As March comes to a close, we are excited about poetry in the media center. April is National Poetry Month. Today, I setup some displays of poetry books for students, teachers, and community members to enjoy. Tomorrow, I will be talking with all teachers at our faculty meeting about making April a celebration of poetry. On April 30th, we will celebrate National Poem in Your Pocket day by carrying poems in our pockets, having poetry slams in the media center, displaying our poems in a variety of ways, and recording our poetry to share with others. I can’t wait to share some of my favorite poems with you, and I hope you will share your poems with me, too.
Monthly Archives: March 2009
New Section
We have a new section in our media center called “ESOL”. In this section, you will find bilingual books. These books are written in English and one other language. You’ll find Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Swahili books. The section is small right now, but we are thankful to our school district for giving us some extra funding to get this section started. We hope to grow this section in the coming years.
New Books
I just unpacked some boxes of new books and just finished putting all of the new books from the book fair into Destiny. Over the next few days, these new books will be displayed in the media center for you to check out. Some of the book categories are: sports, bilingual, animals, space, graphic novels, award-winners, and student requests. Here are just a few of the titles that I added. Stop by and check them out! There’s lots to choose from and they will disappear fast!
Battle of the Books
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- The Final Two Teams
For the past three months, students in fifth grade have been reading up a storm. Forty-seven students were involved in the Battle of the Books. Teams of five students read the ten books and practiced answering questions about the books. On March 19th, we held a school battle. There were two preliminary rounds and one final battle. It was a very close match between all of the teams, which goes to show how involved the students were in reading their books. The team advancing to the district battle on April 2nd is “What Happens When Kids Read”. Congratulations Nicole, Neal, Serena, Chow Chow, and Jared.
Book Fair Premiere
Our Spring book fair is off to a great start. Today students and teachers dressed like stars and walked down our red carpet to begin their book shopping. Our morning BTV broadcast was live from the red carpet and students and teachers were interviewed about their reading lives and what they were looking forward to at the book fair. Stop by all this week to do some shopping and help raise funds for our media center. With funding for next year undecided, our book fair may become a main source of funding for buying the materials that we need to support our learners. We’re open Monday and Wednesday from 7:30AM-4:00PM, Tuesday from 7:30AM-7:00PM, and Friday 7:30AM-1:00PM. Stop by and shop like a star!
Athens Banner Herald Article
In case you missed it, here is a link to the Athens Banner Herald article written earlier this week about our author visit from Deborah Wiles. Take a moment to read it, and feel free to post comments at the bottom of the article with your thoughts about the day. We need to be advocates for the important work that we do in our school.
Deborah Wiles dances with PreK-1st Grades to the lullaby, One Wide Sky
Student Media Festival
On March 16th, we held the Barrow Student Media Festival. This was an opportunity for students to showcase their technology projects. We had 25 particpants and 10 of our students are advancing to the district media festival. Congratulations to all who participated. By clicking the links below, you can visit the ten projects that are advancing.
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3
Project 4
Project 5
Project 6
Project 7
Project 8
Project 9
Project 10
Deborah Wiles
It’s hard to believe that our visit with author Deborah Wiles is over. Students and teachers had a wonderful time listening to Mrs. Wiles talk about her books and her love of writing. She shared her writing notebooks with us and helped us to see that her stories come from things that happened to her in her own life. She even showed us funny things like how she turned her rotten red-headed brother into a girl in Love, Ruby Lavender and how she turned her Aunts into chickens. Students are filled with ideas of where they can find the stories in their own lives, and we will be working on personal narrative writing a lot over the next few weeks and publishing that writing in a variety of formats. Some of the writing will probably even be on this blog. Let’s all find our stories and find ways of sharing them with one another.
New Podcast and Spring Break Check-In
Here’s a new podcast about what I’ve been reading during Spring Break. You can subscribe to this podcast or visit our media center homepage, scroll to the bottom, and click play. I hope you all are having a fabulous break and enjoying some intriguing books. Remember to record your 300 minutes of reading to earn you star on the Book Fair Walk of Fame. See you Monday!
New Poetry Section
Thanks to a great presentation by my colleague, Buffy Hamilton, at the Children’s Literature Conference, I’ve discovered a new tool for us to use in our media center. Harper Collins has many wonderful books to browse on their website. These books allow you to preview a book before you buy it, but most importantly, they let you see a book we may not have in our media center or that is currently checked out. Next month is National Poetry Month. I’ve started a poetry collection on our media center webpage. We’ll have many more exciting poetry events coming up, so stay tuned for more.
Expect the Miraculous 