Blessed to Teach and Read

Oh my goodness!  I found a draft of a blog post from back when I got my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.  I was so excited and relieved to receive it!  I was proudly, fully vaccinated as of mid-March.  In the original draft, started a summary run-down of all the lessons I had been doing with students, but only managed to get through kindergarten and first grade.  To the draft, I added on what I did with students for the rest of spring 2021.   I do have to say, I am so proud of all of teachers everywhere for our efforts, our love, our devotion, and our perseverance in the face of truly difficult times this school year.  We made it to the end of a year to be proud of, building relationships, teaching students, and growing as professionals! Without further ado, here are my lessons: Kindergarten:   We made puppets of Kevin Henkes' characters from Egg,  after reading the book together and learning about how he uses his typewriter, his S...

Another great year is in the books!  Am already looking ahead toward next year, gathering ideas for genrifying sections of our library, but am definitely taking some time to relax, restore, and spend time with family.   Here's a brief overview of happenings from March to May: Thanks to the VERY supportive parents of our school, we held our Spring Follett Book Fair.  (I helped decorate a bit.)  While the set-up was super easy and they give 30% cash, we've decided to go back to Scholastic Book Fairs, until they build more Follett distribution centers near us, and/or hire more staff.  We missed having a regional person on-site, to ensure that we were getting the books we needed.     I continued on with monthly Biblionasium Challenges, ending in the grand prize giveaway of 2 Paperwhite Kindles, donated by our local Zaxby's.   Loads of more lessons for my K-5 kiddos, with an emphasis on a variety different authors:...

No need to have watched or read Marie Kondo's "Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up".  I have a hoarder for a husband, and I LOVE to purge stuff.  I've begun weeding our "E" for everybody picture book section. It's astonishing how many of our books from 2002-2003 are still on the shelves, having never been checked out, even once, or less than once a year over the past 16 years our school has been open. Our County Head of Media Specialists, Kristen Deuschle, shared about a local charity, Reaping Nature , which will donate our weeded materials to needy schools in our county.  Perfect! As I've been consulting the Historical Report and looking through each story to decide its fate, I've had more ideas churn up.  Definitely planning on beginning to genrify the fiction section next year, but WHAT IF I also made an "Upper Elementary" picture book section???  I already started the "ECH" Early Chapter books section and "Easy Reader...

Guess what?!? When eating at Your Pie in Suwanee, I saw an advertisement in the side of the napkin dispenser. It got me to thinking, 'Do our school napkin dispensers have this feature?  How could I leverage that into getting my students to read even more?'  It turns out that our Cafeteria Manager, Mrs. Mathis, is cool with me having students share their book reviews in the sides of our cafeteria napkin dispensers!  So, I pulled typed, book reviews that students had already submitted on Biblionasium, and formatted them to fit.  I added a picture of the book cover with the students' name, teacher, and grade.  I emailed their teachers to send them down for a photo to share on our school's Twitter feed, #SharonStrong.  Fingers crossed more students take the time to write an engaging book review to share with the school!   I set up a Biblionasium challenge for Newberry books where students have to read and log 10 of 25 Newberry winning book...

I got creative this month by moving loads of dictionaries to the teacher resource closet, and by turfing some paperback dictionaries that should have gone home with third graders in years past.  By clearing out an extra set of shelves, I was able to make the nook below for more display space.  I put the Valentine books there, so that I didn't have to move or take down our Black History Month book display.  (I got to put out "Love Letters" by Adoff Arnold - My absolute favorite!   Someone already checked it out.) (Only a third of the books we have on display) I added this "I love our library because..." interactive display to encourage students to fill in hearts with their reasons for loving our library.  The small print tells students that I will use their paper hearts for our "Read Across America" display.  I've already received lots of great responses!   While working at our Forsyth County Technology Fair on Saturday, Ja...