We had another incredible day of connecting with classrooms and authors. At the end of the week, I will share our Google Earth tour that summarizes our entire week. For now, here are some pictures and videos from our connections today.
| Erika Victor 3rd grade Berlin, Germany |
| Jennifer Reed Kindergarten Massachussetts |
| Heather Temske 4th Roswell, GA |
| Laura D’Elia 3rd Massachussetts |
| Christy Brennan 5th Pennsylvania |
| Shanon Miller Iowa |
| Shannon Miller 4th/5th grade Iowa & Author Deborah Freedman! |
What a way to start the week for Read Across America and World Read Aloud Day. Our morning kicked off with about 40 guest readers (2 in every classroom PreK-5th). First, these readers gathered in the library to select books. Many thanks to Kim Ness for checking all of the readers in and Julie Moon for setting up our Signup Genius which kept us organized. They were full of energy and spent time connecting with one another, sharing stories, and getting pumped up to read to classrooms.
After a group picture, our 5th grade BTV crew escorted readers to classrooms and they got started sharing Dr. Seuss books, laughing, and learning with our students. It was so much fun to go around the school and hear Seuss words filling the air, seeing kids smiling, and hearing their laughter.
Following this, we started the first of 36 Skype sessions to celebrate Read Across America and World Read Aloud Day. We are creating a Google Earth Tour as we connect, so I will post that at the end of the week. For now, I’ll share some images and video from our week. Today, we connected with:
| Okle Miller 2nd grade, Tampa FL |
| Crystal Hendrix Asheville, NC |
| Wendy Garland 4th grade Massachussetts |
| Jennifer Reed 3rd grade Massachussetts & Peter Reynolds |
| Jenny Lussier 2nd grade Connecticut & Ame Dyckman |
| Nancy Edwards 6th grade, Seattle |
| Shannon Miller K/1 Iowa |
| Kathy Schmidt Gwinnett GA 1st |
We will actually celebrate all week long….March 3rd through the 7th.
One of my favorite connected educator friends, Shannon Miller, and I have been planning our collaboration and teaching plans for 2014 so of course World Read Aloud Day was a very important part of this. We decided to write this post and start planning, connecting, and sharing the excitement for this day.
This year we are excited for even more of these special connections.
The classroom kit is great! We love how it contains suggestions for read-aloud, suggestions for group activities, and a fundraising guide to support LitWorld and their programs.
Let us know if you have any questions on how this works. One of the fun parts is collaborating and throwing around ideas with each other.
Have fun and get connected for World Read Aloud Day this year too.
A favorite day for Barrow students is our annual Polar Express Day. This year was our first year back in our new building, so of course, this day brought new surprises for students. All of the favorite traditions were there, too:
Some new surprises this year:
This is truly a magical day. It takes a huge team effort to pull this off. There are so many hands in this day that it’s hard to list them all. Many thanks to:
Before the hangout started, over 200 people had viewed our Smore page.
Today was our Picture Book Smackdown Google Hangout On Air. We had an amazing lineup of schools and authors to share their favorite picture books and talk about why picture books matter in our world. This event grew from a seed of an idea on a Google Doc into a collaborative event. Each participant and school brought their own talents, expertise, and connections to the table to make this event successful. This was my first leap into Google Hangouts to do an event such as this. I always tell students, teachers, and families that we have to be willing to take risks. If we don’t put ourselves in a place of risk, then we’ll never learn. We don’t do our best learning in places of comfort. I certainly learned a lot today by taking that risk. I want to thank each of these schools for preparing their students and taking time out of their day to connect and share with the world a love of reading and picture books.
I also want to thank authors Laurel Snyder and Ame Dyckman for joining us and sharing their own favorite picture books and why picture books matter. They both have busy schedules and it meant so much to have them take the time to join us. My adrenaline is finally coming down from the morning and I’m pausing to reflect on the experience.
What I loved:
What I learned as the host:
What stressed me out!:
Take a look at how our event turned out, and please share your own learning about using Google Hangouts On Air in the comments below.
I am so excited about a Picture Book Month event that I have planned on Thursday. From 10-11:00AM EST, 6 schools in 5 different states and 2 authors in 2 different states will come together in a Google Hangout on Air to share favorite picture books as well as why picture books are for everyone. The hangout will broadcast live on Youtube, but it will also be recorded.
How did this come about?
November is National Picture Book Month. It’s a month where I ask students, teachers, and families to read as many picture books as possible and to think about the importance of picture books in our world. It’s also a month where a lot of educators make connections with one another to celebrate and explore together. At the beginning of the month, Laura D’Elia, school librarian in Massachusetts, organized a Google Doc for librarians across the country to make connections with one another by having access to one another’s schedules. The Doc also became a space for brainstorming other ways to celebrate.
I suggested that we hold a picture book Google Hangout and share favorite picture books among schools. This immediately started some focused brainstorming on Thursday’s event. Several schools were on board and we pledged to meet together in Hartford, CT face to face at the American Association of School Librarians Conference. Even before we arrived there, we had started our plan of how to advertise the event, how to structure it, how to involve students, and how to bring in authors. Our Smore page began to populate with our ideas as they came together. Each one of us had additional connections with other schools and authors, so we each invited others to join our hangout. Cathy Potter invited Ame Dyckman, author, to join us. I invited Laurel Snyder, author, to join us. We are so excited that they will both be able to attend.
In advance, students at each of our schools are preparing in different ways for the event. My students filled out a short script to help them remember what to say. They basically had to remember things like the title, what the book was about, why they liked it, and why picture books are for everyone. They also practiced sitting in front of the camera and reading their script. Their books are waiting in a stack for our hangout. 
We’ve read. We’ve recruited. We’ve prepared. We’ve organized. Now, we are ready to connect and have a full hour of sharing as many picture books as we can. It’s a smackdown! We hope that you will join us by visiting the Smore page at 10:00AM EST on Thursday November 21st. Just click on the video feed that will appear on the page at that time and enjoy. You can also tweet about our smackdown using #pbsmkdwn as the hashtag. If you can’t watch live, consider visiting the page and watching the archive of our hangout. You’ll also find a post on my blog later this week detailing how much fun we had during our connection.
This was so much fun to organize, and it really wasn’t extremely difficult. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!
November is Picture Book Month. It’s a month to study the fine art of picture books and their importance in our lives no matter what our age. We’e been celebrating Picture Book Month since its creation 3 years ago by author Dianne de Las Casas. Each year, she rounds up a month-long celebration with posts by numerous authors each describing the importance of picture books in our lives.
Each year our own celebration grows. This year, we are holding a shelf challenge. Last year, Matthew Winner (aka The Busy Librarian) did a shelf challenge for School Library Month, so we are borrowing his model and modifying it for Picture Book Month. Here are our “rules”:
Who can participate:
Any students, teachers, or families at Barrow!
Where to find picture books:
Any book in the Everybody section
Any book in 398.2 or 811
Any book in the holiday section
Any book where the story is told through pictures or pictures & text.
What to do:
Set a goal for yourself. Examples: Read every book in the Everybody section A’s. Choose a shelf and read every book on that shelf. Set a specific number of picture books to read. The possibilities are endless!
Write your goal on the back of this sheet and keep track of your progress. Add sheets if you need to.
Turn your sheet in to Mr. Plemmons on December 2nd.
If you finish your challenge, you will get:
A certificate
A bookmark
In addition to our shelf challenge, we are recording students and teachers for our morning broadcast talking about their challenge goal and a favorite picture book they have read for the challenge.
We are also planning some connections with other libraries to share favorite picture books as well. I love to see how this celebration grows each year. I hope that this year we set our own record for the number of picture books checked out in November.
Storybook Parade has been a Barrow tradition for many years. Over the past couple of years, we transistioned from a morning parade to a day-long event. Our schedule now looks something like this:
I organize most of the day’s events, but it couldn’t all be done alone. There are just too many pieces to do by myself. This year for guest readers, I created a Signup Genius. I emailed all of our volunteers and former readers, shared the link on Facebook and Twitter, and put it in my newsletter. Camilla Bracewell, Barrow grandparent, also made some phone calls and emails to recruite readers. It didn’t take very long to schedule enough readers for every class, but as usual, during the days leading up to the event, we started getting cancellations. Rather than scramble to find more readers, I had our administrators and specials teachers on standby to read in the event that we needed them.
For the assembly, I wanted to speed up every class walking across the stage. In the past, every class has written a blurb about their class for me to read. Some classes write a short blurb while others feel the need to describe every costume. This year, Mimi Elliot-Gower, our family engagement specialist, had an idea to use quotes about reading. I made a Google doc of reading quotes and let teachers sign up for a quote that represented her class. I read these quotes as classes went across the stage and we tried to keep a constant flow of traffic.
For the parade, we changed our route this year. We used to parade up to Five Points and back, but Lumpkin Street has gotten so busy that we wanted to move most of the parade to some streets that were a bit less congested. Our 5th graders got to make a special stop at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education and have some hot chocolate. Our family engagement specialist, Mimi Elliot-Gower and counselor, Lauren McElhannon, setup this special treat.
Back at Barrow, teachers had lots of options for what their classes might do the rest of the day. Every specials, EIP, special education, and gifted teacher offered sessions for classes to sign up for. I created a Google spreadsheet schedule and teachers could sign up for up to 2 thirty minute sessions. Examples included:
It was a fantastic day with so many books represented. Each year this day grows a little more and includes a few new ideas. Who knows where it will go next year.
We would like to thank all of our guest readers who came out today to celebrate with us:
What fun! Today we participated in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record. Since 2006, Jumpstart has been encouraging people around the world to break the record for the most people reading aloud the same book. This year, the book was Otis by Loren Long. We Give Books provided free access to this book for anyone who wanted to read it online. At the same time you were reading for the record, you were also supporting book donations around the world.
Today, 4 classes at Barrow participated in the media center, while some others read the book in their own classrooms. Each class was a bit different in what we did with the book.
Mrs. Clarke’s PreK class is studying cooperation. We used Capstone’s PebbleGo Social Studies database to learn about the word cooperation. Then, we gave examples from our own lives and classroom of how to cooperate. As we read Otis aloud, we talked about how cooperation was shown in the book. We also talked about how we were cooperating with people all around the world to read for the record.
Read for the Record through the years.
In Mrs. Watson’s 1st grade, we looked at the data from Read for the Record through the years. We also read about tornadoes on PebbleGo and made connections to Otis and the Tornado. 1st grade is studying weather along with their study of The Wizard of Oz so Otis and Otis and the Tornado were a perfect fit.
In Mrs. Wright’s 2nd grade class, we Skyped with Mrs. Lussier in Connecticut. We had also connected with her 4th grade students during Talk Like a Pirate Day, so it was fun to reconnect. We took turns reading pages in the book and then added to a friendship padlet. Since October is bullying awareness month, we used Otis to talk about being kind and showing friendship rather than bullying.
Showing pictures to Mrs. Techman’s students.
In Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade class, we Skyped with Mrs. Techman in Charlottesville, VA. I read the entire book to both classes and shared the pictures on the camera. Our students stopped along the way and made predictions for one another. We also took some time to tell about our own communities. We looked at a map of how far away VA is and how long it would take to walk or drive. Students wanted to know how long it would take to fly, so we pulled up a travel website and searched for a flight. We also took time to add to the Padlet in this class, and Mrs. Techman’s class will add to it tomorrow. 
While all of this was going on, I also tweeted the link to the padlet. It was retweeted numerous times, so hopefully others will add to it. Shawn Hinger and her students at Clarke Middle in Athens took time to add their own thoughts on friendship. It was nice to have a middle school voice among the elementary ideas. 
Once again, I was amazed by the power of connecting and how many standards can be woven into an event such as this. I can’t wait to see what the record was set at today!
Ahoy thar maties! Today be national “talk like a pirate” day. What better way to celebrate than dressing up like a pirate, reading some stories with classes around the country, writing some fun pirate sentences to practice saying, and creating some pirate stories.
That’s exactly what we did in the Barrow library. The planning started last weekend, when I started looking for classes in the school who wanted to participate. As class signed up, I used twitter to locate some special library friends around the country to connect with.
Over a couple of days, the schedule took shape for us to connect with:
The plan during each connection was to:
Our pirate padlet
We started our day with Mrs. Boyle’s Kindergarten class. They have been learning how to tell stories from pictures. Today was the launch of our storybird project, so I decided to focus our storybird on pirates. After warming up with some “Tell Me a Story” cards, we searched for pirate pictures on Storybird. We made a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end. It was a challenge to link our story together between pictures, but the students did a great job working together. Be sure to read their story here.
Our Storybird cover
Next, we skyped with Shannon Thompson at Stroud Elementary in Athens. Shannon and I took turn reading A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade by James Preller. We both read in our best pirate voices. Following our skype, we disconnected and students added sentences to the padlet. We reconnected on skype and students shared their sentences with one another in their best pirate voices. We had a few sound issues, which led me to switch the webcam I was using.
At 10 & 10:30, Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Ramseyer’s 2nd grade classes connected with Jenny Lussier’s 4th graders in CT. During one session, we read Bubble Bath Pirates by Jarrett Krosoczka and during the other session we read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. It was fun to hear our different pirate voices and share the many costumes that both of our groups of students were wearing.
At 11:45, Mrs. Yawn’s 2nd grade class had a special triple skype. We connected with Okle Miller in FL and Edie Crook in NC at the same time.
Okle and I read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long and Edie Crook read A is for Arrr! by Laura Salas. Okle had on a great pirate costume, and Edie’s students had made great pirate hats to share, too. It was fun to know our voices were connecting from 3 different southeastern states.
A is for Arrr! with Mrs. Crook
At 1:15, Shannon Miller’s students connected with Mrs. Em’s 1st grade students. We read How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long. Our students also took time to share what was going on at our schools today. In addition to pirate day, our students had a walking field trip and Shannon’s students had dot day, Homecoming, and a color challenge. Shannon’s students took time to add to the padlet after our connection, while Mrs. Em’s students added sentences that focused on words that used sounds they were working on in class.
Finally, at 1:45 Mrs. Choate’s Kindergarten class connected with Edie Crook in NC. I read Bubble Bath Pirates by Jarrett Krosoczka and Pirates vs. Cowboys by Aaron Reynolds. It was a challenge to switch from pirate to cowboy while reading the book. It would be a fun book to read over skype if both schools have a copy because you would only have to keep up with one accent. I loved hearing Edie’s students make connections between the two books.
It was a fun-filled day. We made connections. We read text and had great discussions. We practiced reading fluently and with expression. We practiced our sentence writing. I’m exhausted. Now off to Krispy Kreme for some free donuts. They are giving away a full dozen of donuts if you are dressed like a pirate!
Expect the Miraculous 