It's not abnormal for me to only post twice a year, but this school year, I purposefully took a hiatus from this blog. I took a step back from trying to maintain this piece of my library program along with my monthly, library newsletter, because I wasn't going to keep putting work before my family. I took self-care seriously as we rolled into the 2021-2022 school year, and set some boundaries that I hope to maintain, should we ever get out of this pandemic.
First semester, I do have to share that I had the students make the most beautiful Dot Day display that we have ever made! I bought and gave each student a small, round, paper plate. The only instructions I gave were to choose a color family and be creative. Thanks to the help of a couple of substitutes and several 5th grade helpers (Castle Apprentices), I was able to get the whole thing taped to the walls. Several teachers begged me to leave the display up for after fall break, so I did!
Other highlights include me trying harder to include content standards in my lessons, such as helping kindergarteners practice setting and character analysis with cut-and-paste or guided drawings. Other grades did lots of STEM learning cycles where they planned a design, tested it out, recorded the results, and worked to iteratively redesign and then retest their builds. We used a lot of TeacherGeek's materials and ideas!
Thanks to PTO volunteers and staff, we held an in-person Scholastic Book Fair (in the library - First time in almost a decade that the fair was in the actual library!) and raised a lot of funds to buy more books! The proceeds helped us start a board books section for our pre-K and Kindergarten students. Our literacy committee approved the titles we selected from the fair. They also approved a large order that we received just in time for January birthday book star participants.
Finally, I was privileged to attend Georgia's Educational Technology Conference this fall - in-person! I got to spend time with job-alike colleagues and learn about new tech tools that our library may want to invest in, such as Merge cubes for augmented reality or Chibitronics for hands-on coding with circuits.
I'm looking forward to the lesson plans that I will hopefully get to do with students, if/when they come back for in-person learning. I'm doing Cubetto coding with kindergarten and also helping them create their own ABC book in Wixie. Our 5th graders will also learn and practice coding skills with BrainPop's creative coding about the New Deal. In 1st grade, we'll be doing some quick research on 3 animals and adding creative adaptations so that we can create a rock, paper, scissors-type game to stretch our brains. In 2nd grade, students will learn how to make an infographic with Google Drawings to practice a bunch of different skills: paraphrase, cite sources, select fonts and appropriate colors, and align and format icons. Similarly, in 4th grade, students are going to research someone for either Black History Month or for Women's Herstory Month, for our upcoming library bulletin boards. They will create a Google Drawing of information to also practice paraphrasing, citing sources, and organizing information in a visually pleasing and appropriate format. Finally, in 3rd grade, students will be taking a short VR trip to China to practice retelling a folktale with the whole class. Then students will work with a partner to create a Wixie bookcover retelling and a video recording of the morale, lesson, or central message of the book they choose.
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