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 books from 1994 - 2018. Zaxby's has donated free kids' meal cards for prizes, and will be giving us a Kindle to use as a grand prize! Students who read and complete Biblionasium challenges will be entered to win! I set up an October Challenge, where students read 3 mystery genre chapter books or novels.
I have plans to post a new challenge each month.
Then, I also found loads of unwanted leveled readers, and snagged them for a new "what to do if you've got a book overdue". Saw this cute idea on Pinterest, so I slapped some duct tape on the spine, and put them out. In just 3 days, I've already had 2 different kids opt to take one when they couldn't check out due to overdue books. It's not exactly what they wanted, but it's better than leaving empty-handed.
In 1st and 5th grade, we've started doing some Digital Citizenship Lessons. First grade did a Nearpod lesson (pictured below) to explore a website to determine which features of that website they liked or disliked. In our next lesson, we looked at PebbleGo and Britannica School, first to learn how to navigate to those databases, and second, to explore the different features of each database. LOVE first graders and how excited they are to learn and do more!
Fifth grade has been working on evaluating online sources, looking at the domain for trustworthiness, locating an author or publisher, and checking the source for links to valid sources that don't have bias. Then in our next lesson, we practiced how to search online, for those times we are away from school, and have a question we think Google can answer. ;) They LOVED seeing who could put together a search phrase that came back with the least, most valid sources. Adding parentheses, + or - signs, "OR", or searching synonyms were just a few of the things they tried to narrow their results.
In kindergarten, we've been reviewing different types of nonfiction materials (newspaper, magazine, cookbook, how-to, and descriptive). In 3rd and 4th grade, we've been reviewing different types of reference materials (dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, and almanac).
And, in 2nd grade, we've been learning about author, Grace Lin's life, her inspiration for illustrating and writing, and how she has books for all ages. Each class has watched a bit of an interview from Reading Rockets, so they hear her voice and listen to her talk about the importance of "writing what you know". On GraceLin.com, we explored her studio, and saw her many sketch books and writer's notebooks! We learned about her family and her book characters.
Update on my personal GoodReads Book Challenge: I'm up to 38 of my 100 books goal for 2018. Read "Superfreakonomics" and "Think Like a Freak" over fall break.
This is so cool.... Am sure the students will love this great addition
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