In honor of National Poetry Month, here is a post from another blog promoting a book called Steady Hands: Poems About Work. I absolutely love the poem they include about the librarian!
Poetry Month Post
Category Archives: Resources
It’s Poetry Month!
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.
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 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.
Reviews Now Available
We are excited to announce that students can now post reviews of the books that they read by using the review feature in our online catalog. Writing reviews is a great way to practice response to literature writing. It also provides valuable feedback to other students on the books that are in our media center. It will take a long time to build our list of reviews, but if you want to write one, see Mr. Plemmons for more assistance. Classes are currently coming to learn about and practice this feature. If you feel ready to give it a try at home….visit our card catalog.
- Click on David C. Barrow Elementary.
- Login with your username and password.
- Search for a book that you have read.
- Click the reviews tab.
- Click Add Review.
- Give the book a star rating and type your review (or copy and paste from a Word document)
- Click Save
- Now your review is sent to Mr. Plemmons for approval. Once approved it will appear in the card catalog with the book.
Search Books from Home
Great news! Our card catalog is now available from home. You can search for books at home and come in the next day to check them out. Just follow this link.
Digital Download Books
I just wanted to remind everyone about a great resource on the Athens Regional Library webpage. You can download audio books by creating an account with your PINES library card. The selection of books for children and teens is steadily growing. There are two books by Deborah Wiles, who is coming to our school on March 17th. You can download The Aurora County All-stars and Each Little Bird That Sings. Check it out!
Vote Panda!
Storytelling
I love a good story. I especially love listening to people tell their stories. My wife and I often go to different storytelling events. Recently, we went to Stone Mountain to the Tour of Southern Ghosts and hear some wonderful, spooky stories. Today in the media center, I was fortunate enough to get to tell a story to two fourth grade classes who are studying Native American folktales and scary stories. Here is a link to my story.
Election Centers
I recently created a Delicious bookmark account for our media center. We used Delicious during election centers that were visited by 3rd and 4th graders in the media center. At these centers, students learned about a whole range of repsonsibilities of the president and what it takes to become president. Here is a brief video clip of students in action during the election centers. Don’t forget that you can visit our Delicious bookmarks by visiting www.delicious.com/barrowmediacenter.
Expect the Miraculous 