Blessed to Teach and Read

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:...

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...

In the summertime, I usually follow this pattern:  stay up super late into the wee hours of the morning, sleep in until around 10 a.m., and then mill about all day.  As the days tick by, I then stop knowing what day or date it is and stop remembering the things that are told to me.  My husband and I go for a week to some beach, and I typically spend a week at home in Alabama with my family.  I do try out lots of new recipes from my Pinterest board, and I do catch up on reading all the books I want. I also stress out a bit about the impending school year, knowing that 40+ hour weeks lie ahead of me, yes, even as a librarian!  But typically, the highlight of my day is going to the mailbox to get the mail.  Three glorious minutes in the sunshine. However, this summer is completely unlike any of the ones before.  My husband, Michael Daniels , is currently out of a job due to a lay off.  He has been out of work since April.  We decided to put hi...

What's that?  Don't know what a modal auxillary is?  Neither did I, or at least I didn't know I knew what one was.  (a random and new Common Core Standard)  It's those verbs like Can I help you?  Should you take a jacket?  May I get some water?   While I did get a great free Powerpoint on Teachers pay Teachers from Eileen Mays in Eatonton, Georgia , it was trusty Pinterest to the rescue.  Virginia Chronakis' pin via Diane Rodrigues' pin led me to an ESL worksheets site, iSLCOLLECTIVE .  I chose "English" as my primary language, but they seem to have to have grammar worksheets for multiple other languages.  Simply create a free account, and begin downloading everything you could ever need.  You can also create and upload items to share and give back.  

While casually checking my Pinterest page for new recipes, I, of course, can't resist the urge to click on a pin that says " Science and Math Toys " that are made from everyday items. In turn, that linked me to a LiveBinders page created by Karen Bolotin for science fair projects. THAT, then led me to " Notebooking Pages.com " = total excitement for the interactive note booking part of me. :) Membership access to all of their pages is $80 for the year, but I've spent well more than that at TeachersPayTeachers and in my time spent looking for quality resources and ideas online. Now, I've got even more incentive to encourage my kids to get pledges for Fun Run Time this year (our school's fundraiser for the year), since I had originally thought I would spend my 10% of monies raised on a membership for Flocabulary . I may have to reconsider and get this membership instead, though my kids did LOVE " 5 Things " by Flocabulary.

Whoo! Another find from Pinterest. Here is a site with games linked to common core standards. While I'm entirely sure that the Expressions part of the math text we adopted several years ago will excellently support the new common core standards, it is always nice to have additional resources for parent volunteer centers or small group remediation games. I also like the list of math read aloud titles. There are also links to free online games that support standards too. It's nice to find so many resources all in one place!

Our school has just kicked off 2 weeks of raising funds through Fund Runners . They are giving away 1 iPad to a teacher. Teachers get a raffle ticket for every $1,000 pledged to students for running laps. So, when I saw this picture from a blog called Langwitches , I knew I had to share it with my Sharon Elementary friends and with anyone else who reads this blog. It is too cute and applicable not to share! I also love that Blooming Butterfly poster! Of course, I found it on Pinterest, my favorite place on the internet.

Actually found Vocabulary Flash Cards website from Pinterest instead of Twitter. Love how cute and vivid the pictures are on each card! Wonder if our school could use one of these on the morning news every day instead of the slide with definition, sentence, and no picture. I bet kids would pay A LOT more attention to the "Word of the Day". :)