Caution! Lost Tooth Zone!

Lose a tooth in the library....get a free book!

Something very strange happened with 6th graders today.  They entered the library this morning and their teeth started falling out.  I had 3 students in one class lose a tooth in the library in one 40 minute period.  When you lose a tooth in the library, you get a free book.  I was busy that period running to my secret book stash closet and back to the library with free books.  TOO FUNNY! 

It's Cat vs. George: MCS Book Character Election

Hallway Display

In an attempt to create another school wide event celebrating the blessing of books, I thought it might be fun to have an election in our school the same day as our nationwide election on November 2nd.  This went so much better than I ever imagined it would.  What we did in the our lessons in library spilled out into the atmosphere of our school, and I couldn't have been happier.  Here it went grade by grade:

K-2nd grade:  For two weeks in library, students had their own copies of both Cat in the Hat and Curious George goes to the hospital.  We read these through together and use my "magic bell" to signal it was time to turn the page.  The objective: to give students a well rounded perspective on both book characters so they could make an informed decision on their vote.

3rd-4th grade:  Students read through both copies of books on their own.  Came up with 3 reasons they liked each book.  Wrote these down on an evaluation sheet to help them with their decisions.  I also spent time walking through the election process with them in the book See How they run.  This went better with 4th grade than 3rd.

Vote for Cat in the Hat!

Vote for George!

4th grade:  4th graders were the foundation of this event in the school.  Their enthusiasm was amazing to watch.  They designed campaign posters in Art class (a great way to combine curriculum efforts) for either Cat or George and displayed them throughout the school.  These were great!


5th-6th grade:  Students researched both candidates on their laptops using safe search engines.  They had to highlight 6 things they learned about each candidate or the author. We spent two weeks on this.  This exercise was critical in terms of keeping older students engaged in the election.  Without this, I don't think they would have been as interested in it as they were. 


In all grades: A beloved parent helped me tremendously with this task.  We created buttons and badges for students to wear at school supporting their candidate.  K-3 grade had badges.  4-6 grade had buttons.  We distributed them a week before the election.  Any earlier and the effect would have been lost.  The badges were in bad shape by the election, even though we laminated them.  It warmed my heart to see them wearing them throughout the school. 


On the morning announcements: A week before the election, I handed our principal fun facts about the two characters.  Those were shared each morning before our school day started. 

Not sure when I will be able to revisit this idea again....but it sure was fun!!!!  Very happy with how it turned out. 

Now Recommending Posters

Now Recommending Posters complete popcorn, review, and pic of student

Students love to have their opinions validated....even when it comes to books.  If they have really enjoyed a book, I want to hear about it.  It is so energizing to see a book travel through the hands of students in a particular classroom simply because it was so highly recommended by one of them. 

I love the quote bubble coming from the student

I thought it would be fun to create some interactive posters in the library hallway to display students' recommendations.  I change these every so often so as to give other students an chance to share.  These posters were a lot of work to make....but I am happy with how they turned out.  (Think "Now Showing" Posters in movie theaters)

Book Spine Poetry Completed

Book Spine Poetry Display in Hallway

A very fun unit with our 5th and 6th grade students.  I was so proud of the creativity some of them used in making these.  I had to display a few of them in the hallway. 

One of my favorites

Memoirs of Sushi

Adding his own rendition of Sushi to the fishbowl

Oh!  How we love our sweet Sushi!

 I love my second graders!  They are so enthusiastic and fun to be around!  They make my Monday afternoons in the library so memorable.  Their coat hooks are right outside the library and they stop by every opportunity they can to say hi to me.....and of course, Sushi the Library Fish.  They love him so and he is strangely very special to them.  If only he felt a mutual affection for them as well. 

Keeping their feelings for him in mind, I ran across a new book by Devin Scillian entitled Memoirs of a Goldfish.  Illustrations by Tim Bowers are fantastic and bring personality to an otherwise typically dull pet.  This book brought to light the thoughts and feelings Sushi might have if he actually had a voice to express them.  An all around fun book but even more meaningful because of our relationship with our library fish. 

To carry the story further with second grade, I found an Ellison cut out of a fish bowl.  Students created their own memoirs of their beloved Sushi within the fish bowl.  These turned out so cute!  I loved seeing the various ways they drew him and the stuff they included in his bowl.  In the words of avid fishermen, this lesson was a "keeper."

Rescue Bunnies- Doreen Cronin

Doreen Cronin is one of my favorite Children's authors.  When my youngest was little, we loved reading Diary of a Worm together and got so excited when she added to the series with Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Fly.  Other favs like Click, Clack, Moo and Duck for President are now modern day classics for early elementary students.  When Doreen's new book Rescue Bunnies came out recently,  I couldn't wait to read it and share it with my students.

Rescue Bunnies must have good balancing skills

Although this is not my favorite Cronin book, I thought it went nicely with the Fire Safety Unit our Kindergartners were going through in their own classrooms.  I am not sure how much they enjoyed this book.  I didn't get the sense that it would stick in their minds long after we were together in library.  But we did try our own Rescue Bunnies activity at the end.  This went ok...but again, not my most stellar lesson with them.  Probably won't revisit this one again for next year.

PROJECT: DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM Part 3

To wrap up our DDC objective (at least for now),  I put a pile of non-fiction books on each table in the library.  The books ranged from the 000s to the 900s and some were close to one another on the shelves.  I shared with students the challenge of putting these in numerical order according to the DDC.  They thought it would be soooooo easy to put them in order.  "No problem, Mrs. Hesterman!" they confidently uttered.  In a race between the tables, I whispered (I AM in the library, of course) "Ready..set...shelve!" and away they went.  Undoubtedly, this did no go as easily as they thought it would.  As each table finished, I checked to see if they had done it correctly.  I would say "No...sorry.  You've got 3 out of order."  And they would rise to the challenge once again.

Although I don't have any pics of this, it was a lot of fun.  If I were to do it again, I would probably do it with smaller groups.  It would be easier to access if they were really getting the concept or not.

PROJECT: DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM Part 2

Dewey Decimal Bingo

After highlighting certain sections of non-fiction that students are typically interested in (Sports, Drawing, Animals, etc.), this week in Libraryland, we focused on playing Dewey Decimal Bingo.  Each student had a bingo board with 000-900s indicated by an individual square on the board.  Then, I called out potential non-fiction books and they had to place the square under the number category they thought it might fit.  They really liked doing this.  The most tedious task for me was cutting out the boards and the tiny little squares that went with them.  But once they are made, they're done.  And I can use them again in the years to come.

PROJECT: DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM Part 1

Teaching the Dewey Decimal System to elementary students garners as much as excitement as watching paint dry.  It is hard to communicate the value of this organizational tool to students.  They don't have a huge affection for non-fiction books and tend to avoid that section of the library at all costs.  So, in order to present the efficiency of the system to students and make it fun for them, I went for a couple of different mediums to achieve the goal.

Here is my first attempt at engaging the students:



Students really enjoyed this video and it has an annoyingly catchy tune to it (which they loved!) It was a great way to introduce the DDC and spawned a natural dialogue between us on how to find great books within it.

5 Finger Test

Give me 5!

Our first graders are such ambitious readers!!  I love that about them!  At times, their hearts' desire is to check out books that are just too challenging at this stage of their reading journey.  They want so desperately to check out a "Magic Tree House" or a "Junie B. Jones,"  but their day will come.  It just isn't today. 

I feel like I am treading lightly here as a librarian.  I don't want to burst their reading bubble, but I want to encourage them to camp out in books that are appropriate to their reading level.  This week, we ventured into learning the Five Finger Test, in hopes of combating some of their eagerness for too advanced fiction.  Here is how it works:

Only 1 finger so far!  Yippee!

When a student begins to read a new book, each time they come across a word that they don't know, they put out a finger.  If they get to the end of the page and only have 1-2 fingers out, they can certainly stay with that book.  It is reading appropriate for them.  If they have 3-5 fingers out, it might be a good idea to try a different book.  So, back to the book shelves we go.  We want to produce successful readers.  And we want them to feel great about reading.  The Five Finger Test helps tremendously with that goal. 

Smiles abound!

I wondered how the kids would accept this as we went through it.  Amazingly, they really liked it.  And I felt good because they went home with books that complemented their reading level that day.  There were smiles all around....one of the reasons I LOVE MY JOB!

Update on Dahlathon

Even though we have been done with the Roald Dahl unit for about 3 weeks now, it has been a pleasure to see students still into his literature after the fact.  I had challenge our 2nd-6th grade students to participate in Penguin's Roald Dahl Reading Dahlathon as part of our emphasis on the author.  Penguin offers students 3 prizes if they read 3 Dahl books of their choice before the end of the calendar year.  I have been so proud of our students.  We have only been in the optional challenge since we ended the Dahl unit and 5 students have already completed the challenge.  I am so proud of them, I try to make a big deal out of it by having their name read over the morning announcements and putting their name up outside the library.  The benefits of this are two fold:  It lets students know that others are actively reading and it keeps the Dahlathon still front and center as part of our school wide emphasis on literacy.

Book Spine Poetry

What do you think of this one I've put together?

One of the most valuable resources to me in my new job are other librarians' blogs.  I love looking through them and seeing what others are doing across the miles.  It is hard to imagine where I would be in terms of job development without that asset.  I follow a few very closely and believe they have no idea how much I appreciate their efforts at documenting their experiences in their own libraries. 

I came across an interesting idea on a blog that I thought I might try to implement with our 5th and 6th grade students.  It is called "Book Spine Poetry."  With clipboards in hand, students write down titles from the book spines throughout the library that specifically catch their attention.  After writing the titles down, they begin to piece and put together different combinations of book titles which might make for interesting poetry.  Mixing our computer time with regular library time, students looked up examples of book spine poetry with their laptops on the internet, long before they began their own endeavor.  This allowed them the opportunity to see it with their own eyes first.  Then, they set out to create their own. 

Searching the internet for Book Spine Poetry

This lesson could easily become a cumbersome activity, if you allowed students to take books off the shelf to construct their book spine poetry.  By writing the titles on a sheet of paper, this kept our library nice and neat (which means A LOT to me).   We will spend two weeks on this project.  It warrants that kind of time.  Stayed tuned for our own pics of book spine poetry in the near future. 

Studying the spines to find just the right ones

Side note:  I really loved watching the kids get into this.  I mingled throughout the library and shared potential titles with them to inspire their imaginations.  They had a lot of fun with this, which reminds me just how much I LOVE MY JOB!

Week in Review- Scholastic Book Fair

We offered Pre-sales of Wimpy Kid coming out in Nov

Well, the 2010 Scholastic Book Fair is now history.  The learning curve was high for me as I have never done one of these before.  And as Sir Winston Churchill so accurately stated "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I have learned lots!

This is just ONE side of the library

Here are some things I learned from the book fair:

1) Do not get a cold during the week of book fair.  You need to bring your "A" Game to the court.  Much energy is needed during book fair.  Walking around with your head stuffy makes it difficult to absorb everything you need to know.  Especially when this is your very first book fair.  Stock up on Airborne. 

2) Have a team of volunteers around you who have an affection for books.  I had a wonderful team of people who helped pull this off.  There is absolutely no way it can be done alone....even if you did have years of book fairs under your belt.  Special thanks to my family as well.

3) If you are running low on energy, tap into the energy of your students.  Each day, they came into the book fair with such enthusiasm and excitement.  Just reflecting on their smiles this week brings warmth to my heart.

The book fair moves to the lunch room for Thursday night

4) Try to anticipate everything a head of time.  This is impossible, but try anyway. We had no idea that a new scanning system from Scholastic (intended to make the book fair easier) would actually cause our book fair customers to wait in an enormously long line.  I cannot even put to words how badly I felt about this.  We will be fixing this next year.  Some way.  Some how.

5) I missed my students this week.  Even though they all came through the library at one time or another, I didn't get to connect with them as well as I normally do.

I look forward to more "Adventures in Library Land."  This week was definitely an ADVENTURE!
I LOVE MY JOB!