes was more of a project than I thought it would be (especially since I am art challenged!).

It was a fun project and I think really helped to convey Dr. Kings message of love to the kids.

MLK day bulletin board

Snowpocalypse 2011- Atlanta style

2011-01-13T10:23:00.009-05:00

I am currently typing this in my jammies at my kitchen table - WHY you ask am I not at work today..

We are on day FOUR of snowpocalypse 2011 here in Atlanta. ^The picture above was taken yesterday in my neighborhood. It seems to be a little better today, but since the Atlanta area does not seem to own any plows or sand trucks, we just have to wait for it to melt - which is a little hard when the temperatures seem to be staying below freezing. I have not left my neighborhood since Sunday, but I am determined to brave the ice and make it out of my neighborhood today! The kids had a great time playing in the snow the first two days, but yesterday I started hearing "I'm bored" I'm cold" I'm sick of playing in the snow" and the best was from my daughter "I hope we have school tomorrow". After two weeks of Christmas break togetherness and now this, I think we have officially had TOO MUCH family time. Unfortunatly my husband was not part of the family togetherness, he works for a local tv station and they were on "disaster" mode this week. He left our house Sunday night and he finally got to come home last night for a while before going back into the station for his "normal" shift. The news must go on!

Next week I start my annual SNOW unit in the media center, where we read snow stories and I "make" it snow in the media center - it is ALWAYS a big hit, but this year I am wondering since the students have seen so much of the real stuff if it will be as big of a hit?

I am sad that I had all kinds of things planned for this week - week two of my Martin Luther King story time (post of that to come), research with some classes, week two of my Animoto unit with 5th grade - now I have to adjust my plans and go on. I did get to read some books and catch up on some laundry, but as my thirteen year old daughter said "I'm all done with this snow now" I have to agree

Some pictures from my snow days

Here is hoping that we get some melting going on today!!

Happy Half Year!

2011-01-05T07:17:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know it is a new year, but for those of us in the school system (at least here in Georgia) it is half-way through our school year. While I HATE starting school in early August, I do like that our half way point starts off the New Year. I have been spending the past few days trying to catch up on all that I *thought* I would do over our two week break (and didn't) and reflecting on what I've done this year and what I still have to do.

what I've done:
* started a new IMPROVED Reading Raptors program (my school wide reading program) - I like the way this program is going, although I didn't realize how much WORK it would be for me to keep up with the reading logs and prizes - I have a few tweeks for next year, but I think I FINALLY have something I am happy with.

*brought back the weekly reference question - while I thought I would have a lot more kids participating online, I am happy with the number of kids participating and researching using BOOKS here in our library

* started the Penny Dreadful 4th grade book club. This has been SOO much more than I thought it would be. I had more kids sign up then I could take, the kids who I did take into the book club are excited and having some AWESOME conversations about books. And the most exciting thing - right before Christmas my Donors Choose project was fully funded so I am ANXIOUSLY awaiting 3 sets of books for our club- this will also allow me to add another day to the club - YAY!

* Taught the first 9 weeks of the 5th grade technology special, doing projects on Galileo, PowerPoint, digital cameras and digital photography

* Did numerous story times for grades K-2

* started year two of my collaboration with a 4th grade teacher on our reader's theater project - this year we have added blogging to the mix!

* Presented at GA COMO and at my local districts professional development day

* Ordered LOTS of new books (which I am also anxiously awaiting for)

* and lest not forget running a pretty successful book fair and a helping coordinate a VERY successful school wide literacy night

* I won a scholarship to the Follett User Conference in Chicago in March (with the CHEESIEST video ever made)

* and oh yeah, I was named Teacher of the Year at my school (which I STILL can't believe!)

I feel like I still have SOO much I want to do these next 90 days. I have Dr. Seuss day projects to get going on, a 5th grade oral history project I am trying to get off the ground with a 5th grade teacher, poetry cafe, two author visits, another book fair to run and hopefully lots more teacher collaboration. The other thing I would like to do more of is blog - I seem to have this goal every year and every year I start out strong, but then life gets to me... maybe if I had an iPad to blog on ((dreaming..dreaming..))

Happy New Year!

Oh yeah - if you are in the Atlanta area this Saturday night (1/8/11) and you LOVE kidlit - stop by the first (of hopefully many) Atlanta kidlit drink night - 6pm at the Square Pub in Decatur - I am planning on being there with the lovely and talented Laurel Snyder - it should be a FUN night!

The Penny Dreadful Lunch Bunch Book Club

2010-12-08T12:38:00.004-05:00

My friend and Atlanta author, Laurel Snyder has a new book out, Penny Dreadful and to go along with her book she has started a book club - not just any book club but a book club where the participants will read books from a list that "Penny" & Laurel have come up with. There are some great books on the list, many are classics (Ballet Shoes) and many are newer titles, destined to be classics (The Penderwicks).

I wanted to find a way to have some of my students participate in this so I came up with The 4th grade Penny Dreadful Lunch Bunch Book Club. I went into the six fourth grade classes we have here at my school and talked about the program - that we would all read a book from the Penny list (all read the same book), meet once a week at lunchtime and eat lunch in the media center and discuss the book. I was thinking I would have 5 or 6 kids want to participate - I had a HUGE response - so big that I realized that a big group like that would not work. SO I choose 12 students out of the responses as the first group. I have kept the names of the other students and I will choose 12 more after the New Year to be part of the next group.

I had chosen to read The Penderwick's as our first book because 1. I love the book and 2. I had seven copies of the book. The problem was, I had seven copies of the book and 12 students participating... So plan b was I would choose two different books to read. I had 6 copies of Because of Winn Dixie (another favorite of mine) so I decided that it would be the second book we would read. At the first meeting of our lunch bunch book club I talked about the club and how it would work and I divided up the students into two groups and handed out the books. We have met twice since that first meeting and the club is even better than I imagined it would be. The kids are having a great time discussing the books and I have been pleasantly surprised at how excited the students are to talk about the books! Because we are meeting every week, I ask the students to read to a certain chapter so we can all discuss the book up to that point. This week my Because of Winn Dixie group surprised me and all of them had finished the book!

The only downside to this group has been that we have had to divide into two groups. I really want to try and get at least twelve copies of each book that we read so the whole group can read one book and they can all participate in the discussion together.

As part of my quest to get enough books, I have created a project on DonorsChoose.org. If you need a tax deduction before the end of 2010 or just want to donate to our project we would be SOO appreciative! Here is the link to my DonorsChoose project. Take a look at the rest of the site, there are some GREAT projects out there that teachers are trying to get funded. I donated to a project at the high school in my hometown and I want to donate to a few more projects as part of my holiday donations.

Speaking of the Holidays, Hanukkah is almost over (last night is tonight) and Christmas is just around the corner - and more importantly for me, winter break is only seven school days away - two weeks where my alarm will not go off at 5 am, I am SOO looking forward to it!

Veteran's Day

2010-11-10T12:48:00.006-05:00

This week is book fair and all the craziness that comes with it, but last week and next week I am reading a story for story time that I just love (and WARNING.. it might bring tears to your eyes as you read it) and am a doing a project to celebrate Veteran's Day.

The book is The Imposisble Patriotism Project by Linda Skeers. The book is about a boy who is not too happy about a President's Day project that his teacher has given the class, create something about patriotism. He goes about asking his classmates what they are doing (a paper mache liberty bell, a map of the US, dressing up as the Statue of Liberty) and is still stumped. He finally has an idea at home while looking at a picture of his Dad, who is not at home at the moment. I won't give away the ending, but it is a bit of a tear jerker.

Before I read the book, I talk with the class about what Veteran's Day is and what a Veteran is and also about what Patriotism is. After the story the students are writing/drawing letters to Veteran's with the kids. I have two different templates, one for my Kindergarten students who will be drawing a picture and one for my students in first grade and up who will be writing a thank you letter to our Veteran's and our active service people. Since I see so many students, I am giving these thank you's to a variety of places. I have a few Veteran's that I know (some from WW II) that I will be giving a few letters to. I also have an address for an active army unit that I will be sending some of these to and I will also be dropping some of these off at the Veteran's Hospital in Atlanta.

Today on our schools morning announcement show I showed this video of my son interviewing my grandfather, a WW II vet and purple heart recipient. The funniest thing about this - one of my third graders asked his teacher if my grandfather was from a different country because he sounded like he was - the teacher replied "No honey, he's just from Boston!"

And one good thing about having book fair this week - look what we got in yesterday at the book fair!!!

Getting Ready to Deck the Halls

2010-11-03T07:24:00.004-04:00

So it is that time of year again, I almost drove off the road last night when I passed the local library and it was all decked out in Lights! Garland! Wreaths! yep I guess November has been forgotten and we are right into the holiday season. But then again, this reminded me that I do have to get going on those kind of holiday things - gifts, decorating, holiday story time (I am still deciding this one) and a gift of appreciation for my volunteers. I don't have a whole lot of volunteers, but the ones I do have are FABULOUS and I want them to keep coming back.

Taking a que from some of my teachers who have cards made of their class, I decided to make some cards specific to the media center this year. Shutterfly has some great options for photo Holiday cards. I am thinking of taking a nice picture of my clerk and I in the library, maybe with some props and creating a Holiday/thank you card to send to my volunteers. I have picked out this card because I can include quite a bit of type on it.

Shutterfly also has some great gift ideas, I do a calendar every year for my mom with pictures of all her grandchildren in it - this proves more difficult every year because my siblings keep having new babies every year, but it is now something that is EXPECTED of me. I was thinking of a way I could do one of the smaller calenders for the media center - maybe give these away to my volunteers - would it be too forward of me to circle in red their volunteer days (ha ha).

You can take a look at all the holiday cards and other gifts that Shutterfly has to offer - and until TODAY (11/3) when you order one calender, any others are 30% off (but hurry!!)

Calling all bloggers! You can receive 50 free greeting cards from Shutterfly http://bit.ly/sfly2010

This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the As Cape Cod Turns, which endorses blog with integrity, as I do.

Reader's Theater podcasts

2010-10-27T10:32:00.004-04:00

We have successfully finished our first unit of Reader's Theater with our fourth graders. This group had a harder time understanding the "performing" aspect, but I think they did well. It will be interesting to see how they improve when we do this next unit with them.

Here is our podcast of the Tuesday group's Reader's Theater. Once again, the audio is a bit too loud in spots, so I need to work on my recording techniques before we do this again.

My favorite is the student who plays the Wolf in the True Story podcast.

The Three Little Pigs Reader's Theater based on the book by James Marshall

The True Story of The Three Little Pigs a Reader's Theater based on the book by Jon Sciezka

PLEASE Vote for ME

2010-10-21T09:17:00.003-04:00

Ok, so I was asked by my district office to apply for this contest from Follett - the prize is a trip to their user conference in March, which looks AWESOME. We use their Destiny products and I love them - they are super easy to use and our county office also makes it easy for us to use these products!

So yesterday I came up with an idea for a video entry - it is quite cheesy and I have forever embarrassed my children with this, but it was fun.

If you have a chance, please look at the video on the site and vote for me - you can vote by logging into Facebook or you can register on their site - if you register on their site PLEASE make sure when they send you a confirmation email to click on the link (which takes you back to the site) then click on my video AGAIN and click VOTE.

THANKS!!

I have embeded the video here, but it looks a litle "off", so you can also go here to watch and vote.

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin

2010-10-18T09:54:00.004-04:00

Last week I used the book How Many Seeds In A Pumpkin by Margaret McNamara. It is a great seasonal book that incorporates math and counting/estimating skills. Since we hosted a school wide math night two weeks ago, this was the perfect tie in.

For our activity I first showed the students a video I put together, it included a clip about how a pumpkin grows that I downloaded from Discovery Education (this is a subscription site, but if you teach in the state of GA we do have access to it), a time lapse video from YouTube about growing a HUGE pumpkin and a cute music video from Brian Vogan, "That's How a Pumpkin Grows". Then we started counting pumpkin seeds - for my older students (2nd grade and up) I gave each table a big pile of seeds and they had to count the seeds by grouping them in groups of 2's, 5's or 10's. They had to write down how many groups they had and then write down how many seeds they had. For my younger students, I made index cards with either 2,5 or 10 written on it. They had to glue the number of seeds that it listed onto the card, then each table counted by the number on the card (so one table had cards with 5's on them and we counted by 5's etc..).

Here is a slide show on how the lesson went. This week I start one of my FAVORITE story times of all - Boo Bubbles - will post pictures soon!

Welcome COMO attendees

2010-10-15T08:38:00.002-04:00

Thank you for coming to my session and visiting my blog. Below is my presentation from today's GA COMO presentation Reader's Theater with a Technology Twist.

Reader’s theater with a technology twist

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

Books that brought me to tears and guess who

2010-10-01T13:01:00.005-04:00

yeah, so this week not one but TWO picture books made me a little teary - you might chalk it up to the fact that my first born asked a girl to homecoming this week and she said YES (his first "date") but even if your first born isn't about to go on his first date, these might make you a misty eyed.

Knuffle Bunny Free by Mo Willems - this book didn't get me until the end - and I won't reveal the ending, but if you enjoyed Mo's previous Knuffle Bunny books, this one won't disappoint. Also, head over to Mo's blog and check out a little audio of him and the REAL Trixie - so sweet!!

The other book is one I didn't expect to get teary over, but did - My Mommy Hung The Moon: a Love Story by Jamie Lee Curtis, illustrated by Laura Cornell. In this book the mommy is a super hero that creates rainbows and bakes cookies and is good at everything. I think I cried at this book thinking of my own mommy, who is still a super hero in my eyes. I am actually getting this book for my Mom for her birthday this month, you are never too old to get a picture book as a gift! Right now in my house (1 teenager, 1 almost teenager and a 10 year old) nobody thinks I hung the moon, so maybe I was a little misty eyed for the days when I got big hugs whenever I came home and big kisses every night before bed.

In Media Center news, it has been BUSY here - and I will post about some of the goings on here next week, but for now I wanted to leave you with a little October project I am starting. I am going to have a MYSTERY person every week in October. I have a picture of the person behind a mask and a few clues about the person. The people are all people that we study here as part of our social studies curriculum. Students can guess who and I will choose some winners for a chance to choose a prize out of my prize box.

can you guess who??

hint: invented many things and was one of the first people to create a library

Wrap up of Where I'm from technology project

2010-09-21T12:31:00.003-04:00

I am FINALLY done with the 5th graders and the Where I Am from project. Since I only see each class once every six days, it has taken me quite awhile to finish this. I think this project would have gone smoother if I could have seen the same group of kids four days in a row, they forgot too much in between class sessions., but I guess that is the curse of being a "specials" teacher.

Here is one of the PowerPoints:

I’m from lawrenceville Parker

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

I have these fifth graders for two more classes and then they go to the technology teacher until Christmas break. Today I started a digital camera project with them based on the book Flotsam. The lesson came from an idea I read in SLJ earlier this month. Today was my first day, and so far the kids LOVED it. I am doing things a bit differently than was described in the article and I created a step by step guide that they have to follow to take a picture, upload it to a computer and print it out on the color printer - I was so happy that they all seemed to be able to follow the directions. I will upload some of their finished pictures when we are finished next week!

Story Time this week: Edward in The Jungle

2010-09-13T12:55:00.004-04:00

Last week I started my first story time of the year. Since my "theme" for story time this year is "Where Can Books Take You" I decided to start the year off "taking" the kids to the jungle with the book Edward In The Jungle by David McPhail.

My activity with the book for Kindergarten was for them to color a jungle animal mask that I had already cut out for them, then I helped them glue on a craft stick to the bottom so they could hold it up to their face like a mask. My activity for first grade was the same, except that I had the students cut out the mask (I cut the eyes for them, and I found this AWESOME tool at Michaels that lets you cut out circles perfectly!)

For my second grade students I decided that I wanted to jump right into research with them this year, so after the story we talked about fiction and non-fiction and I had non-fiction jungle animal books out on the tables for them. We talked about the parts of a non-fiction book (table of contents, title page, index) and I passed out bookmarks that I had made with the name of a jungle animal on them. They then had to find 3 "cool" facts about their animal, using the table of contents and the index, and then write their facts on the bookmark.

The kids loved the book and both activities worked out great.

To end my week last week I had some good news, I had been selected as the Teacher of The Year for my school - it is an awesome honor, especially because the two other teachers who were finalists are just AWESOME teachers (and I am not just saying that...they really are!)

Check out our story time last week!

Readers Theater, Blogging and some news

2010-08-31T21:44:00.002-04:00

I can't believe that we are in week four of school, it is flying by already! I will FINALLY be done with orientations this week and I feel like the REAL year can start!

I am again working with our 4th grade focus teacher (what our county calls it's gifted classes) on a Readers Theater project as part of her language arts currciulum. Since this is our second year doing this project, we feel like we have a better idea of what our students are capable of and how to pace the lessons. This year we have two big classes (14 and 16 students) so instead of starting off with just one readers theater script for the whole class, we have had to break the class into two groups. We decided to choose scripts that are related to each other so we can also add in some writing exercises to the project and we wanted scripts with a little humor for our first project. We choose to do two adaptations of the three little pigs stories, The Three Litte Pigs by James Marshall and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka.

We are on week three of our project. So far we have introduced the concept of Reader's Theater to the students, read them the books from which the reader's theater was adapted from and have given out the scripts. As part of this project we wanted to integrate technology into it. Last we we produced a podcast and a slide share slide show (with the students narrating the slides). This year we wanted to start using technology right off the bat, so we started a blog for each class. I wrote the introduction on the blog and we are choosing 3-4 students each class period (each class meets once a week) to blog. This week our question that they had to answer on the blog was: What do you think of reader's theater so far? Each blog entry will be counted as a language arts grade for this class.

Check out our Tuesday class blog here. Check back on Thursday and our Thursday class blog should have some student entries in it. Only one student really knew what a blog was when we introduced it today, but they all got so excited about it, even at bus call today I had students asking if they could come in at lunch tomorrow and blog!

In in other news, today I was announced as one of three finalists for our schools teacher of the year. The other two finalists are SOO much more deserving than I am and are such FABULOUS teachers, but it is such an honor to be recognized - and my Principal gave me flowers, so it was a great day today!

Off and Running and Where I'm From

2010-08-23T09:57:00.002-04:00

What a crazy two weeks it has been, but a good crazy! Lots of orientations (I have almost all the grades done, first grade is this week and Kindergarten next week) and lots of kids checking out books already!

I am teaching a fifth grade special this year. I am splitting the teaching with our technology teacher and I have the first five rotations. The first rotation (we run on a six day schedule) we did my media center orientation (I thought since I had them in here I would get it out of the way.) The second rotation I decided to start a project using our state database system, Galileo. I decided to adapt the lesson plan, Where I'm from in Galileo for my students. Basically, the lesson starts off with us discussing the poem by George Ella Lyon, Where I'm From. Then I introduce them to the Galileo databases and I tell them that we are going to use these databases to find information on the place where we live now and we are going to create a Where I'm From poem and PowerPoint presentation on what we have found in the databases about our town. I show them a sample of a Where I'm from in Galileo PowerPoint (provided in the link above) and I also created a Where I'm From PowerPoint (but I did not use Galileo to find images since I am not from Georgia).

I am planning on this being a 3-4 class project. The first class period I spent explaining the project and showing them examples and then showing them how to save images off the database to their home drives on our server. The next class period will be spent gathering the images for their PowerPoint and writing their poem (the link above also includes a template for their poem). The third and fourth class will be spent creating their PowerPoint.

So far, the biggest obstacle - the kids do not know how to spell the name of the town they live in -Lawrenceville. Now, I can understand if they had just moved to the area, but many of these kids have lived here most of their lives. This was an obstacle I wasn't planning on with fifth graders!

Here is my Where I'm from PowerPoint, hopefully I will be able to share some of my students in a few weeks.

Where I'm From- Northboro

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

Back To School

2010-08-10T13:16:00.006-04:00

Was it just me or did summer just FLY by. Well, we are back to school and things are already crazy here in the media center. This year I am co-teaching a 5th grade technology special with the technology teacher here at school and I am really looking forward to it - although the first round of the special is regular old media center orientation, i think it will be exciting for the students to learn some new things in the computer lab.
I created a video again this year as part of my orientation - it saves me from having to repeat the same things 36 times, and it is pretty funny. I had some staff kids (including my own son) star in the video - funny thing was, all the kids wanted to be the "bad" examples (like how you shouldn't RUN in the media center). I am hoping to upload it to TeacherTube - while it really is very specific to MY media center, I am thinking that other people might want to use my ideas to make their own. I will post it if I get it uploaded.

I also started off the year by giving my staff goody bags - they were willed with information about the media center, our databases (Galileo) and some of our other subscription services (like BrainPop). I also included a sweet treat - orange creamcicle cookies - it took awhile to bake enough cookies for the whole staff (I packaged them in packages of 3 cookies) but I think it was worth it.

Here is a little slide show of some images from our first week.

Sunday Video

2010-07-25T13:17:00.002-04:00

I just finished editing and uploading a video I created to show on Veteran's Day at school. YES, I know I am a little early, but this video is close to my heart - it is my son interviewing his great grandfather (my paternal grandfather and the man he was named after) about his time in World War II and his purple heart. My son had a little trouble getting serious, and he has some work to do on his delivery before he becomes a TV weather man (what he wants to do when he grows up ..of course after he becomes a major league baseball star... ahh to be 9).

Great Parties

2010-07-20T14:06:00.002-04:00

In my next life, I want to plan book release parties - is there such a job - maybe book publicist?

Look at this GREAT book release party that Grace Lin had for her newest book - Ling & Ting - the fact that she MADE the cupcakes and the cupcake toppers - that is a dedicated author!

Now to think of how I can use cupcakes in the media center next year - I LOVE cupcakes....

Here is a cute trailer for the book

And all good things must come to an end...

2010-07-20T13:24:00.009-04:00

I know it is only mid July, but as far as I am concerned summer is over. My "summer" is the three weeks that I trek with my kids up to Massachusetts. While I have lived in Atlanta ALMOST longer than I lived in Massachusetts, it will always be home and I am thankful that I am able to go "home" for such a long time each summer. I am also thankful that my family has a house on Cape Cod. Here is my photo essay of "What I Did on my Summer Vacation"

While we were in Massachusetts we got to take a road trip to Maine and visit author Matt Tavares and his family and hang out in BEAUTIFUL Ogunquit, ME

We got to hang out with cousins - and they are just SOO cute

And explore on the beach for lots of COOL things - jellyfish, sand dollars & lots of shells!

and we got knocked down by BIG waves and FROZE in the 56 degree water (at Nauset Beach..where they spotted a great white shark the NEXT day!)

And we took a boat to the beautiful island of Martha's Vineyard

We made it to Fenway Park (although I didn't get to go INSIDE, but my Dad, brother Tim, Brother in Law Joe and my son James DID get to go inside!)

and what is better than eating ice cream on the beach while looking at this

So now it is back to work - this week I have been getting in gear - thinking of things for next year, starting order lists of supplies I need and getting the last of my web 2.0 course modules done. I can't believe that the new school year is almost here!

This and That

2010-06-25T13:42:00.006-04:00

It's summer, so not much going on library wise, so though I would share some other links.

Last weekend we spend the weekend in Panama City Beach, Florida (my very FIRST trip to the gulf!) for my son's baseball tournament. On Saturday, while we were sitting on the beach, a group of men came by us with blue latex gloves on, picking up things on the beach, they were looking for tar balls from the gulf oil spill and were finding small tar balls on the beach. A few minutes later a woman came out of the water and her float had small patches of oil on the side that had been in the water. I never thought that the oil spill would touch me, but it just goes to show you how HUGE of an impact this disaster is going to have on our whole country.

In other news, take a look at this blog post by Lisa Adams about the book If You Knew Suzy: a Mother, a Daughter, a Reporters Notebook by Katherine Rosman- I already had this book on my to read list, but after reading her post, I think I am going to take a trip to the book store tonight to pick it up!

This week I traveled to Massachusetts by car with two of my kids and my Dad - my Dad is awesome - who else would take a week off from his high pressure job as a bank CFO and fly down to Atlanta, travel with us to see his grandson's baseball tournament in Florida, help me try and fix my toilet (then buy me a new one when the fix didn't work) then drive 2 days, 1000 miles back to Massachusetts with me but my Dad. While we were at my house this week we had a great conversation about social media - it turns out that a mommy podcast that I listen to (Manic Mommies) is produced/hosted by a woman (@kristinsb) who helps run her families bank marketing firm in Massachusetts. She and I had a twitter exchange a few weeks back about my Dad and banking - I told my Dad this and as it turns out he has been trying to bring in some social media to his bank - which is one of the things she has done presentations on a bank conferences. I loved this "6 degrees of separation" conversation we had and that even though we are in totally different businesses, that I could turn him on to how social media works!

And to all my librarian friends who are traveling to the ALA Annual conference in Washington, DC or to the ISTE conference in Denver - safe travels and know that I am SOO jealous of all of you, maybe next year I will get to one of these great conferences!

Well, I am off to go swimming with my kids and my 2 year old niece Lilly, who is just the cutest little girl EVER!

Year in Review 2009-2010

2010-06-16T17:37:00.002-04:00

High School media GODDESS Buffy Hamilton inspired me to create an Animoto video about my year in the media center. I had never used Animoto before, but thought it looked cool so I thought I would give it a whirl. I learned a few things, mainly, if you have more pictures/text than the song you choose allows, it just cuts out whatever it didn't have time for (so I had to choose a new song). The text tool is VERY limiting, so I ended up having to abbreviate a lot. Also, wish I had taken more pictures during the year- I am VERY cautious about putting students in anything I post on here, but looking back, I wish I had some more pictures of students engaged in activities in the media center.

Since this is my first attempt at any kind of annual "report" I think now I will know what I need to save/document for next year. Of course, Animoto is blocked in our county, so I will have to send this as an attachment so that my administration can take a look at it. I know that my Principal knows what I do, but I think it can't hurt to have it documented, especially with these trying financial times.

You're Never too old...

2010-06-15T10:59:00.008-04:00

photo by Sean McCarthy, Twisted River Productions

This weekend was my daughters (she's the one in green) 9th dance recital (8th year at her current studio, North Georgia Dance & Music Factory) and, if I can be a mom for a minute, she ROCKED IT! She got a lot of compliments this weekend of how much she has improved and I am one proud mama.

Adult tappers (I'm 3rd from the right)

BUT it was also MY recital too - I dance in an adult tap class at the studio - I have a lot of fun and get to partake in my first love - dance (I danced most of my young life until college,marriage,babies got in the way!) I love the reaction that I get from students who see me at the recital all dressed up in my costume and rocking it onstage - I love that they are seeing that you are never too old to do what you love and to try new things (although tap is not a new thing for me). Of course this lesson is a great one that my web 2.0 students are learning this summer, many of them are coming out of their comfort zone and trying new things - and I am SOO proud of them! Check out some of their blogs:

http://www.frees4thgradefrogblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.hernandezherald.blogspot.com/

http://www.passingthepaintbrush.blogspot.com/

www.ecptech.blogspot.com/

http://www.williamswoohoo.blogspot.com/

http://www.langfordslines.blogspot.com/

http://www.kindergartencooks.blogspot.com/

http://rsmathspecial.blogspot.com/

http://wileysworkshop.blogspot.com/

http://www.kymcrosby.blogspot.com/

http://www.writingrocksattherock.blogspot.com/

http://www.gegensgabsheet.blogspot.com/

It is one HOT day here in the ATL, stay cool my friends!

The Book Whisperer

2010-06-09T07:55:00.004-04:00

I want to move to Texas so that my kids can have Donalyn Miller as a 6th grade teacher (ok, so two of my kids would have to repeat 6th grade, but it might be worth it...). If you don't know who she is...why not?? She is a 6th grade teacher, author of The Book Whisperer and from where I'm sitting, a FABULOUS teacher.

Check out her latest post about what her students read this year, it BLOWS MY MIND that the average number of books read in her class this year was 57 - WOW.

So ever since I read her book I have asked myself the question, as a librarian, how can I spark that kind of interest in books with the students??

I started doing book talks on the announcements... that helped a little. I try and "hand sell" a book (which I think is one of Donalyn's most successful methods in getting her kids to read) but with 950 students, this is SO hard for me to do with every student. I have a reading program, but I KNOW it does not generate the excitement that I would like to see, and I still haven't figured out what would generate that READING excitement that obviously Donalyn generates in her classroom.

These are the things I think about all summer long, hoping that the light bulb will go off - I'm still waiting....

Feeling Summer!

2010-06-08T11:19:00.002-04:00

I am sitting here reading my "students" blogs from my web 2.0 course and I am already SOO proud of these ladies - some of them are coming out of their comfort zone to take this course and it is SO great to see them embrace the technology that I love so much!

My daughter has her annual dance recital this weekend and so we have been listening to the same 5 songs all week that she will be dancing to this weekend - this one brings me back to the 80's - when I thought the B52's were so funny and never in a MILLION years thought that someday I would be "heading down the Atlanta highway" everyday. This song just SCREAMS summer and makes you want to dance!! Happy Tuesday!

Summer is here!!

2010-06-02T19:57:00.004-04:00

photo by APDK via Flickr

Well it has been a week since the kids have left school, a few days since I left school for the summer and already, I am sunburned (from the Braves afternoon game I went to today) and have yet to put a toe in our neighborhood pool (but it does look promising for a pool day tomorrow!) but my exciting summer news is that I am teaching/facilitating an online web 2.0 class this summer.

This web 2.0 journey started earlier this year when my Assistant Principal asked me to come in and explain podcasting to her - when I started going on and on about podcasting, blogs, wikis - she called me a geek and told me that I needed to teach her what I was talking about. It got me thinking to the original 23 things course by Helene Blowers. As I did a little more research I came across Shelley Paul's awesome adaptation for schools, called K12 Learning 2.o. I came up with the idea that I could take these two courses and tweak them a little for our specific school community (after getting permission from the original course facilitators). My administration loved the idea and told me I could offer it to our teachers as a summer course worth 2 PLU's. I expected to get a few people interested, I would have been happy with 5 people, but to my surprise, I now have THIRTEEN teachers taking the class this summer!

We started last week and today I had my first three students start their blogs (and they look great!) This is an online course, but since it is offered just to teachers in my school I will be available for tutoring sessions, either in person or remotely by phone/email or google chat. If this goes well I am hoping I can offer it to media specialists in our county and other teachers at our school.

Of course, as with most of the things I take on, it took me a lot more time to get everything up and running, but I think that (or hope that) the people who are taking the course get something out of it and at the very least, be more comfortable using technology in their classroom.

Well, it is time to do one of my favorite summer activities - watch 2 hours of So You Think You Can Dance with my daughter!

Happy Summer!!

Author Visit - Matt Tavares

2010-05-11T10:43:00.004-04:00

It has been a YEAR in the making, but last week our school hosted author/illustrator Matt Tavares. Matt was great and the students loved him. He talked about how he writes and illustrates his books and he tailored each presentation to the different grade levels he saw throughout the day. He also has the COOLEST story about how he uncovered some facts about Hank Aaron's first home run in the major leagues - my students found that to be pretty cool! The story is on his website if you would like to read it.

While Matt was here, he also filmed a segment for our local school districts' TV station, GCPS TV. They call the series The Author in You and Matt filmed here with a few of our students. The TV station is now online and I will post a link to the show when it is on their website. In the meantime, check them out, they have some great original programing.

Since Matt writes a lot about baseball I decided to try and get our local minor league team, the Gwinnett Braves (GBraves) to host a night for my school and also host Matt that night since his latest book is about the most famous Brave of all time, Hank Aaron. I put the GBraves in touch with Matt's publisher Candlewick Press and they arranged to have Matt throw out the first pitch, have the first 200 kids receive a copy of Henry Aaron's Dream and have Matt sign them. And I SWEAR I had nothing to do with this, BUT who were the GBraves playing that night... yep, the Pawtucket Red Sox. My youngest son, the aspiring Red Sox player ,got to go on the field with Matt and help him warm up before the big pitch, I think it was a thrill for BOTH of them to be on the field. Matt did a great job throwing out the first pitch, but I think he was a little disappointed that the Paw Sox didn't come recruit him (then again, the way the Sox are playing these days, maybe they made a mistake!). I ended up selling 400 tickets to the game and our chorus sang the national anthem (they did such a great job!) We all had SUCH a good time and the students thought it was SO cool that Matt and his family sat with us at the game!

I love author visits, and to me, they are so worth the time, effort and money that a media specialist puts into having them, but the two days that Matt was here and all the activities that we had planned while he was here was SOO much fun and so worth it. It might be hard to top this next year....

Take a look at this quick slide show for pictures from Matt's visit.

More Poetry Cafe

2010-05-04T17:08:00.003-04:00

Finally had a chance to put together a slide show with pictures from last weeks Poetry Cafe. I think it was a HUGE success - I think doing it after CRCT was the key (a lot of teachers seem to do poetry after the CRCT) and talking it up to the teachers and to the kids on announcements I think helped with the response I got - I have actually held it over one more day to accommodate all the teachers that wanted to sign their classes up. This will definitely go in my plans for next year! And like I said to the kids - everything sounds better when said into a microphone!

Poetry Cafe so far..

2010-04-28T12:36:00.006-04:00

has been a HUGE success. The teachers are loving it, the kids are loving it and I am loving getting to wear a feather boa and reading some of my favorite poems, many of which I have not thought about in a very long time. Thank you again to Andy Plemmons for the ideas!! Tomorrow is Poem in your pocket day and we will be celebrating here all day!!

Here are a few pictures of our Poetry Cafe - I am hoping to put together some kind of video or slide share once the week is over.

Never Enough Time- Book Review & Poetry!

2010-04-19T08:54:00.005-04:00

Do you ever feel that way?? I always have these great ideas to blog about.. then somehow I never have enough time to get them typed up and put on the blog. I never seem to have enough time to do all I intend to do in the media center either, last week I realized that we have 30 days of school left and there are STILL things I wanted to do this year that I have not... so once again I have started my to do list for the 2010-2011 school year. And don't get me started on my personal stuff that does not get done.. let's just say that if you are looking for dust bunnies, come on over to my house, they have invaded and I wouldn't mind getting rid of a few!

Ok, now that I have gotten that off my chest I DO have a few things I wanted to blog about.

COUNTDOWN by Deborah Wiles
I don't usually do not do too many book reviews on here, so many other people do a much better job (and once again, I never have enough time to READ as much as I want to!), but I wanted to give a shout out to this book. I was lucky enough to have Deb visit my school last year and she kindly sent me an ARC of her newest book. WOW. You can read full reviews here and here and here.
The book takes place over a week in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and is the story of twelve year old Franny Chapman. It is a historical fiction novel, but so much more. It is also a novel of friendships, a novel of coming of age and a novel of family. The most interesting thing about the book is that it is peppered with historical images, speeches, song lyrics and short biographies of some of the people mentioned in the novel. While I sometimes found them distracting while I was reading, I did go back and look at these and I really like that I could do that without looking them up on my own. I think having them as part of the book will make this book a great resource to have in a classroom.

I am already thinking of ways to use this book next year with my fifth grade students who get a crash course on sixties history in the last part of the school year. I think it would be a great read aloud, but, I also think it would make a great group read too. Of course I would also love for the kids to all read the book then have Deb come for a visit to talk with them about it - since, if you read her blog (and if you aren't WHY NOT??) you know that this book has a lot of Deborah's own experiences in it. I followed her blog while she was writing this book and I felt like I already KNEW Franny even before I started reading the book. The book is out May 1st - the buzz is, it is going to be BIG - and it couldn't happen to a nicer person!!

Poetry Month
As you know, April is Poetry month, but here at my school it tends to get a little lost since we start off April with Spring Break, then come back from break to have two weeks of state testing (CRCT). So, I was looking for a way to somehow SQUEEZE something in at the end of April. Well, thanks to a tweet from Buffy Hamilton, alerting me to a blog post from a school in Athens, GA, I think I have found a way to do it. I am planning on doing a poetry cafe next week and celebrate Poem in your Pocket day on Thursday April 29th. I am pulling out my poetry books and looking for ways to decorate our cafe next week. I am also trying to figure out how to get teachers EXCITED about this and how I can do some kind of Poetry board outside the cafeteria, maybe some kind of board painted with blackboard paint? Looks like a trip to Home dept might be in order! Wish me luck and thanks again to Andy Plemmons for the GREAT idea - I love my PLN!!

Well, it only took me two days to finish this blog post - maybe when my kids are older and I don't spend every weekend spending hours at baseball tournaments and shuttling kids to dance classes I will finally have the time..... if any of you have figured out a way to add an extra hour to the day, let me know!

A student makes a plea to save her librarian!

2010-04-08T16:18:00.003-04:00

I am on spring break this week, enjoying the beautiful weather here in Atlanta while also sneezing from all the pollen here (but it is raining here as I write this, hopefully washing away some of that icky yellow pollen that is covering EVERYTHING here). I am working today on my web 2.0 class (more on that in another post) but I came across this plea from an eighth grade student to keep her librarian on staff at her school. Author Mitali Perkins posted it on her blog and it is a must read.

The news lately seems to be such doom and gloom for our school systems, layoffs, furloughs, cut backs, it makes me worried as a school librarian, as a parent and as a citizen of the United States. I hope that our nation and our cities and towns can find a way to save our schools.

Celebrating Spring!

2010-03-25T11:14:00.002-04:00

Ever since I found this TeleFable online last summer I have been DYING to do this for story time in the media center - well it is FINALLY spring and we are making flowers in the media center this week.

The book is Rose's Garden by one of my favorite author/illustrators Peter Reynolds. The TeleFable story (he owns the company with his brother) came out before the printed book as a tribute to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston. The Telefable was so popular, they rushed the publication of the book to last fall.

I love sharing with my students new ways to read a book (even though I do think the good old fashioned way is still pretty good too) and the TeleFable is a great way to tell a story to them, and so far they have loved it!

After I read the story, the students are making tissue paper flowers. This has proved to be a bit more challenging for my Kindergarten students than I thought, but with a little teacher help, the flowers have turned out well. Take a look below at some pictures of our week!

As for me, I know spring is FINALLY here because I have started to unearth all my flip flops from their winter hide out AND it is only 9 more days until Red Sox opening day - Sunday night, 8pm, ESPN vs the Yankees!

GO SOX!

Science Story Times that ROCK!

2010-03-18T19:03:00.004-04:00

Here is my presentation from the Georgia Children's Literature Conference on science story times. Many of the story times I describe in my presentation have been highlighted here on this blog, but now they are all in one place! If you attended my presentation - THANK YOU - since I am posting this on Thursday night, before I actually present, I hope you enjoyed the presentation and I didn't do anything too embarrassing - like tripping over my laptop cord (yep, happened before). Thank you to the Georgia Children's Literature Conference for letting me present!

Science Storytimes

View more presentations from Kathy Schmidt.

Reader's Theater performance

2010-03-17T19:03:00.006-04:00

This is a PowerPoint that my 4th grade readers theater group did with Melissa Stewart's FABULOUS readers theater script (that goes along with her book, Under the Snow).- they drew the pictures to go along with the book and this was the background during their "live" performance. I had them add the sound to the PowerPoint yesterday so that I could post it. I had a hard time finding a place to "host" it so that you could hear the sound, this is the result - my voice is the first voice you hear and it sounds like I am talking with my nose plugged - which I was not and it does not sound that way on the original PowerPoint, but, you'll at least get to see what my kids have been doing. Next project for this group, they are choosing a book and writing their own readers theater that they will perform for their parents near the end of school in May!

Check out the slide show here.

Leprechauns & Rainbows

2010-03-14T12:56:00.003-04:00

My Favorite holiday is almost upon us - St. Patrick's day! I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl from Massachusetts so of course St. Patrick's day was always a big holiday where I grew up, so I try and share a little of the history and music with my students (most of whom don't know what the holiday is!).

This year my St. Pat's story time is all about those funny little people - the leprechauns! The story: That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting (a daughter of Ireland) The activity: making rainbows using science. I turn off the lights and have a glass of water, a flashlight and a piece of white card stock - I talk about how rainbows form and then shine the light into the glass of water and a rainbow appears on the white paper - MAGIC! Then I turn the lights back on and pass out rainbow glasses (I found these in our science lab, but you can order them through Steve Spangler Science also) and the kids LOVE these.

I have already started celebrating the holiday and I made an Irish feast last night, corned beef & cabbage, bangers & mash (Irish sausages & mashed potatoes) and homemade brown Irish soda bread (new recipe, which was yummy!)

Don't forget to wear your green on Wednesday!

Dr. Seuss Project

2010-03-10T15:40:00.004-05:00

Wanted to give an update on how my first FLIP video camera project went! - It went better than I expected and I learned a lot. The teacher was so happy at the outcome and the kids seemed to love seeing their "book ads" on tv in the morning. I have tried to figure out a way I could post them here, but they have students in them and I can't figure out how to put a black dot on their faces - but for next time I found a GREAT idea - have them put masks over their faces as they read - then I CAN post them, not only here, but on my schools website as well!

The biggest thing I learned - we need to use a tripod! The kids video taped each other (we had a groups of 5, one was the videographer and the others were on camera) and I realized that no matter how hard they tried, they wiggled the camera and the result was a wiggly video. I think that if the project involved shorter video clips or video clips where the subject would be moving, it might be ok to do it without a tripod, but for something like this a tripod is a must. I just hope that the tripods I already own work with the FLIP cameras.

I am hoping to try at least one more project this school year, but as we approach spring break and testing season, my teachers have so little time to do some FUN stuff like this.

Happy Read Across America Day!

2010-03-02T07:55:00.004-05:00

Our school celebrated yesterday, but, I had a touch of the stripes yesterday....

The picture misses the fact that I did INDEED have painted stripes on my face and I had some striped tights on too!

But I did eat my lima beans yesterday and I am feeling much better today!

Getting Ready for Read Across America Day (week!)

2010-02-22T09:23:00.002-05:00

As most of you know, Read Across America Day is next Tuesday, March 2nd. Due to some school scheduling conflicts, our school is celebrating it on Monday, March 1st, but here in the Media Center we are celebrating it all week.

Today, I am starting a collaborative lesson with a fourth grade class. We will be learning about how to write a book review with a little research thrown in. The class is divided up into 5 groups (about 5 students in each group), each group will choose a Dr. Seuss book to write a review of. All the students will read the book, then the students will write a review of the book. One student will be the researcher and will be in charge of finding one or two interesting facts about Dr. Seuss. The kids will then film a short book trailer (using the written review) using our new FLIP video cameras. The students will also include the cool fact about Dr. Seuss at the end of the review. I will then take the videos, clean them up a bit and we will air them, one per day, on our morning news show every day next week. I have done a quick little Google site to organize the project.

I am a little nervous that it will all get done by Friday, but I know that the kids are going to be SO excited to use the cameras and to have their work shown on the announcements.

My spring book fair is next week, so we will be very busy in here with that. On Monday, the literacy coach and myself have set up some guest readers (mainly, people in our school, such as the custodians, cafeteria ladies, school secretary, the principal, etc..) to read to each class. I am also sponsoring my 3rd annual faculty Dress Like a Book Character day (which reminds me, I need to figure out some prizes for that!) We are also encouraging all the teachers to include some special reading time in their day on Monday (but wouldn't it be nice if they did this EVERY DAY!)

Speaking of Dr. Seuss, Amy at Time to Renew has a cool Prezi presentation on the life of Dr. Seuss.

SNOW!

2010-02-13T09:58:00.005-05:00

For the 2nd time this winter our area has been blanketed by snow. Luckily for us, it happened on a Friday afternoon so there will be no snow day and even better, no snow make up day (we were suppose to have yesterday and Monday off, but instead we have school due to flood and snow make up days - BLAH!)

Here are some pictures of the snow in Georgia yesterday and today. I just hope it melts on the roads today, I have plans tonight!!

Reading Log

2010-02-11T07:56:00.004-05:00

I have actually gotten in some good reading time lately, which is amazing considering how crazy my life has been of late. There is a mix of middle grade, picture books, YA and adult titles, something for everyone!

Picture Book
Henry Aaron’s Dream by Matt Tavares
I have known about this book for sometime (Matt is going to be my guest author in May) and it was worth the wait. It is not only a beautifully illustrated book, but the story about Aaron’s journey to the major leagues (it ends with Hank’s first major league at bat) is inspirational and something that my baseball fanatic students will love. For elementary schools in Georgia, this will be a must purchase for the study of famous Georgians (2nd grade). Check out Matt’s website for a REALLY cool story that he uncovered while doing the research for this book. Also, if you are local, Matt will be at Little Shop of Stories on May 2nd and he will be doing a signing at the Gwinnet Braves game on May 4th (against the Pawtucket Red Sox!!) I will be at both!!

Middle Grade/YA
The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z by Kate Messner
I bought this book for my media center and read it over the weekend. It is a great story of a middle school girl who is grappling with passing science (by finishing a MONSTER leaf project), going to the sectionals for cross country, the aging of her grandmother who lives with her family, her feelings for her best friend , who happens to be a guy and dealing with your typical middle school group of mean girls. With a 6th grade daughter of my own, I thought this book was so true about many of the things that girls this age are dealing with. I think it is a great title for fifth graders (and middle schoolers) who will be dealing with all these issues all too soon!

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
As luck would have it, I had this book checked out from the public library when the announcement was made that it had WON the Newberry! I LOVED this book! There have been LOTS of reviews, and you can read one here and here, but I will say this, I wonder how much kids who read this book will understand the 25,000 Pyramid storyline – or even, for that matter the talk about Dick Clark. Monica at Educating Alice is reading this to her fourth grade class and I think it would make a great read aloud, and in that case, you could explain (and maybe even show a clip) of the show. And I just LOVE how the book ends (you willhave to read it to find out!)

My Life the Musical by Maryrose Wood
I gave this book to my daughter, the budding Radio City Rockette, for Christmas. If you have a middle school age girl (or her mom) who loves musicals and Broadway, they will LOVE this book. It is about two teenagers ( Phillip and Emily) who live on Long Island and they are in LOVE with the musical Aurora. When they find out that the musical is closing, they are on a quest to find tickets for the last performance and also the identity of the elusive author of the musical. The book is peppered with lots of musical trivia and lyrics and sub story lines of family, identity and usual teenage issues of fitting in. This made me want to go out and see a musical!

Adult
The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir by Elna Baker
This book was HYSTERICAL! This is a memoir of Elna Baker trying to grip with the fact that she lives in NYC, is young, an aspiring actress and Mormon. She tells of how she deals with dating or rather trying to date in NYC and keep her Mormon values. Her one tale of meeting a famous older actor is hysterical and I have spent WAY too much time trying to figure out WHO it is (she does not reveal his identity, but tells us he is as famous as Newman, Redford, Beaty). It was a quick read, but one worth the laughs!

Story Time This Week: A Tribute to Coleen Salley and Mardi Gras

2010-02-05T12:50:00.002-05:00

This week in honor of one of my FAVORITE people of all time, Coleen Salley and as a warm up to Mardi Gras my story time combined a Louisiana folk tale by Ms. Salley and the making of Mardi Gras masks!

I love Ms. Salley's Epossumondas books, even if I STILL can't the Lousiana accent right when I read them! Coleen's last book (published in October, a year after she passed away) Epossumondas Plays Possum , was my choice to read this week. This is the story of little Epossumondas, he once again goes into the swamp, forgetting that his Mama had warned him of the terrible loup-garou who live in the swamp and will swoop a nice little possum right up with his nasty claws. So Epossumondas gets lost and encounters all sorts of nasty swamp creatures, but isn't scared at all because they are not the loup-garou. In the end, his Mama finds him i the swamp and she is surprised because he DID indeed use the "sense he was born with" in dealing with the nasty swamp creatures.

This book NEEDS to be read in a southern accent, I try to summon my best, Steel Magnolias accent when I read this book, and I think for a good ol' girl from Massachusetts, I think I do ok with the accent. If you ever want to hear how the Epossumondas books SHOULD be read, get a copy of the audio book for any of Coleen's other Epossumondas books, she read them and is FABULOUS.

For our craft this week, I am having the kids make Mardi Gras masks, the kids are LOVING this, the bad part, I am having to cut out the eyes of the mask before the kids come in - I need a mask die cut if I ever do this again!

Check out some pictures from our story time this week.

Dear Mr. President....

2010-02-04T10:55:00.003-05:00

As many of you know, President Obama's 2011 education budget does NOT include any additional funding for libraries or specific funding to put certified school librarians (that is what we are suppose to call ourselves these days, right?) in schools.

Buffy Hamilton of the Unquiet Librarian wrote an AWESOME letter, which I shared with all the media specialists in my county. AASL also has a sample letter that you can use to write to your local paper and your local congressional delegates. One last thing you can do, at 5:45 today, Organizing for America will be hosting a conversation with President Obama. You can submit your questions for him at their site here. If we flood the site with questions about why he has excluded libraries and school librarians in his 2011 education budget, maybe he will realize how important this issue is to schools across the country.

If any legislator has any questions about how important it is to have a certified school librarian in a school, I would like to invite them to come out and spend the day with me and see what I do for my school and I am sure that any school librarian would extend the same invitation! (just please don't come during book fair!) President Obama, I have the welcome mat out for you!

Diversity

2010-02-01T14:20:00.004-05:00

I found this TED video from Amy Bowllan of the SLJ blog, Bowllans blog. This video is a talk by story teller Chimamanda Adichie from the 2009 TED International conference. Adichie talks about how people can have stereotypes just from the stories that they read and hear. This REALLY made me think about what kind of books I use for story time and how I need to diversify what I read to the students. Our school population is increasingly becoming more diverse, not just more Hispanics and African Americans, but more Asian students and we have quite a few students from Slavic countries as well. It is worth it to take 20 minutes to watch this.

Library Day in the Life

2010-01-25T20:17:00.002-05:00

Today I participated in round 4 of Library Day in the Life - started by Bobbi Newman. I created a slide show (below) to document the day and I also wrote a play by play below. It was kind of a strange day in my library today because it was science day at our school and the library was being used for some special science programs all day, but then again, that is what sums up a day in my library, no day is EVER the same, which, I think is what I LOVE about my job!

Day in the life of an elementary school media specialist: January 25, 2010

~ I start out my day checking my Twitter account online at home while I eat breakfast (key lime pie yogurt & juice, if you must know) Twitter is blocked at school, so I get my "fix" in before I go.

~ When I get to school I have to unlock 7 doors in my media center - but I guess I should be so blessed that I have such a LARGE library.

~ E-mail - especially on a Monday my in-box is usually pretty full. I first try and e-mail out my schedule for the day to the teachers at my school as a reminder if their class is scheduled to come in to the media center that day. Today I only had one scheduled class because of science day activities happening in the Media Center.

~ I get my son off to class (he is in 3rd grade) and run around to buy a milk from the cafeteria and a Sprite from the teachers lounge as part of my lesson this morning (more on that later).

~ my 5th grade news crew comes into the media center and we go into our tv studio to prepare for the morning broadcast. The broadcast is only 15 minutes long (at most) and only takes about 15 minutes to prepare, but the 5th graders who are involved love it. I had a new crew today, so the broadcast is a little shaky, but they did a great job for their first day.

~ After the news show, I finish getting set up for story time. I am doing a science story time with a non-fiction book Under The Snow by Melissa Stewart then I am making snow with the kids using instant snow from www.stevespangler.com. We take the science thing a little further by trying to guess which will make better snow, milk, soda or water (the water is the winner). This morning I am dong this with a third grade class. I usually do not do story times with third graders, but the teachers love when I do science and try and sign up with me, the kids love it too.

~ After the story time class leaves, my assistant and I finish setting up the media center for the special science programs planned for today.

~ As the science programs are going on the media center, I go into my office and try and get some things off my desk:

~ finish creating a web page for a 5th grade research project I am starting with two classes tomorrow on famous African Americans

~ I finish revising my evaluation goals that my Assistant Principal (AP) had given back to me last week with notes on what to fix.

~ Worked on my Media Plan goals for the next two years , this is another part of my evaluation that my AP had wanted me to finish.

~ I talked to the t-shirt company about customized t-shirts that we are having made for our Reader's Rally team. We finalized art and made a deadline for having the orders in (the design is SOO cool)

~ Ate lunch at the circulation desk (as usual) but because of the science programs, I actually got to eat in some peace instead of in between checking books in/out for students. (italian wedding soup & a diet coke)

~ unpacked new book order - YEAH, I love new books, but boo to the company because they forgot one of the books in the order. E-mail my rep to find out what happened.

~ Planned story time for next week, was going to do Mo Willems (love him!), but am going to do the new Coleen Salley book instead and since she was from New Orleans, we are going to talk about Mardi Gras and make Mardi Gras masks, found mask template, now just need to find paper. Maybe we can use the masks to cheer on the Saints (but my Principal is a HUGE Colts fan, might have to rethink this...)

~ Bus duty (my least favorite part of my day)

~ After school we had a Readers Rally meeting. Readers Rally is a competition that my county puts on each year. It is similar to a Battle of the Books competition. The county competition is open to fourth and fifth graders, but we just have fifth graders participate at our school. The competition is less than a month away, and the practice didn't go so well today, gotta get the kids motivated to READ READ READ the books these next three weeks!

~ I leave school to go to my other job - the Mom job, where I cart my three kids around to dance and sporting practice, make dinner, finish laundry and get ready to start it all over again.

A tragedy this weekend

2010-01-12T14:01:00.005-05:00

This is not a book or library related post, but one I felt I needed to share.

This past weekend, in my neighborhood in suburban Georgia, three teenage boys fell through the ice in our neighborhood pond (see news story here and here). One of the boys got out, the other two boys were under water for over 40 minutes before the fire department could rescue them and they died later at the hospital. These were friends and football teammates of my son, they were in the eighth grade.

One of the things I have noticed in the past few days that DOES relate to this blog, is the way social media, games and texting have helped these kids go through this tragedy. On Saturday night, when the media wanted some pictures of the kids, about 7 football players got on the boys MySpaces and found pictures to print to give to the media. It was a great way for the kids (and the parents that were there too) to talk about the boys and remember them. That night, the kids were all texting each other and we found out about a church service that was being held on Sunday morning for the boys. About 50 kids (mostly football teammates) showed up to grieve and pray together. Later that day, the boys texted and Facebooked and MySpaced about meeting up at the pond for a memorial to the boys – within 2 hours, well over a hundred people turned up, not only kids, but neighbors, teachers from the middle school and classmates. Late Sunday night, I heard my son playing his Xbox 360 live – I could hear him talking with some of his teammates/classmates on this game and they were remembering the boys and talking about them - a way for my son and his friends to grieve and heal that I never would have imagined. I have also been told that some kids have set up a memorial Facebook page for those that knew the boys to write messages and remembrances on. I am sure that not only will this help the boys friends grieve, but also their families as well.

This has been hard for everyone in our community and something that those of us that live in the neighborhood feel like it could have happened to any one of our kids. They were all curious about a frozen pond, this doesn’t happen in Georgia (I have NEVER seen this pond frozen in the four years we have lived there) and many of the kids (mine included) had tried to test out the ice on Friday (a snow day from school).

Please keep the families of these boys in your thoughts and prayers in the next few weeks.

Now back to our regular programming…

JFK & Twitter ?

2010-01-07T07:54:00.002-05:00

I am so glad the main stream media (and it is funny, I wonder if we are not far from "main stream media" having a totally different meaning soon, and I am saying this also as a person whose husband works for a main stream media outlet) has seen that Twitter is not just for the living anymore!

This story in the Boston Globe lets us know that the JFK Library in Boston has a new Twitter stream (is that the right terminology?) to replay scenes from JFK's bid for the presidency 50 years ago! I can't wait to sign up!

I had an interesting conversation with a teacher the other day about Twitter - so many people think that it is just another social site, just for "the young" and I was trying to convince them that my Twitter activity is mainly of a professional nature (although most of my tweets lately have been about how darn COLD I am) and how much useful information I have gotten via twitter (not to mention PRIZES, I have won 3 Twitter contests this year!). If non-believers of Twitter realize that historic things like this are being put on Twitter maybe people will see the value, and dare I say it.. maybe even SCHOOLS would see how useful this would be... of course in my district, I am not holding my breath for that one!

January Story Time

2010-01-06T10:58:00.002-05:00

Who knew when I planned my story times for January that it would indeed be FREEZING here in "hot"lanta. I know most of the country is in an arctic freeze right now, but us southerners (even those of us who grew up in the North) just aren't prepared for this kind of weather!

Many of my teachers do an author study of Jan Brett in January (which means that our Jan Brett books are flying off the shelves) so I decided to help them kick off their unit by reading her book, The Three Snow Bears.

After we read the book, I show them a video of Jan teaching how to draw a baby bear that I downloaded off her FABULOUS website (go to the video tab and she has a TON of videos you can download).

Then to have them understand a little bit more about REAL polar bears, I show them this video from the National Geographic site. This site has some great, short videos about all kinds of animals, my only complaint, the ads before each video, but I guess they have to pay the bills somehow, just wish there was a way I could turn them off.

This story time will lead me into my next story time where I will make SNOW with the kids - although we actually might get some of the real stuff tomorrow - for once, I am hoping for NO snow day, we already have to make up 2 days for our flood days in September!

Happy New Year!!

Happy Holidays

2009-12-15T09:03:00.004-05:00

It has been a BUSY few weeks both here at school and at home - I am READY for a break, although my break involves driving 1000 miles and COLD weather, but that's what Christmas is all about, right??

Here is a slide show of the holiday fun we are having here in the media center - I think I like Whrrl better than Slide.com., but Whrrl is now blocked at school (sigh).

I hope that everyone out there has a FABULOUS holiday season!!

Reader's Theater Podcast

2009-12-02T10:17:00.004-05:00

Here it is, the podcast I did with my students readers theater. It is a little ROUGH, and we definitely have to work on talking LOUDER (and maybe using more than one mic to record it) but it is a start!

Reader's Theater - Performance Day!

2009-12-01T14:06:00.004-05:00

It is finally here - performance day for my 4th grade readers theater group. We performed today for a class of 1st graders who already knew the story (A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon) and who are also working on a little readers theater project of their own in their classroom.

SO, how did it go, you asked? It went well. The kids were a little nervous, so some lines were delivered a little too fast, the kids who we have been telling to GET LOUDER were still reading a bit too softly to be heard, but overall it went GREAT!

Some things the teacher and I are going to do for the next go-around (which we will start after the holiday break):

~ have smaller groups - we will be doing 2 different stories, so I think that will give the kids more lines to say
~ video tape the kids earlier in the process so they can really see what they are doing right/wrong
~focus a little more on the difference between the book and the script (we will do this because the goal is for them to write their OWN script from a book)

As luck would have it, today in School Library Journal there is an article written by Avi (YES that Avi) about the benefits of using readers theater - what PERFECT timing!

I recorded the kids doing a practice run of it last week, but am having problems uploading it to Ourmedia (I haven't uploaded anything to them in a LOONG time, so maybe it's not working anymore??) so if/when I get it up I will put the link on here.

The other class performs on Thursday!

Cybils & Your Holiday Shopping

2009-11-29T21:11:00.003-05:00

Take a look to your right (no not that right , your other right..) do you see that COOL widget, yep that one, well it is the new widget for the 2009 Cybil nominate books. It will highlight a new nominated book every time it loads. So how is this helping your holiday shopping?? Well, you can click on the Amazon or Indie Bound link and you can order up that book for someone on your holiday shopping list. THAT EASY - yes it is!

Thanks to JacketFlap for this great widget (this WAS the buzz word at AASL!).

Speaking of holiday shopping, can you believe that it is only 26 shopping days until Christmas (and even less til Hanukkah) - I for one am giving my young nieces and nephew a new book and new pj's to go with the book - you can never have too many books or too many comfy pj's in which to get into when reading said book! Of course my teenager and teenager wanna be only want gifts of the electronic kind (Xbox 360 and a cell phone are on their lists)..sigh.... luckily my youngest son has the right idea, he has asked for bacon for Christmas - yep - actually he was specific, he wants Canadian Bacon - good thing Santa has to cross Canada before he gets to us!

Happy Shopping!

National Educational Technology Plan

2009-11-23T08:30:00.003-05:00

Diane Chen of the SLJ Blog Practically Paradise forwarded a message on her blog from Julie Walker, executive Director of AASL. Here is the message:

Julie A. Walker, Executive Director of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has asked us to forward the information below widely. I hope you will participate on behalf of all school librarians and our students.

Late in October, I sat in on a webinar regarding the National Educational Technology Plan. If you have not done so already, I want to urge all of you to go to the site: www.edtechfuture.org . The developers are seeking input on all four aspects of the plan: learning, assessment, teaching and productivity / infrastructure. At the time of the late October webinar, the developers expressed concern about the LOW VOLUME of comments they had received. They are particularly looking for examples of districts doing INNOVATIVE things.

I urge those of you who feel that school library media specialists can bring value to this planning process to register and to comment. I noted a number of topics of importance to the field:
Lifelong & Lifewide Learning
Measurement of equitable access to learning resources
Learning skills
Technology literacy
Equality of access (including gap between home & school)

For those of you interested in an overview of the slides from the webinar hosted by the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training (NCTET) and PBS, “Shaping the Future of Education Through Technology” with Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, they can be downloaded here: http://www.nctet.org/calendar.htm Please register and comment before the end of the month.

The Kid Lit community is made of AWESOME!

2009-11-22T14:52:00.003-05:00

As many people who follow the kidlitosphere know, Andrea from the podcast Just One More Book is battling breast cancer. Her husband (and co-creator of JOMB) sent out a plea to the authors and illustrators and other kit lit folk to call and send a message of encouragement to Andrea - he got an incredible response and he compiled some of those responses into a theme that Andrea can listen to whenever she needs a pick me up - he calls it the Warrior Theme and it is so empowering to listen to. Listening to all the people in the kid lit world who responded is incredible- you guys (and gals) ROCK! (and as a side note, I loved hearing that fellow Emerson Alum and my Alpha Pi Theta brother, Henry Winkler was one of the first to respond!)

Andrea, I hope that you kick cancer's butt girl - you are already a kid lit warrior, now it is time to make you into a breast cancer survivor warrior!

** image from www.zazzle.com

AASL 2009 - Notes and reflections

2009-11-08T20:51:00.003-05:00

WOW.. that's all I can say about AASL - WOW...

Well, I do have some other things to say about the conference but if you are a school media specialist, start saving NOW for AASL 2011 in Minneapolis- really, I can't believe I have waited this long to attend a national conference. What I came away with was SO incredible and I will be talking about it and dissecting it more in the next few weeks as I have time to really go through conference notes and websites, but here were some highlights:

* stumbling into the Bloggers Cafe (and not realizing where we were) and meeting Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton first thing on Thursday (both of whom are just MADE of awesome!) and listening to some great presentations and meeting some other FABULOUS media specialists and even a corporate librarian from GA. Here is the link to the wiki from the bloggers cafe.

* Listening to opening speaker Danah Boyd - wow - she had some great things to say, I wish I could have my staff and parents listen to her presentation!

* Attending the Smackdown (wiki here) - this was the BEST session of the whole conference - I am SO glad I went in early and got a seat!

* The exhibition hall was great too - I got some free books (including an ARC of the new John Green/ David Levithan book - SOO excited about this), some coupons from other vendors and I stumbled onto a great publisher - Sylvan Dell - their books are beautiful and they have a GREAT subscription e-book service! It will take me weeks to go through all the STUFF I came home with!

I promise more from the conference, but Book Fair starts tomorrow and I better get some sleep!

I'm off to AASL

2009-11-04T14:30:00.002-05:00

I am leaving for Charlotte with a good friend (and fellow media specialist) to attend my first national library convention. I have been a member of the American Library Association(ALA) and it's affiliate the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) since I was in grad school (we're talking 7 years now ) but the conventions are always SO expensive to attend. Most have been in far away places that require planes, trains or long automobile trips to get to and then require hotels and food and well you know how things add up - and my school cannot foot the bill and with 3 kids, neither can I - until now!

This convention is only 3 hours away (by car) and we are staying with my friends brother who lives in Charlotte. This might be my one and only national convention that I get to go to, so I am going to try and make the most of it! I am excited to hear the speakers and attend the sessions and also to hopefully meet up with some online friends.

I have a feeling I am going to be VERY tired on Saturday when I get back!

Happy Halloween

2009-10-30T09:20:00.005-04:00

Today we could dress up as a book character for school - I had a hard time deciding and finally decided at about 3pm yesterday - which explains why I could not find pink pants for my outfit.

Can you guess the book??

Just wish I had more time last night to make pink cupcakes to share at school today - maybe next year!

Today our school systems cable channel is coming here to film a segment for a series they have called the Author in You with local Atlanta author ( and my friend) Laurel Snyder - they usually put up a link to the show once it is live, so I will be sure to add it to the blog. Check out some shows that they have done in the past here.

Boo Bubbles, Ghost Stories and 40

2009-10-26T10:09:00.004-04:00

I love October - for many reasons - post season baseball (ok, that one not so much this year), cooler weather, leaves changing color, pumpkins, my birthday and Halloween! Last year I found a kit to make BOO bubbles on Steve Spangler Science (my favorite science shop!) and the kids loved it so much I decided to do it again this year. I forget what I read last year, but this year I am reading the book The Ghost Eye Tree by Bill Martin jr. and John Archambault. The worst thing about this story time - having to go buy dry ice every morning before school (and it gets expensive!)

My new favorite photo sharing slide program - whrrl is now blocked in my school (knew it was too good to last) so I tried slide share - here is my first attempt at a slide share presentation

Boo Bubbles

View more presentations from Kathyfs24.

oh and it was my 40th birthday on Saturday - I have never been bothered by my age, but this year I seemed to be hit with it - 40 is OLD - LOL - but I had a great weekend with friends and family and a great party on Saturday night, so it made turning 40 not so bad!

Weekly update - storytime & readers theater

2009-10-15T15:26:00.005-04:00

It has been a crazy week here in the media center - lots of classes and my assistant was out this week, plus we had a 4-day weekend last weekend (which was SOO nice!). So here is what we have been doing this week in the media center- celebrating Eric Carle's 80th and the Caterpillar's 40th birthday (he and I are the same age!) Take a Whrrl with my Whrrl story:

I am also on week two of my readers theater project and it is going REALLY well. This week we gave out the scripts to the kids and they did their first read through. They seem really excited about doing this and with the class today, they had some GREAT comments for each other after our first read through. Next week we will work on better fluency with the text and reading with more emotion and "voices".

next up - my FAVORITE story time of the year - BOO Bubbles!! Plus I have to figure out a great book character costume for Halloween - any suggestions?? I've already been a pirate, the bus driver (from the Pigeon books) and Lilly from Lilly's purple plastic purse, the paper bag princess and Abe Lincoln - hmmm.......

Mo Willems!

2009-10-07T12:55:00.003-04:00

Yesterday my school got to be part of Mo Willems simulcast! It was SO much fun! After lots of headaches getting the technology to work in our school (thank you to my AWESOME technology guru at our school and the awesome Internet guy in our county who made it happen) it all went off with out a hitch. My only disappoint with the program, I was REALLY hoping he was going to show us his dinning room (the one with the chalk board walls) so I guess this means that I will still have to hold out for an invite to his house for dinner - I'll even bring desert Mo - really I will!

Between watching this yesterday and watching the video : Eric Carle: Picture Writer this week with my story time classes, I want to quit my job and go work in an art studio - one problem, I have NO artistic talent what so ever. But it does make me want to go out and buy new colored pencils and crisp white paper!

Thanks Hyperion & Mo for letting me be a part of this!

Readers Theater

2009-10-06T09:18:00.003-04:00

I am so excited to start my first readers theater project today. I am working with a 4th grade gifted teacher and her 2 classes (one with 15 students, the other with 11 students).

For today's first class we will be explaining to the students WHAT readers theater is. I am going to show them this video of a group of teens doing a readers theater performance at a public library so that they get a REAL sense of what they will be doing. I also have a short United Streaming video on creating your own readers that I will show them. The teacher and I have already chosen a script from the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon that we will be using as our first script, so to introduce the kids I will be reading the book. We will introduce the scripts at our next meeting next week. Our plan is to meet once a week with these kids and work with them one week on the script and then having them perform the script the next week. We will video tape the kids so they can see themselves performing and also so we can critique their performances.

This project is a perfect example of why media specialists need to TALK with each other. This idea came from a media specialist in my county that I talked to at a meeting we had a few weeks ago. She was describing what she did with a readers theater project at her school and I knew that I wanted to try something here. The hardest part in doing something like this is getting a teacher to work with you and sign on for a project that will be a few weeks in length.

I will update here on how the project is going and what we will be doing each class session that we meet.

Johnny Appleseed story time

2009-09-28T11:05:00.002-04:00

We have dried out here in Georgia, but some of my friends have been hit HARD by the flooding, My former school had a lot of flood damage and is STILL not open yet and there are many families that still cannot go back to their flood damaged home. I have seen flooded areas on the news before but NEVER imagined that it would happen here.

On a happier note, we are celebrating apples in the media center this week. Check out my Whrrl story about our story time and art project.

"Snow" day in September and musing on Web 2.0

2009-09-22T09:53:00.003-04:00

Yes, that's right, I am writing this at home in my pj's at 10am on a Tuesday - YES, I should be at school, NO I am not sick, but we are home because of our 2nd "snow" day, which really is a rain & flood day off from school. For those not in the metro Atlanta area this sounds like another CRAZY thing us southerners do, cancel school for RAIN (my father was laughing out loud when I told him) - but really, look at this:

I have never seen this much water in my life, my neighborhood is ok and from what I could tell yesterday, my school is fine, but there are schools in our district that have parking lots and fields under water and I have heard that a few schools even have water IN the schools. It is CRAZY how much rain has fallen in our area since last week, I have heard reports that in my area, 18" of rain has fallen since Sunday - and to think we went through a severe drought last year!!

Since I am home from school, I am doing a little thinking about web 2.0 tools and the way I use them. I have posted before about my online time and how I have tried at times to "back off" being online so much (a failed attempt) but while while I have been thinking of ways to streamline my use of these tools and also thinking about ways to TEACH these tools to my staff (and maybe to other media specialists in my district) I have come to a few conclusions:

Facebook: - I will admit, I am obsessed, but I have figured out that although I have a few "work" related things on here, this is my personal time. I keep up with family & friends on here, I vent about my kids on here and share pictures of my kids doing funny things on here, to me this is personal networking and I am keeping it that way.

Twitter: I had signed onto this last year and then never used it - but THEN I checked out a few "professional" contacts on Twitter, had some new people "find" me and I have been hooked ever since. Twitter is my "combo" tool.. I use it to connect to people professionally, librarians, authors, book publishers and teachers and it is also my Red Sox nation source, and who knew that I would become "twitter friends' with a librarian who is ALSO a Red Sox fan! I have gotten so many journal articles, blog posts and information from my Twitter followers. I recently sent a tweet out about wanting to find some readers theater resources and I got a few GREAT suggestions from fellow media specialists and teachers. This to me is a tool I can use for many purposes, although it is SO hard for me to express myself in 140 characters or less!

Blogs: Although I don't blog as much as I would like, I still find it a great source to share and "meet" other media specialists. This blog is (mostly) a professional blog, although I have been known to "talk" about my kids, the Red Sox and Jon Bon Jovi, I mostly talk shop here. In my Google reader, though, I do have 2 different groups set up, Mommy Blogs (which, really, I should change the title of that to personal blogs) and professional blogs, and I cannot tell you how much information I get from these people. Being a media specialist is sometimes a lonely job, you are the only person in your building who does what you do and people "just don't understand" what you do some days. Reading these blogs not only gives me ideas on how to do my job better, but also is like sitting in the teachers lounge with my "grade level".

All the other stuff: there is SO much more to Web 2.0, photo sharing, ning groups, wiki groups - it would take me 3 days to talk about it all, but I think that it is my JOB to know what there is out there, although it is also my job to figure out what will help me, personally and professionally and stick with those tools that I am comfortable with.

Here is a great article by Joyce Valenza about using these Web 2.0 tools to teach kids. Here in my school district, many of these tool are blocked, but if anything, I wold love to teach the TEACHERS about these tools. The kids are using them at home, wouldn't it be great if we could teach them that they could be doing a little learning too while using some of these! I love what Buffy Hamilton (one of my Twitter friends) is doing with social networking and high school students, I can only hope that somewhere down the line, I can incorporate these into elementary classrooms too.

Well, I am going to check out what kind of damage there is in our area, I hear the park where we play baseball and football is under water!

Happy Birthday Tomie!

2009-09-15T07:50:00.003-04:00

Today is Mr. dePaola's 75th birthday and illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka (who I hear is from my neck of the woods, central MA) has a project to wish Tomie a happy birthday - go check it out here. (Thanks to Fuse for letting us know about this cool project!)

A garden for a sunny Saturday

2009-09-12T13:48:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I haven't heard of this before, but one of my favorite authors - Peter Reynolds (I swear he wrote his book Dot for my son and Ish for my daughter - too bad HE doesn't know that - LOL!) has a new book coming out! I read in Publishers Weekly today that he is coming out with a new book, dedicated to Rose Kennedy called Rose's Garden. The article was about the publisher (Candlewick Press) moving up the publication date to October and they also provided a link to the Telefable version of the book on the Rose Kennedy Greenway website.

It is another great story - whether you are a fan of Mrs. Kennedy and have visited the Greenway or have never stepped foot in Boston, you will love the story about a girl trying to beautify a city and of a girl trying to make her way in a new place.

Of course as I was reading the Telefable I was already planning the story time I will do with it - I can see the students making their own paper flowers and I will have to show them some pictures of the REAL Rose Kennedy Greenway (which I walked on this summer) and maybe include a picture of the famous steaming tea pot, which I used to walk past every day one summer when I was working in downtown Boston and was the inspiration for the tea pot that Rose rides on in the story.

Now off to pre-order the book!

Story time this week: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

2009-09-11T13:16:00.004-04:00

With 950 kids in my school (K-5) I do a different story time every two weeks. This week and next week I am reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett. If you frequently tune into the Disney channel or Nickelodeon, you know that there is a movie coming out based on the book (they show the preview every 10 minutes!) so I wanted to make sure the kids knew that the book came before the movie - LOONG before the movie - when I tell the kids I was 9 when the book came out they all say "WOW" - so far nobody's called me old... but I am waiting!

After we read the book I do a little science lesson with them. I created a Whrrl photo story to show you highlights from our story time.

Happy Friday!

Decatur Book Fest 2009

2009-09-06T16:31:00.005-04:00

The Decatur Book Festival was this weekend, and as usual it was FABULOUS!

I only got to go on Saturday and for the first time, I spent more time in the teen area than at the children's stage, but my daughter and I got to see some GREAT authors.

First up was Kate DiCamillo - she had a standing room crowd and I had aspirations of getting my copy of Tales of Despereaux signed, but the line was SOO long that I decided that hearing her was good enough. She read from her new book, The Magician's Elephant, out on Tuesday and answered lots of questions, mostly from the kids in the audience. The thing that shocked me the most about her - she is SOO tiny, I mean the woman must wear a size - 0 - yep, so jealous of her!

Here is a video I took of Jon Scieszka introducing her:

Speaking of Jon Scieszka, we saw his presentation about "Guys Read" - he had lots of funny, inspiring things to say and told us some great stories about his family. I am telling you, my dream author dinner party would include this guy - and of course Mo Willems - and maybe take place in Mo's chalkboard dinning room... I have a feeling it would be one non-stop laugh fest! So boys, I am available anytime you are.....

My daughter got to hear one of her favorite authors, Lauren Myracle and we were introduced to Sara Shepard, the author of the pretty little liars series. She was also a teeny-tiny author - what, so do these woman not eat when they write?? - My daughter & I really enjoyed her talk and bought the first 2 books in the series.

Our last author of the day was David Levithan - he was just like I pictured him, kinda of a nerdy/hip New Yorker - he looks like some of the guys I went to college with actually! He read from Nick & Norah and also from his new book, Love is the Higher Law, a book I now MUST read! He also shared that he is writing a new book with Rachel Cohn and also writing a book with Mr. John Green - that is exciting news! He closed by giving us his current favorites he is listening to - wish I had written them down, I am always in the mood for some new music, especially when the suggestion comes from a hip New Yorker (which I am not!)

I wish I could have gone back today, but family duties interfered - can't wait until next year!

Odds & Ends

2009-09-01T09:14:00.007-04:00

Two very different links today - one from Buffy of the blog Unquiet Librarian - she is a high school media specialist in GA and is SO inspiring. She is teaching a web 2.0 class and her students have lots of LOVE for the library - read her post here - lots of inspiration for those days when you say - WHY do I do this??

On another, sad, note this article came to me today from SLJ about a district in California closing all their school libraries. This is SOO sad to me, not just from a professional aspect (is MY job in jeopardy one of these days?) but it saddens my heart. My guess is, the kids that these schools serve are the ones that NEED access to books and NEED to be taught by a librarian how to search and how to use a library and be shown how AWESOME libraries can be. I hope that somehow they can find the money to keep these libraries open.

And one more article.. one that made me YELL "Someone else gets it!!" after I read it. It is an essay by Susan Straight on the reading program AR (Accelerated Reader.) She says what I have believed for years and have told many a parent and teacher when I have been approached and asked "When is our school going to get AR?" I of course have other issues with it, including the cost and the time it takes to manage the system, but in my heart, the issue I have with it is exactly what Ms. Straight has with it, kids read for the points and are not reading for the pleasure of reading.

I had a tough end of the week last week dealing with some issues about working in a HUGE district and feeling like the "suits" just don't get it...just don't understand what it is like for us in the trenches. I am doing my best to get through my feelings and not blast the district, but it is times like these that I miss being in a small private school (of course I do not miss the small paycheck though). But I am determined to start this week out right. I am doing my LAST orientations this week and will finally get to what I love most about my job, story times and collaborative lessons with teachers - YAY!

Senator Kennedy

2009-08-27T08:41:00.005-04:00

I have had a bunch of things I wanted to post about, but there does not seem to be enough hours in my day (sigh). But, I wanted to remember the senator from my home state of Massachusetts, Senator Ted Kennedy who passed away on Tuesday night.

here is a great pictoral of his life on NPR

and here is what ALA has to say about him

and here is what my favorite team did for him last night

He had been Senator of Massachusetts since before I was born. His family, a large irish catholic family from Massachusetts, just like mine, was our version of royalty. Everyone I know has a Ted story, mine was seeing him in a hotel in Boston where I was waiting for my parents to show up for a college parents weekend, I was upset about something - and his son Teddy actually came over and said something to me - they were having a roast for Ted in the ballroom in the hotel that night.

He was an advocate for those who did not have a voice and no matter what his personal demons were, he was a true American and I for one am glad we had someone like that on our side.

image from the American Library association

My Media Center on Whrrl

2009-08-19T13:06:00.003-04:00

My friend Marlynn started using Whrrl on her blog/twitter/facebook to create photo stories and it seemed pretty cool so I thought I would try it out with a photo tour of my media center.

It was easy to use and I could post a link to it on twitter and facebook right after I saved my photo story. You can also send it out as an e-mail. I can see some definite uses in education and one of the best things - it is NOT BLOCKED (at least yet) on my school computer!

hope you enjoy my virtual tour

1st week wrap up

2009-08-14T23:07:00.000-04:00

my desk after a week of craziness!

It's been a week full of.. well.. lets just say it's been a typical 1st week of school full of surprises.

This week I have:

~ Started Monday's morning announcements (which are live on our close circuit tv) with a teleprompter that was out and an audio board that did not work very well - luckily I had 2 5th graders who did an AWESOME "on the fly" job with the announcements without any script at all!

~ Helped the administration put bus tags on ALL of our students backpacks - this involved running around our building and resulted in a big ol blister for me, I need to make a note NOT to wear cute new shoes on the first day next year!

~ Helped LOTS of children on and off buses - including one yesterday that was crying when I got him off the bus in the am and was STILL crying when I put him on the bus in the afternoon (you have to feel bad for THAT teacher!)

~ Worked lunch duty with first graders three days this week (so far, I haven't made any child cry yet, a new record for me and lunch duty!)

~ Finished my media center orientation video and started doing media center orientation for 5th grade classes.

~ Shot and edited a video with our PTA and Principal for Monday's curriculum night

~ Figured out on my own how to work some new equipment our county gave to our media center and gave us no training on - including a visual presenter, a high def. professional dvd recorder and a cd/dvd duplicator. Wrote and had laminated an instruction sheet for teachers on how to use the visual presenter.

~ Had a master's degree student observe me for the day

~ Straightened out my order for the Atlanta Journal newspaper

~ Talked to two 5th grade teachers about collaborating on lessons this year!

and finally....

~ Found out I was nominated by one of my colleagues here for our local schools' Teacher of the Year - now need to fill out more paperwork for the next round of nominations.

I also spent a lot of time after school at my sons football practices this week and managed to get into my first accident, a fender bender in the public library parking lot yesterday, no one was hurt but there was some damage to the other car.

So what a week it has been! I am ready for a weekend full of football games (youth football that is). So Go Eagles (my 8 yr old's team) and Go Hawks (my 13 yr old's team).

Happy New Year!

2009-08-09T08:53:00.003-04:00

No, No it's not January 1st, or even Rosh Hashanah, the new SCHOOL year starts tomorrow here in my little piece of Georgia and I always look at the first day of school as a new year, full of possibilities and full of potential.

Franki at Year of Reading has a great post up about her thoughts/goals for her school library this coming year, it has some great links and great ideas!

This year has started off with me feeling not quite ready and not quite connected. I think the 3-day furlough that our Governor required us to take has something to do with it. Even though I still came into school on one of the furlough days, our teachers seems to be scrambling and feeling overwhelmed and tired already - and of course those of us that live pay check to pay check are having to figure out how we will live minus the 3 days of pay. There is talk that more furlough days are coming in 2010 and that is making me nervous too.

I do have somethings planned this year that I am excited about - author visits, collaborating with a 5th grade teacher on some great research projects with her students, and a 40th birthday party for the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (which is the same age as I will turn in October!!) I am looking forward to trying out a Skype author visit (if I can get Skype to work in our school) and also starting a workshop after school for teachers on web 2.0 (this I still have to convince some people on!) I am REALLY looking forward to going to AASL in Charlotte in November with my good friend Tina. I have never been to an ALA conference so I am very excited about this!

Tomorrow morning I also send my own kids off to a new school year. My oldest is in his last year of middle school (8th grade), my daughter is in her first year of middle school (6th grade) and is quite nervous about it and my youngest is going into 3rd grade at my school. Having grown up in Massachusetts, it does seem a bit weird to be going back to school in August, when the temps are still in the 90's here! Afternoon bus duty tomorrow is gonna be HOT!

I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite movies of all time, You've Got Mail

"Don't you just love fall in New York it makes me want to buy school supplies"- Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail.

Wordle

2009-08-03T16:39:00.003-04:00

Been meaning to try this all summer, finally getting around to playing with it -

check out my first attempt

trying to print it, but having trouble, wonder if it is one of those things that is not totally compatible with Safari?

Music & Science - Don't worry Be Happy!

2009-08-03T08:23:00.002-04:00

I found this great video at Dr. Tim Tyson's blog, Practical Practice. I love that Bobby McFerrin - the Don't Worry Be Happy guy is at a science conference!

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

I am off to get a little work done at school - I should be sitting in a meeting right now at school, but today and tomorrow are our furlough days. I am lucky that my principal has opened our building, the bad news is, the a/c is off - so I won't be there long!!

Getting Ready..

2009-07-29T23:07:00.003-04:00

I have spent the last few days at school, ordering supplies, moving furniture and starting to think about lessons and plans for the upcoming year. I love being at school when it is fairly quiet, I get SO much done, but I really can't wait to have the kids back!

In a follow up to last weeks post about too much technology, I had a technological encounter that made me think that all this technology IS worth it, although maybe in smaller doses.

One of my followers on Twitter gave a @ shout out to one of her followers, someone I did not know, but thought I would check her out. So I followed her (buffyjhamilton) and then when I went to her Twitter page, I noticed she had a blog - so I checked it out and - wow - I found another Georgia Media Specialist. The blog is The Unquiet Librarian , and she has a great blog post up now about how she put together back to school packets for her teachers. Of course this inspired me and although I don't have time to get free stuff from vendors like she did, I am working on getting something similar together for my teachers - so thanks Buffy for the ideas!!

So many of the teachers and librarians I am following on Twitter seem to be using Twitter in schools, even if it is just using it as a networking tool or as a notification tool for parents/students. My problem with this is, Twitter and all social networking tools are blocked on our district servers. While I am glad that Facebook is blocked (would be WAY to tempting for me during the day), I do see the benefit of using Twitter and other social networking sites (Flickr is another one that would be great to use in schools). So how do I go about preaching to the technology powers that be in my district to unblock these sites?

I am thinking of offering a Web 2.0 workshop for some of my teachers - basically just to teach them some basics of blogging, podcasting, what social networks are and how to Tweet, I just don't know how I can do this without access to most of these sites at school.

Back to school tomorrow to work on the studio and make sure all is up and running for the first day of school broadcast!