More Fun With Library Signage

After several requests, it became clear to me that there was interest in more of the library signs I put together yesterday.  Above is the one with Katniss from The Hunger Games.  The rest of the signs will follow.

I like to mix these up over the course of the school year, so there is something fresh every couple of weeks as they come in to class and to check out a new book. 

For each of the ones featured here, if you click on the picture, it should take you to a larger size that you could print off for your own classroom.

As I make more of these for my library, I'll try to share them for other teachers to be able to use them as well.  Am trying to come up with signs that will work for a broad range of ages -- from preK-3 to 6th graders -- and will also catch their interest in reading. 

I would like to come up with more literary-related ideas as well, so if you have a book character you'd like to suggest, I'll see if I can put something fun together in terms of a reading promotion sign.

Pottering Around

Toward the end of the school year, the kids get a little restless:  the weather warms, the sunshine beckons, and keeping a classroom full of pre-adolescents engaged can be rough on the best of days.  This year, after so much snow and ice and arctic blasts of deadly frigid air and cabin fever, that is proving to be true already.

They simply want to be outside in the fresh air.

Frankly, I can't blame them, because I feel the same way.  This winter has been brutal, and we are all longing for some flowers and leaves and fun.

So, in anticipation of this summer break antsy pantsy-ness only growing as the calendar moves forward, I am planning a bit of fun for the end of school that will, I hope, keep everyone engaged while we attempt to still learn a little something.  If nothing else, I'll have some fun with it, but I do hope the kids do as well.

We had planned on having a Harry Potter party for The Peanut this year for her 11th birthday.   While we were at Universal on vacation, we picked up some fun items to use for invitations that you can only get in Hogsmeade, and had planned a surprise way to deliver the invitations by "owl post."  (Bless you, people on Pinterest, for your genius ideas!)

Rather than let all my pins and internal planning go to waste, I've decided to use it for the amusement of my class instead.  Will be posting some ideas as I firm them up, but I wanted to throw out to the crowd the fact that I'm looking for some great, educational ways to use the Harry Potter theme in the classroom over a two week stretch.

Figuring the last two weeks of the year will be a lost cause, am trying to come up with a way to make that not be the case.  Perhaps it is naive of me to think this can be accomplished, but you can't blame a girl for trying, can you?

Any thoughts on ways to do actual lesson planning in a Harry Potter context?

Am thinking about setting this up so that they have "wizarding" classes each day instead of our regular ones.  But I haven't quite figured out how to morph our regular classes into the wizarding ones just yet.  Things I have contemplated thus far:

Library Lesson Plan: Kevin Henkes And Chrysanthemum

Today has been a big project on Kevin Henkes wonderful book, Chrysanthemum. I have wanted to do a library unit on this book for a while because it is such a wonderful read

It also presents a lot of opportunities for in class discussions for younger and older kids alike, opening a number of intriguing avenues for kids to stop and really think:  about actions and consequences, about their own feelings and those of other people as well, about the incredibly clever use of language that Kevin Henkes incorporates in this book in terms of description and action, and all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces.

For my younger students, I found a wonderfully put together discussion packet on story elements and construction that we'll use.  You can download it for free at Teachers Pay Teachers, and print it off to use for your own classes, too.  (Don't you love the word "free"?)

I am also working on a poster-sized drawing of Chrysanthemum, which I will use to talk about Henkes' wonderfully descriptive language and about good and bad behaviors and choices of the various characters in the book.

An example of something similarly done can be found at Pencils, Glue and Tying Shoes -- loved this poster, and am doing a similar one for my classroom.  But I'll be using some post-it notes that I found that are already die-cut in the shape of flowers to show "good" versus "bad" words from the story, in some form or another (still working on just how I will do this).

But for my older students, I wanted a discussion that was more in depth.  Since I couldn't find exactly what I wanted anywhere online, I created my own little lesson bits and pieces.  Thought they might be a useful jumping off point for others out there as well.

Library Reading Promotion: Adorable Westie "Hot Reads" Sign

Putting our adorable westie to work for my library, this is my latest reading promotion idea.  If nothing else, it will get the kids to ooh and ahh at the adorableness of the westie and perhaps take a peek at the books on either side of the sign.

Here's hoping!

Am planning on placing a couple of books out each week -- one for early readers, one for older ones -- on book stands that will showcase the books for the kids, along with the adorable pooch sign above.  As much as possible, I want to use books that I have read, so if the kids have questions I will be able to talk from my own reading experience.

I do genuinely try to make an effort to read as many books as possible in our library so that I honestly can speak from my own reading experience with the students.  I find that an authentic, personal recommendation always works better than an "I've heard it is good" variety, especially with the older kids who like to talk about the book as they are reading and find it annoying to have to catch me up.

By switching the recommended books out weekly or bi-weekly (depending on how much time I have to throw together book talks on the fly as the school year gets rolling), I am really hoping it will allow for a bit more interest from the kids about the books that are highlighted.  Because it will allow me a short book talk about the books with my classes as well, we can also discuss information about genres, authors, series, and all sorts of other assorted goodies along the way.

I got the sign idea from the wonderful Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers by Steven Layne.  There are so many great ideas for reading promotion in this book, and I find myself referring back to it often for another spark of inspiration in a classroom activity or to try to help a reluctant reader find some enthusiasm.

Thought this might be a fun idea for others to use, too.

Pondering Chrysanthemum

Kevin Henkes, one of my favorite children's book authors, wrote a wonderful tale about a little mouse named Chrysanthemum that I absolutely love.  In the book, there are great examples of teasing which open up an entire avenue of discussion with kids about how they feel when they get teased or bullied, and what behavior is and is not acceptable and why.

It is a short story, filled with lovely little pictures, and a lot of meaning built into a very simple little storyline:  Chrysanthemum loves her name until the other kids start to tease her about it being different, and then she feels badly and hurt and ashamed, until her teacher tells her how wonderful it is to have a unique name...and then things get better.  It is the sort of short story that makes for a wonderful start to the year, if the kids all take it to heart, because you can then refer back to it when a student is acting badly in a "remember how that made Chrysanthemum feel" sort of way.

I have been thinking about using Chrysanthemum as my beginning of the year story for my classes for that reason. 

But how to use it effectively is the question, as a lead in for the classroom rules and as a larger discussion about making smarter choices in and out of school.

Mythology Morning

Feeling pretty proud of myself this morning: woke up and put together a card matching game of mythological monsters from Greek myths, complete with illustrative pictures.  Have been working on lesson plans all week and trying to come up with fun ways to get my students excited about this mythology unit.

I also plan to put together a Jeopardy game using a cheapie shower curtain liner, some 3x5 cards and ziploc baggies.  But that may have to wait until after I have gotten my room ready for Open House next week.

Dusting, organizing and decorating my classroom have to take priority for the moment. 

It is the final sprint to the start of the school year.  It is going to be so great to see all the kids and get back into my normal routine after this summer of chemo.  I miss what used to be normal, and it is high time I reclaimed some of that equilibrium that I used to take for granted.

In the meantime, though, I'll be putting together some more ideas for teaching my 4th, 5th and 6th graders about mythology.  Thank you, Rick Riordan, for your brilliant Percy Jackson series.  

If I play my teaching cards right, I'm going to have a whole lot of kids reading it this year.  That would make me very happy indeed.

Library Unit On Greek Mythology

The second Percy Jackson movie will open in theaters on August 7th, just before school begins this year.  For an elementary school librarian, this is an event that needs to be used well, because it presents a fantastic opportunity for capitalizing on the interest bandwagon among the 4th, 5th and 6th graders about Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series as well as the underlying mythology stories and characters that permeate the books.

Doesn't it just scream book promotion and myth teaching for the older kids?

Especially if you add in the upcoming winter Olympics, and its roots in Ancient Greece and competition for the favor of the gods.  That is some fascinating history in its own right.

Over the last couple of weeks (as my chemo brain has allowed), I have been planning a multi-week unit to discuss Greek and Roman mythology, as well as to introduce the students to some other myths from around the world.  Am trying to piece this together so that we read a myth together and then work on activities and worksheets to further deepen their understanding of the myth, as well as how it has been used over the years as a story to impact behavior or as a warning or whatever else might be an underlying theme.

What I am hoping to do is have the kids put together their own notebook as we go through this over the course of a few weeks.  Each myth would have its own section for crafts, worksheets, and a copy of a story summary for each one.  That way, at the end of the entire process, they would have their own book of mythology that they built themselves.

There is so much new vocabulary in a lot of these stories, words that we pull from the original Greek and Roman myths that are used every day -- that alone is worth teaching all of this, I think. 

In putting all of this together, I have found some wonderful resources:

-- Literature Pockets, Greek and Roman Myths, Grades 4-6: for the Medusa craft and the Apollo poem and sun wheel craft alone, this is so worth it.  But it also has some great vocabulary worksheets and story summaries that I'll be using as well.

--Greek Mythology Activities: Activities to Help Students Build Background Knowledge About Ancient Greece, Explore the Genre of Myths, and Learn Important Vocabulary: this has a fantastic alphabetical listing of all of the Greek gods, complete with illustrations and some wonderful game and activity ideas as well.

A Summer Filled With Wonder?

As May whizzes by me, heading directly toward June and the end of the school year, I have begun to contemplate what our summer might look like this year.

That's a bit difficult to do, mind you, because I still haven't gotten my test results back from the additional oncotype testing on the tumor that was removed, and thus still have no idea whether I'll be facing chemo or radiation next...makes it incredibly difficult to plan a summer's worth of activities for my 10 year old when I can't even make treatment plans for myself.

But because I am a planner, I'm trying to at least come up with some back-up options nonetheless.  Just in case.  And mostly because I fear we'll be stuck inside a lot due to me being exhausted from whatever treatment is thrown my way, and I want to have some fun things on hand to mitigate the eternal boredom of my wee girlie should the issue arise.

Or, at the very least, figure out some outdoorsy things we can do that won't require an enormous expenditure of energy for me.  Picnics spring to mind or outdoor tea parties or something like that, perhaps.

On my Pinterest page, I've been collecting ideas on my "Fun With My Daughter" board, and also on my "Fun and Crafty" board.  I'll be collecting ideas in earnest this week and hope to have some great possibilities to share with everyone over the weekend.

One thing we will almost certainly do at some point, and something we have done before, is a little Alice in Wonderland themed tea party.  It's our own little "girls night" ritual on evenings when dad is out of town, and The Peanut still loves to just hang out with tea sandwiches and conversation when we get time (free time hasn't been frequent of late, let me tell you, which is a really good reason to try ad make this happen a little more regularly this summer).  Our oldest niece is coming out to stay with us for a few weeks this summer, so perhaps we'll wait until she gets here and have a "tea for three" party instead.

Marooned

The Peanut just finished reading The Swiss Family Robinson, in its original version and not via some abridged one.  She loved it.

So this morning, we are watching the Disney movie version. I'm expecting a lot of "Hey, that wasn't in the book!"

It's the little things, isn't it?

Hope your day is a good one.

Lessons From Library Mouse

Yesterday, I put my Library Mouse lesson plan into action. This was all based on our reading the book Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk in our last week's library classes during their story time. This week, my kindergarten, first and second grade classes all got to write their very own book.

When they entered the library, they were greeted by the display above and we all read the note from Library Mouse together and talked about what they got to do that day.   As you can imagine, there was a lot of excitement.

Then I called each child up one by one to pick up their book and little pencil and they got to take a look at the mirror inside -- just like Library Mouse did for the children in his library in the book.

Here is what it looked like when it was opened a bit:

Library Mouse: A Lesson Plan

Over the weekend, we went to Pittsburgh for my birthday and had a lot of fun.  While we were there we went to see Mary Poppins -- which was wonderful -- and did a lot of other fun stuff as well.

One of the things we did was to visit Ikea, which is fast becoming one of my favorite places to find fun stuff for the school library.   And boy did a find some awesome treasures this trip!

Last week, I read Library Mouse to my kindergarten, first and second graders.  It was, as always, an absolutely enchanting read for everyone.  The kids adore the story, and love to think about a tiny little mouse being an author because that translates so well to them being an author, too.

After I read the story to one class, I caught a little boy peering around the baseboards trying to find the library mouse hole in our own library.  Too cute!

My idea for this week's lesson plan was to make some one-page books for the kids, so that they, too, could write a book and illustrate it just like Library Mouse.  You can find some easy directions to make a one-page book here.  I'll be making more than 60 of them over the next couple of days.

Too cute, right?  Just you wait.

Building An Enthusiastic Reader

This morning, The Peanut woke up for school when her alarm went off, brushed her teeth, got dressed, fussed with her hair a little bit...and then crawled right back into bed to read for another half an hour.

Her father, thinking she hadn't gotten up at all, rushed upstairs to get her moving only to find her nose completely buried in the Percy Jackson series.  Which is how she was last night, too, when we had to make her turn her lights out and go to sleep.

It really is every parent's dream to build an enthusiastic reader, isn't it?  But how do you do it?

I don't have the answer for every child, but in terms of my own child I do think this was key:  we have been reading to her and with her since she was tiny.  We never went anywhere without a book -- in the diaper bag, in the back seat of the car within reach of her car seat when she was younger, all over our house in every room, fairy tales on my kindle, good stories crammed on her bookshelves in her own room...first in board books and later in regular books and then on her own kindle.

We wanted her to know that reading is important to us, so that it will also be important to her...and from the earliest age. 

Both of us are big readers -- we read every night before bedtime, and have made it a point to let The Peanut crawl in bed and read with us fairly often.  Also, during the summer on hot and humid afternoons when being outside in the sweltering haze is miserable, she and I will crawl onto the king-sized master bed and enjoy some reading time in the air conditioned splendor together.

Also, each summer, The Peanut and I pick out a book to read together -- something that might have been a big reach for her when she was smaller, but that was a wonderful story.  One summer it was The Cricket in Times Square -- we happened to be taking a trip to New York City that summer, to tag along with daddy to a conference, and I wanted to introduce her to the hum and rattle of the city and the subways before we got there. She loved it, and we spent the time in New York periodically looking for lost crickets, which was very fun indeed for wee girlies.

Another year, it was The Borrowers, a story that I highly recommend reading aloud together. At the time we read it, the vocabulary would have been well past where The Peanut was, but by reading it together she got a wonderful story and a built-in personal dictionary and context explainer right there in the chair next to her, and that was both handy and cozy.

Reader Interest Inventory

One of my favorite start of the year things is my Reader Interest Inventory.  The kids moan and groan having to fill it out, but really love getting personalized feedback from it once I've had time to read and digest their information.

I've pasted the contents of my Reading Interest Inventory form below, as well as my response letter form that I'll be using this year.  Thought it might be helpful for others who are considering doing something like this at their own library.

I put my forms together using some that I found here and there online last year, but culled most of the questions from two wonderful books.  I highly recommend every teacher who has anything to do with literature or library programs get these books and read them -- they have opened my mind up to outside-the-box possibilities and seeing reading fresh through the eyes of my students and not just my own.  They are:

-- The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers

-- The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

Superb reading on an incredibly important topic. Worth a lot of reading and discussion among all of us, including with parents and lawmakers.

It took a while to tweak my form to get it just right for my particular batch of kids and age groups, but once I did that I had to figure out what to do.  Here's how my Reading Interest Inventory works:

At the very beginning of the school year, I have the kids in grades Third through Sixth fill out a Reading Interest Inventory form.

Re-Thinking My Library Lesson Plans

Before the end of the school year, one of the things all teachers at my school had to complete was a full evaluation of their individual classroom curriculum compared to the state curriculum standards requirements.  (West Virginia's state standards requirements can be found here.)

For regular classroom teachers, it was a huge undertaking -- covering every single subject in the broad swath of their teaching requirements for each grade, from math to reading to social studies and beyond.   In my case, I was covering just the library curriculum standards because I only teach that one area at school, but it still ended up being a humongous undertaking.  My full analysis, for K through 6th, typed up was close to 80 pages long -- yikes!

But having gone through the entirety of what the state requirements are at each grade level?  I am now faced with a wholesale revamping of my lesson plans from last year to be certain we are meeting those standards to the extent possible.

It is a daunting revision, not least of which because I just built those lesson plans last year from scratch for my first year of teaching.  And now?  I'll be re-doing the whole of them to improve on what we did last year with the state standards requirements in mind.

Summer Reading

It is the first full day of summer break for me, having finished the year with meetings and a very nice luncheon yesterday.

This is what The Peanut has been doing with her morning thus far.

I know. 

We have spawned an avid reader and it is awesome.  I cannot begin to tell you how happy this makes me, that she has her nose in a book whenever possible without having to be prompted or forced into it.

When asked the other day how she became such a good reader, her reply to another adult we know was instructive:  "It's what we do in my family.  We all love to read."

My Tissue Paper Flower Obsession

I have a confession: I am obsessed with learning how to make a really beautiful tissue paper flower.

Not just an every day, run of the mill, sad little wilty approximation, either. 

A really bountiful, full, beautifully crafted and colorfully awesome one.  The kind that make you gasp when you see them because the colors are so vivid and the tissue paper is so perfectly molded into a flower form.

I woke up this morning thinking about this, after having a dream last night about how to decorate the library is a gorgeously lush Alice in Wonderland theme. 

There is clearly something wrong with me.

Last day of official school for me today.  Perhaps a few days of summer vacation are a really good idea.  What do you think?

Books To Love: The Borrowers

The Peanut and I choose a different book every summer as "our book," and we read a chapter or so in the heat of the afternoon in the master bedroom, snuggled comfortably in the air conditioning on the big, king-sized bed, reveling in the glorious lazy goodness of summer and excellent storytelling.

We have done this each summer since she was small.  And it is something we look forward to now each year when school is out.  We haven't yet selected this year's story, although I am thinking The Secret Garden may be a good pick, or perhaps Treasure Island.  But it could also be one of the Harry Potter books that she hasn't yet read (she's somewhere in the middle of the series, along with reading a bunch of other books at the same time).

The key is to pick a book that has a really good story that will pull her along day in and day out and make her drag me to read aloud again.  I know that I've hooked her when she is begging for more story the moment she wakes up.

Two summers ago, our read together book was The Borrowers by Mary Norton.  And it was just such a book.

Even now, two years later, she still talks about scenes from The Borrowers. And wants to make presents for The Borrowers in our own house that she is convinced we must have.  Her reasoning?  "Our house is 109 years old, how could we not?"  You can't really argue with that.

Last summer, Studio Ghibli released The Secret World of Arrietty. At our house, it was a much anticipated film, because The Borrowers is all about Arrietty, her family and her world, and the adventures she has trying to stay out of sight from humans while still being close enough to them to borrow what her family needs.

While the movie is enchanting, as pretty much all Ghibli offerings are given Miyazake's amazing gift of storytelling and visual art, it just isn't as good as the original book from whence it came.  If you haven't yet read The Borrowers, you really should -- it is fabulous.

There are several books in the Borrowers series, and we haven't yet read them all, so perhaps this summer will be more of a series read.

What's your read aloud for your kids lately?  We're always looking for our next good read...

Reading Really Is Fundamental

For the last few days, I have been working on a reading list for students to spur a little summer reading.

At the school where I teach, each teacher hands out a "summer reading" requirement list of 4 or 5 books (sometimes more, depending on grade level and type of books) that the kids are expected to read prior to the start of the next term.

For my lists though, I'm striving to come up with something that makes reading seem fun -- I want to hook the kids into books from now through the rest of their lives.  And to do that, they have to want to pick up the books and read.

I'm wondering:  if you were making a list of books that kids ought to read for fun, especially for reluctant readers in the age range of 6 through 13, what would your top 5 books be?


How about if you were making a list of books these kids ought to read before they go to college, what would your top 5 books be?

And, finally, when you were a kid, what was the book that hooked you on reading?  Do you remember it?



It's funny because there are always differing opinions on what is great reading and what is crapola, although there are some books that almost always make the list for everyone when I talk with them about this.  For each child, book recommendations are going to be different based on their own, individual interests, obviously.  But there are certain constants that are classics that everyone generally reads...and for good reason.  Those are the gems I'm trying to mine.

I ask the above questions because I'm working on some end of the year things for the library.

It is a thrilling thing to have a parent say to you that their child is reading so much more because of some effort you have made.  I'm hoping to help create more readers in the years to come.

Bits And Pieces From A Busy Librarian

It's been a busy couple of days, and I have neglected the blog shamefully.  Mea culpa, gang.

Wednesday was a teaching day, and it was a hot, sweaty sprint from start to finish.  If anyone has some tips on dealing with kids who have a serious case of "summer-itis," I'd love to hear them.  My management skills are being tested and, since it is my first year, I'm a little worried that I'm not doing everything I can to succeed.  I'd love suggestions on what worked for you in the past in terms of classroom management as the term comes to a close.

Thursday, I drove a couple of hours south of here to Charleston, WV, because Scholastic was having a huge book warehouse sale.  They had books marked down from 25%, 50% even a "scratch and dent" shelf where really great books with something like a crease in the cover or a tiny tear were selling for $1 or $2 each.

I managed to pick up 46 books -- some hard backed, some classics, several nature/science/animal, lots of beloved series, and a few new picture books for story time -- for less than $130.  Woo hoo!

Slowly but surely, our little library collection is growing and older, battered books are being replaced with newer copies.  It certainly takes a while, doesn't it?

Books To Love: The Sisters Grimm

Sometimes, you find a series of books that are so awesome, you wish you'd written them yourself.

That is true in spades for The Sisters Grimm.

We bought the first book in the series over spring break two weeks ago.  I am now on the last book of the series -- Book 9.  And The Peanut?  Is halfway through Book 6 and chugging away.

UPDATE:  The Peanut finished the 6th book while I was working on this post -- she read it in less than 24 hours even though it is a 304 page book! -- and is already chugging through Book 7 while munching on a peanut butter sandwich for lunch.  I love these books!!

These books are absolutely going in the school library when we are done with them.  The series is fantastic.

Long story short, two sisters appear to be orphaned by parents who disappear, and are then taken in by a grandmother they thought was already dead.  Her last name is Grimm.

As in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm of fairy tale fame.

Hilarity, mysteries, and adventure ensue, as the Sisters Grimm are pulled from one fractured fairy tale into another and another and another.

I am 43 years old and I cannot put these books down.  The same is true for my 9 year old daughter.  Now that is some excellent reading!

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