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:...

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...

November flew by quickly!  My New York and Alabama family were here to visit for the week-long, Thanksgiving break.  We made some fun memories together, and I cooked the biggest meal of my life! After they left, we promptly put up our Christmas tree. :D Before it snowballs into December, here's a catch-up of all that I've been up to at work this past month with my students: Kindergarten has been reviewing and learning about plot elements: Character (who or what the story is about), Setting (where and when the story takes place), and Plot (the events in the story).  Then I showed them the Early Reader shelves in the "E" for Everybody section, to encourage them to get a book that they will definitely be able to read to themselves. First grade has been practicing locating books in the "E" section by looking at the shelf labels and looking at the book spines.  It's a work-in-progress, and something we'll definitely be practicing again this yea...

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'm doing it!  I'm posting before it's been 6 months! Haha!   I've been posting new books to our school's #SharonStrong as often as I can, to promote the new books we have purchased.   Through promoting our new books, author Ame Dyckman, saw one of my posts, contacted me, and sent our school enough "Misunderstood Shark" bookmarks and stickers, so that each child at school got both!  I posted her letters up next to our bulletin board.  The kids LOVED them, and continue to love reading her stories! And, before our county subscription to TeachingBooks.net ended, I entered a book contest and won this book for our school!  It's going into our Professional Library, since it's a paperback.   C.A.S.T.L.E. (Collaborative and Social Technology Learning Environment, also known as the library) Apprentices, or 5th grade helpers, have started working to create our monthly bulletin board and shelf display.  They're doing a...