Author Visit - Matt Tavares

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

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..

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!

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!

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!

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!

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.