Category Archives: Events

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Dr. Seuss & Read Across America Day

Well…we did it.  Even with rain, wind, cold weather, and some snow flakes, guest readers visited Barrow Elementary and read Dr. Seuss books to every classroom in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

This morning the media center was packed.  We had members of the community as well as a huge support from Sigma Phi Epsilon.  Readers enjoyed some conversation and refreshment and were escorted by student ambassadors to classrooms.  Readers shared stories with the classes and had good conversation about books and reading.

At 8:15, all of PreK came to the media center to hear a special program done by Lorraine Holahan from the Athens Regional Library.  Students heard stories, sang songs, helped tell stories, and saw puppets.

At 10:00, Beth Friese’s class from UGA, visited and read books to individual students, small groups, and whole classes.  It was a day packed with reading.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this successful, especially Ms. Olin who did all of the scheduling and had to be out sick today!

We would like to thank these wonderful readers:

Sigma Phi Epsilon

Lorraine Holahan

Lesley Black

Jana Stough

Christie Purks

Amy Gellins

Michelle Francis

Denise Mewborn

Sue Holt

Paul Kurtz

CC Robinson

Don Nelson

David Sweat

Ted White

Lissa Clark

Leland Barrow

Heidi Davison

Eric Keese

Ken Mauldin

Beth Friese and her UGA LLED4120 Students

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Carmen Deedy

What a phenomenal day with author and storyteller Carmen Agra Deedy!  Carmen shared stories with students in Second & Third Grade, Kindergarten and First Grade, and Fourth and Fifth Grade.

As I watched the students during her performances, I was in awe at how our Barrow students came together as one student body and helped to tell the stories that Carmen was sharing.  She had them clapping, making sound effects, and definitely laughing the 45 minutes away.

What was even more fun for me was when I heard teachers talking about how much their students enjoyed the programs.  Students went back to their classrooms and wrote down the stories Carmen told so they wouldn’t forget.  They wrote down books that she mentioned so she could find them later.  They begged their teachers to let them practice telling stories.  In fact, teachers said that the students just couldn’t stop talking about how much they loved Carmen’s visit.

Teachers and students have stopped me in the hallways all afternoon thanking me for this visit.  Author visits take a lot of planning, but when you see the joy and excitement for reading, writing, and storytelling that come out of successful visits, it makes all of the hours of planning well worth it.

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Student Voice, Student Choice Grant

Today, a group of students from 3rd-5th grades met in the media center with their lunch to complete another step of our Student Voice, Student Choice Book Club.  This club is funded by a grant from the CCSD Foundation for  Excellence.  In the grant, students have a budget to purchase books for our media center.  Students must spend their entire budget, which means they may have to combine their budget with another student in order to spend every penny.  The books will be ones that are of interest to the students in the group and books that are on a level that the students are comfortable with.

Today’s session featured Jim Boon, a representative from Capstone Press.  We will be using this company to purchase our books.  He brought numerous samples of books for the students to look at and read.  Students created lists of books that they were interested in.  Next week, each group of students will sit down with a Capstone catalog and their list and begin to spend their budgets and finalize their orders.

Once the books arrive, the students will be the first to read them and will write reviews to share with the rest of the school.  Then, the books will go into circulation for all students at Barrow.

Check out today’s excitement.

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Media Festival

Today we held a media festival to showcase inquiry projects from Ms. Hicks and Ms. Biehl’s spectrum class.  I recently wrote about the process for creating these projects and you can find that information here.  Today was a day to celebrate the work that these students accomplished.  Third and Fourth grade classes came and viewed the projects, while the students talked about what they had learned in doing the projects.  There was also a session for parents, mentors, and district personnel to come and view the projects as well.

This truly was an incredible process and collaboration between Ms. Hicks, Ms. Biehl, Mr. Piazza from the district, and myself.  Students were also strongly supported by mentors who were experts in the fields that students were investigating.

Take a look at the pictures of everyone enjoying the festival, and also take some time to view the student projects on our media center webpage.

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Read to Succeed

In our media center, we try to have several different reading promotions during the year to support reading for fun outside of school.  Earlier this year, we did a “Read Around the World” program where students read books from each section of our media center and earned stamps in a passport.  This allowed students to explore genres of books that they might not read on their own.  Several students have continued reading out of these sections even after the “promotion” was finished.

This month, we are participating in the Six Flags Read to Succeed program.  Students read outside of school for a total of six hours, record that time on a log sheet, have it signed by an adult, and they earn a free ticket to Six Flags for the summer.  Many of our students already read this much outside of school, so why not earn a free ticket to Six Flags for something you’re already doing!  For our students who aren’t in this routine yet, we hope that this might be one incentive that will start a culture of reading beyond the school walls.  Reading logs were sent home in purple folders on January 5th and logs are due back to teachers no later than February 26.

Our media center will always encourage students to celebrate the love of reading.  If  you have ideas of things you would like to see us do to support this, feel free to email me or post a comment.

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Polar Express Day 2009

Today marked the annual tradition of the Polar Express Day in the Barrow Media Center.  This year we welcomed many students who are new to Barrow and enjoyed their very first Polar Express.  Classes came to the media center two at a time.  They were greeted by Mr. MacMillan or Dr. Sabatini waving a lantern and talking with them about the magic of coming aboard the Polar Express.  Students entered through a tunnel into a darkened media center illuminated by holiday trees, snowflake lights, lanterns, and spotlights.  Students sat in rows as if they were sitting on the actual Polar Express itself.  Conductors served hot chocolate to all students and a teacher held the spotlighted book and turned the pages as we listened to the Polar Express be read.  Before leaving the media center, students had a bell placed around their neck with the words “Always Believe” whispered in their ears.  With bells and candy canes in hand, students filed out.  We were so excited to see so many new faces and we salute our fifth graders who experienced their final Polar Express Day.

Always Believe!

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Guest Reader Day 2009

Last Thursday December 3, 2009, several community members came to Barrow to share their love of reading with our students.  We had a judge, basketball players, a basketball coach, members of the UGA Athletic Association, an author, a swim coach, a musician, a technology specialist, a former librarian, a librarian’s wife, and several other wonderful individuals who gave their morning to read to our students.  At 7:45 our readers gathered in the media center to select their books and find out which classroom they would read to.  Our student ambassadors escorted the readers to classrooms and they spent 15-20 minutes reading and talking with the students.  Every classroom had a reader, and the students were all abuzz for the rest of the day talking about who came to their class.  Thank you so much to all of our readers.  We will hold another reader day on March 2, which will be our annual Dr. Seuss Day.  If you are interested in being a future guest reader, please let us know.

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Third Grade Expert Day

Third graders gathered in the media center today to interview habitat experts.  These students are involved in a project to learn about the plants, animals, and habitats of Georgia.  At the end of their project, students will design a state park that will fit into one of the habitats of Georgia with as minimal impact to the native plants and animals as possible.

Students began their learning exploration by gaining background information in their classroom about the habitats of Georgia and habitat terminology.  Then, students visited the media center and used a pathfinder to search website resources to inform their questions about the plants, landforms, animals, and climate of their assigned habitat.  To prepare for today, students developed questions that they needed to ask an expert in order to inform their state park project.  Students rotated every 10 minutes to expert tables and listened to presentations and asked questions about a variet of topics.  Many thanks to our experts who attended today:

Chris Adamson (Landscape Designer)
Berkley Boone (Memorial Park)

Melissa Caspary (Barrow Garden Designer)

Sara Clarke – (Horticulture/Parent)

Alicia Coughlan (Vermicomposting)

John Maerz (UGA/Warnell Natural Resources)

Lincoln Larson (UGA Eco Reach)

Debbie Mitchell (GA State Botanical Gardens)
Dawn Biehl (Floral Design)

The third grade teachers and resource teachers have worked incredibly hard to make this a dynamic learning experience for our students.  I am so glad that these students and teachers used their classrooms, the media center, and community resources to connect students with quality information.  I can’t wait to see the final projects that students create using the information they have discovered.

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Veterans Day 2009

We had a wonderful day honoring veterans in our media center today.  Barrow’s 5th grade works very hard to create a day of celebrating and honoring the veterans connected to our school community.  Mrs. Slongo’s class discovered the book, America’s White Table by Margot Theis Raven, after I borrowed it from our public library.  They decided to create this table for display at our veterans celebration and one student discussed the symbolism of the table.  For more info on the white table, visit this site.

white table

Other students read informational writing and poetry at the event to honor the veterans in attendance.  At each table, students were chosen to interview veterans and introduce them to the room.  Finally, Sophie and Levi served as roving reporters and interviewed many of the veterans in order to capture their stories from their days of service.  You can check out the video by clicking this link.  I hope everyone has had a wonderful veterans day today.

 

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Gone from these Woods Author Visit

Today 3rd-5th graders were lucky enough to have a 45 minute session with author, Donny Bailey Seagraves.  She is the author of Gone from these Woods, a book recently published by Random House.  Donny’s talk included many details of how she uses her surroundings, memories, and acquaintances to inspire her writing.  Students also had an opportunity to ask questions about being an author and about the writing process.

This author visit was made possible from funds from our recent book fair.  Thank you for all you do to support our media center.  Author visits always inspire students to go back to their writing notebooks and work on crafting great stories.  In March, we will have author, Carmen Agra Deedy, who will visit with all students at Barrow.

Donny Seagraves’s book is available for checkout in our media center.  It’s a great story for older readers that is a great book to share with a family member and have thoughtful discussions about real-world situations.  Check out our pictures from today’s visit.