February 2, 2013 by plemmonsa

Student Book Budgets 2012-13 (Part 1)

A snapshot of the form that students used to survey other students

Once again, I have reserved a portion of our library budget for complete student control. I have done this over the past three years and have come to value it so much that I plan to continue and improve upon the process. So far, this year is proving to be one of the most interesting so far. In the past, I’ve worked with groups of students as large as 40 and as small as 12. This year, we have 27 students in grades 3-5 who have agreed to participate in this process.

This year, I created a Google form asking about some reading interests and gauging student interest in being a part of the book budget group. I emailed the form to all students in the school. In general, our 3rd-5th graders are the main students who check their email, so those were the students who responded. Out of about 60 responses, I had about 40 students who were interested in being in the group. I went through the list and tried to select a mix of boys, girls, grade levels, classrooms, backgrounds, and reading interests. This narrowed the list to the 27 students.

I then got permission from the students’ teachers to allow them to be in the group. Next, I blocked out some times on the library calendar. Here’s the rough outline of what I did/planned to do:

1/25: Initial meeting with the whole group to lay the foundation of our work and edit the Google form that I started. We also claimed which grade levels we would each survey. This was done at the very beginning of the day when students would have been doing their morning meeting in the classroom.
1/28-2/1: As soon as students arrived at school, they got their netbooks out and pulled up our Google form. Then, they surveyed their own class as well as one other grade level that they had chosen.
2/1: After surveying is done, email the results to all of the students so that they can begin looking at patterns.
2/4, 2/8, & 2/11: Students will meet in the library during their lunch. We will narrow down the survey results and determine which specific books and categories of books we want to focus on. Then, students will begin creating lists of books with our favorite vendors including: Bound to Stay Bound, Capstone Press, and Follett
2/12: Finalize the lists and order the books.
While we wait on the books to arrive, some students might choose to work on some marketing strategies, but I won’t do this with every student in the group.
When the books arrive, schedule a meeting to unpack, stamp the books, and double check the packing slips.
Advertise the books on BTV and put them into circulation.

Students pulling up their Google Form to begin roaming the school.

At our initial meeting, students did a great job adding to the form I had already started. In the form, I asked about specific series of books, genres of books, and created a space for students to list specific books. This was all based on what students are constantly asking for in the library so there were things like: The Hunger Games, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, World Records, Rainbow Fairies, Ninjago, Lego, Princesses, etc. The students decided to add a question about grade level and gender so that we could balance how many boys, girls, and students from different grade levels we surveyed. They also added their own series and genres that I completely missed. This is what I love about this participatory aspect. It’s impossible for one person to know the reading needs of the entire school. It has to be a collaborative effort.

During the week of 1/28-2/1, students surveyed as many students as possible. I was amazed that by the end of the week they had surveyed over 400 students, which is almost every student in the school! This is highest amount of students we have ever been able to survey in this project. Almost every day, I emailed the students an update on how many students in each grade level we had surveyed. This helped them focus their time. I was also amazed by the decision making of many of the students. They were careful not to disturb a classroom if the teacher had already started a morning meeting or a lesson. They also came to the library to ask me my thoughts about where they might go next. In the library, I watched the number of surveys steadily climb in the spreadsheet that Google Forms automatically creates.

On 2/1, I emailed the students the final results so that they can hopefully look over it before we begin the messy process of making decisions this week. I’ll do another post about the decision making process and book ordering, but for now here’s what we have to work with. How would YOU narrow this down?

Prek	42	10%
K	58	14%
First	69	16%
Second	73	17%
Third	46	11%
Fourth	45	11%
Fifth	33	8%

Boy		207	49%
Girl		159	37%

Superheroes	129	31%
Princesses	92	22%
Graphic Novels (comics)	170	40%
Legos	172	41%
Star Wars	141	34%
Wrestling	96	23%
Ghosts	165	39%
Sports	206	49%
Poetry	124	30%
History	145	35%
Animals	232	55%
Paper airplanes	149	35%
Cars	144	34%
World Records	201	48%
Drawing	197	47%
Mystery	167	40%
TV shows	149	35%
How to	126	30%
Action	159	38%
Scary	177	42%
Myths & Legends	159	38%
Picture books	187	45%
Movies	185	44%

Hunger Games	161	39%
Rainbow Fairies	113	27%
Diary of a Wimpy Kid	211	51%
Guinness World Records	168	40%
Ninjago	174	42%
Disney Princesses	87	21%
Sisters Grimm	59	14%
Mo Willems books	90	22%
Captain Underpants	145	35%
Geronimo Stilton	104	25%
Magic Tree House	191	46%
Junie B. Jones	168	40%
Lunch Lady	141	34%
Babymouse	139	33%
Goosebumps	100	24%
Dr. Seuss	190	46%
Fashion Kitty	114	27%
Bad Kitty	142	34%
39 Clues	109	26%
Eragon	73	18%
Bone	111	27%
Genius Files	75	18%
Nancy Drew	95	23%
Corduroy	89	21%
Hardy Boys	114	27%
Percy Jackson	100	24%
Archie Comics	92	22%

February 1, 2013 by plemmonsa

Google Forms: Choose Your Own Adventure

I had heard about how you could write a Choose Your Own Adventure story using a Google form, but I had not been brave enough to give it a try until this year. The idea got placed back in front of me at one of our media specialist professional learning meetings by Tanya Hudson. Then, I went into Google forms and gave it a try. I made a very short, basic fiction story. I won’t go into detail in this post about how the story is made, but it is all about adding multiple page breaks in a form and then directing answers to go to those pages based on the response of the reader.

Mr. Plemmons’s very rough practice story!

Then, at our school level professional learning day in January, I did a session on using Google forms. I shared some very basic uses of forms and also included this advanced idea. Our 4th grade teachers were very interested in how this might be used by their students. After some brainstorming, we decided on writing historical fiction choose your own adventure using some of the 4th grade standards. In the library, I have several nonfiction choose your own adventure stories from Capstone Press, so these became mentor texts for the project.

The teachers gave me a small group of students from each of their classrooms. The reason we started with a small group was so that I could work with them in a smaller setting to explore the possibilities of creating this kind of story. Then, these students could pair with other students in the class to show them the steps to making the stories. The students worked with me during 5 hour-long sessions.

In session 1, we read some excerpts from the informational Capstone Press books. Then, I walked them through the story I made and how it was created. They ended this session by “messing around” in Google forms to practice some of the things I modeled.

In session 2, students looked at the standards and chose their topics to begin researching. They chose from:

Describe colonial life in America as experienced by various people, including large landowners, farmers, artisans, women, indentured servants, slaves, and Native Americans.

Locate where Native Americans settled with emphasis on the Arctic (Inuit), Northwest (Kwakiutl), Plateau (Nez Perce), Southwest (Hopi), Plains (Pawnee), and Southeast (Seminole).

Describe the reasons for, obstacles to, and accomplishments of the Spanish, French, and English explorations of John Cabot, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Juan Ponce de León, Christopher Columbus, Henry Hudson, and Jacques Cartier.

Trace the events that shaped the revolutionary movement in America, including the French and Indian War, British Imperial Policy that led to the 1765 Stamp Act, the slogan “no taxation without representation,” the activities of the Sons of Liberty, and the Boston Tea Party.

Describe the major events of the American Revolution and explain the factors leading to American victory and British defeat; include the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Saratoga, and Yorktown.

Describe key individuals in the American Revolution with emphasis on King George III, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry, and John Adams.

In all of the other sessions, students mixed research from books, websites, ebooks, and the research tool in Google Docs with actually creating their form. Students supported one another as they figured out things, but students also conferenced with me on their stories. About mid-way through their sessions, I had students go ahead and submit the link to their form to me. I used a Google form to gather all of their links. Then, I could easily check-in on students without disturbing their writing.

As I look back at what we’ve done so far, it has been a very messy process with lots of different kinds of learning going on simultaneously. If I had it to do again, I think it would be easier to start with a fiction story than weaving in history. Just making the structure of the Google form and getting it to work took a lot of time and students were also trying to research facts. When they moved to research, their skills at creating their forms were getting a little rusty. I think if students started with fiction where they could just make everything up, they could spend more time being creative and actually getting the form to work. We learned a lot about the process, and I definitely think that these students will be able to show others the steps it would take to create their own.

All of their stories are still works in progress, but you can try them out here:

JP’s Boston Massacre

Henry’s Seige of Yorktown

Dmitri’s French and Indian War

Lucy’s Colonial Times

Jake’s Taxes of the British

Will’s Battle of Lexington and Concord

Lilli’s Battle of Lexington and Concord

Hadley’s Boston Tea Party

Graham’s French and Indian War

Anna’s Native American Tribes

Samantha’s Boston Tea Party

Feel free to leave feedback on any of the stories as a comment and I’ll pass it along to the students to celebrate and improve their stories.

January 31, 2013 by plemmonsa

Books are like a Box of Chocolates

blind date

About a week ago, I saw this picture on twitter and Facebook. It was getting tons of attention and it made me very curious about the impact this sort of mystery might have on readers. So…..I shared the picture on our Barrow Media Center Facebook page, and a few fans had some great ideas about connecting this to Valentine’s Day or to a box of chocolates since elementary students don’t really go on blind dates.

I took these ideas and passed them off to our wonderful library volunteers, Leslye Queen, Jen McDowell, and Hester Meyers who got the pieces in place. Leslye pulled books that were new or hadn’t circulated in awhile, wrapped the books in butcher and construction paper, wrote the barcode numbers on the back of the wrapping, and made a master list of the books that had been wrapped. Jen cutout hearts in preparation for a student creation area. Hester continued wrapping books and labeling the back. I found short blurbs for each of the books, printed them out, and glued them to the wrapping. I also made a small poster explaining the promotion.

All day today, the wrapped books have been sitting on top of a bookshelf and all day students have been asking what they are. I’ve just responded with “Listen to BTV tomorrow morning”. This has peaked their curiosity even more and they’ve started begging me to tell them why the books are wrapped. I love it!

Just look at how these students were acting!

Tomorrow on BTV, I will let them know the details.

Each book is wrapped with only a blurb about it.
Students are invited to check out a wrapped book and give it a taste because books are like a box of chocolates….you never know what you’re going to get. They will check out the books by typing in the barcode on the back.
If they love the book, they should consider doing a review for the book so that it gets more promotion.
If they know of a book in the library that should be wrapped, they are invited to wrap it, put a blurb on the book, add it to the master list, and put it on the shelf. There will be a “making station” available for them which will include paper, hearts cut-outs, glue, scissors, crayons, and markers.

I’m hoping that this catches on and becomes something that the students manage themselves. It offers one more way for students to connect with and participate in their library. It also brings attention to books that are new or haven’t been checked out while also challenging our tendency to choose books based on the cover or popularity. I can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow!

January 28, 2013 by plemmonsa

More Kindergarten Storybirds

These cards were used prior to moving into Storybird.

You may remember from earlier in the year that Ms. Hocking’s Kindergarten class worked on a sequence of lessons in the library and in their classroom to eventually produce their own story inspired by art using Storybird. Now, even more of the Kindergarten classes are working on a similar sequence of lessons. We have spent time on the common core standard:

ELACCKRL7: With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts).

This has been done through wordless picture books, picture books where part of the story is told in text and part in pictures, and picture books where the pictures support the text. Students read these books in class lessons as well as in the library.

To prepare for Storybird, we started by using storytelling cards from a set of cards called “Tell Me a Story“. I chose a sequence of cards and then had the kids begin telling the story and linking the story from one card to another. As we transitioned to Storybird, I told them that it was like pulling illustrations from a big deck of cards and figuring out how the story connected together across cards. We wrote a Storybird together as a class to model the thinking it takes to select a sequence of pictures as well as create text that ties together the pictures.

Finally, in small groups with an adult, students wrote their own storybird. The role of the adult was to lower the barriers to artistic expression by helping students with things like typing, taking turns, etc. Today, Ms. Seeling’s class (Mrs. Boyle’s Class), created their stories in small groups. We had 5 groups led by me, Ms. Seeling, the parapro, a student teacher, and a parent volunteer. Here are their final stories:

They Are Friends

The Rabbit and His Friends

A Porcupine Babysitter

The Mean Gorilla

The Porcupine Dream

Ms. Seeling also hopes to have some students make individual stories and then use Screencast-o-matic to record the students reading their stories. I love how each teacher and class is learning from what previous classes did and building onto what was accomplished.

January 24, 2013 by plemmonsa

Barrow’s Knot

Now that we have a mobile computer lab for the library, we no longer have a wired lab full of mice, headphones, and power cords. However, people still need headphones, mice, etc, so we put these in boxes for people to grab as they need it. Since our students are usually in a rush to clean up and get back to class, they often just toss the mice back into the box rather than wind them up correctly. This resulted in a very tangled problem. The cords of the mice became so tangled that you could not get even 1 mouse out of the box to use. I definitely did not have time to sit down and untangle these, and I felt bad asking a volunteer to do it. I wasn’t sure how the mice were going to be usable again.

This morning on the way to school I had an idea. The knot reminded me of Cobble’s Knot in the book Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. I found that part of the book and prepared an announcement for BTV. I read an excerpt from the book and then talked about making a connection to our own library (which is a standard we teach). I introduced Barrow’s Knot by holding up the tangled mess of mice. I issued a challenge to see who could brave the knot and untangle the mice. After BTV, I put the knot on a table with the Maniac Magee book. I also put a sign up sheet for students to sign their name as they attempted the challenge. If they were successful in getting a mouse untangled, they could highlight their name to earn a prize.

If you want to see the announcement of Barrow’s Knot, watch our morning broadcast. Fast forward to 1:23.

I barely got the knot on the table before students were in the library to attempt the challenge. Our library has been buzzing all day long with kids coming to see the knot, try to untangle it, and asking who was successful. This is what the knot looked like as people were trying to defeat it.

Only 14 students attempted the challenge before Barrow’s Knot was defeated. I never imagined it would be done so quickly. These students put each untangled mouse into an individual ziploc bag to prevent this from happening again. For the rest of the day, kids came to take the challenge and hear the stories of the students who were successful. It was so much fun. I was amazed by how something that was so frustrating to me was suddenly fun when it was turned into a game. Students were so willing to take on the knot rather than look at it as an impossible time-consuming task. I was also amazed at how something fun and mysterious brought so many kids to the library. It makes me wonder about the missed opportunities I may have had with other dilemmas the

I’m taking away so much from this one simple act such as:

Gamification is a natural part of us. Chores are more fun when they are turned into a game.
When we work together on a dilemma that frustrates us, great things can happen.
Combining expertise and talents can accomplish what seems impossible.
Our students hold the answers to many of our dilemmas and frustrations if we just open up the space for them to contribute.
The library should be more than a place to come and get books. It is a place to work together, solve problems, be creative, make connections.
We must model what it means to connect to a book through bringing books to life and intentionally connecting them to the real world. I imagine many students will remember Maniac now that they have participated in a dilemma much like his own.

What do you take away from this?

January 18, 2013 by plemmonsa

2013 Spelling Bee

DSCF1338

Today was our school spelling bee for 4th & 5th grade. We broadcast the event to classrooms and families via Adobe Connect. If you would like to view the archive:

Click here

January 14, 2013 by plemmonsa

Martin Luther King Jr Lessons: A Different Spin

DSCF2368

Every year, I offer lessons to accompany the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. There are so many inspiring stories about this influential man, but students hear some of the same stories every year. This year, I wanted to offer a different spin and introduce a recent book called Belle, The Last Mule at Gee’s Bend by Calvin Ramsey and Bettye Stroud. The book is most appropriate for grades 3-5, but it could certainly be used with others.

Prior to reading the story, I build a bit of background knowledge about Gee’s Bend by watching the first few minutes of this video about the Gee’s Bend Quilters.

I wanted students to know the importance of the quilts to the people of Gee’s Bend as well as understand a bit of the culture of Gee’s Bend, so we only watched a bit of the first Bender’s interview.

Next, we used Google Earth to zoom into Gee’s Bend and talk a little about the geography of the area and where the name “bend” came from.

In 4th grade, students are working on common core standard ELACC4RL3: Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions). As we read the story, I asked students to pay close attention to the characters, setting, and plot so that they could discuss it at the close of the story.

In 5th grade, students are working on common core standard ELACC5RL2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text. To build some background knowledge on theme, we watch the first few minutes of this video:

5th grade reflected on theme throughout the book to inform their conversation at the close of the story.

In both 4th and 5th grade, we read the book and stopped along the way to have impromptu discussions. Many of our discussions came around the part of the book that is about the right to vote and how Martin Luther King, Jr. encouraged all African Americans to vote because it was their right.

Student contributions in Today’s Meet

At the close of both lessons, students went to computers and used Today’s Meet to have a silent conversation about their particular standard. 4th grade posted about characters, setting, and plot, and 5th grade posted about theme. I encouraged students to read what others were writing and write follow-up posts or questions for their classmates. I wouldn’t say that the conversation was particularly connected at this first attempt, but there were definitely things that I liked. For example, in 5th grade, every student was able to post a comment about theme whether it was right or not. I could quickly see who really understood theme and who didn’t without publicly naming what was “right” and “wrong”. Also, at the very end, I had students read back through the posts and decide which comments stood out to them the most as really identifying theme. Students could easily name who said what as they were speaking. For example, “I liked how Aidia said that anyone can be a hero”. It was a way for students to acknowledge the contributions of their peers and accurately quote their contributions. Sometimes it’s hard for students to remember exactly what someone said aloud, but this printed text made that easier to remember.

I definitely would like to try Today’s Meet again in other settings, and I’m happy to find a place for this wonderful story to give new life to a topic that students have heard many times.

January 14, 2013 by plemmonsa

Stone Soup: A Folktale Follow-up

Ms. Spurgeon, a fabulous third grade teacher, does a Stone Soup folktale study with her students each year. This is a part of the folktale study that third grade just kicked off. She has her students study multiple versions of Stone Soup and consider how the characters, setting, and plot change based on where the story is taking place or which country the story comes from. Students are quickly discovering that the basic themes of Stone Soup stay the same but characters, setting, and the ingredients in the soup change.

Today, we read Jon J. Muth’s version of Stone Soup. We loved hearing the many different kinds of ingredients that were added to the soup such as pea pods, lily buds, taro root, winter melon, and more.

After we finished the story, we revisited our Google form of folktale elements to see how Stone Soup compared with other folktales we have read. We noticed that the following elements appeared in all 4 folktales that we have read in 3rd grade:

flat characters
fantasy time
setting briefly described
plot full of action
repeated phrases

Classes will continue to fill out the form and make comparisons.

To conclude this lesson, we used Tagxedo to make our own digital bowl of Stone Soup. I asked students to think about what ingredients they might add to a class stone soup if they were to go home right now and get something out of their cabinets, refrigerator, or from a neighbor. While students were checking out books, they came up to me and told me 2-3 ingredients, which I typed into Tagxedo. I selected a circle shape to represent the pot of soup, and here is what our soup looked like at the end of our time together.

January 10, 2013 by plemmonsa

Little Free Library 5th Grade Project

I’ve known about Little Free Libraries for awhile now, and since I learned about them I wanted to help establish one at our school. I was waiting for just the right moment. This summer I attended the Decatur Book Festival and saw several creative Little Free Libraries that were being auctioned off and it made me want to establish one even more. I posted a picture of the libraries on our media center facebook page and immediately Ms. Cross, a 5th grade teacher, said she wanted to help make this happen at our school. Her comment made me think about the gift that our 5th grade gives to the school at Moving On Ceremony at the end of each year as a way for the 5th graders to make their mark on the school before they leave. Since our 5th graders won’t get the opportunity to go to school in our brand new building next year, I thought this year’s gift needed to be extra special. I had found the perfect fit for the idea.

I began talking with people at our school about the project. As always, our art teacher, Rita Foretich, was on board to help weave this project into an interdisciplinary experience. Other teachers in the school that don’t even work with our 5th graders began offering ideas too and within a few days our spark of idea was really starting to grow.

I sat down with Mrs. Foretich and we did an initial brainstorming of what our project might look like. We thought of materials, resources, locations, and also a sequence of events that would need to happen in order for the project to be done by the end of the year. Our plan consisted of: an intro to Little Free Libraries for the whole 5th grade, persuasive writing in 5th grade classroom, continued research and conversation in the media center, and little free library designs and artwork in art. I took our plan to the 5th grade team for feedback and additions. The teachers brainstormed ways for the students to really take ownership of the project such as donating their own books to stock the libraries and bringing in $1 each to cover the registration for the 2 libraries.

We launched into the first phase right after this session. I made a short introduction video using screencast-o-matic and uploaded it to Youtube. Mrs. Foretich showed the video at the beginning of an art class.

As she showed it, the kids immediately began having ideas and wanting to contribute them. She developed a Google form to share with the students so that they could all submit their feedback without taking up too much of the class time to hold a discussion. Mrs. Foretich’s student teacher also began contributing her knowledge and connections to UGA.

The next step will be for the student to brainstorm more about the materials, labor, and location so that they can begin writing persuasive letters to individuals and organizations for support.

Our goal is to create 2 Little Free Libraries by the end of the year. One will be installed at the new Barrow and one will be installed somewhere near downtown so it is accessible to our students and the community on that end of town. Who knows what this project will develop into, but it is already full of participatory culture as more and more people contribute their ideas, their expertise, and their creativity.

If you have ideas or resources for this project, feel free to leave them in the comments or contact our library.

January 8, 2013 by plemmonsa

Folktales with Google Forms

Third grade just launched into a study of folktales. As a kickoff, each class came to the library for an introduction to folktales. We used a slideshare that listed many elements of folktales as well as kinds of folktales.

Then, I showed students a Google form with 3 questions. This form was displayed while I read a folktale aloud. Question 1 was the title of the book. Question 2 was a list of checkboxes that listed out all of the elements from the slideshare. Question 3 was about what kind of folktale.

At the end of the story, students paired and discussed each of the checkboxes to decide if those elements were present in the story that we read. Finally, we came back together and checked off the elements that were present in the story. Students raised their hands as I called out the elements. If we had a majority of hands, we automatically checked the box. If it was less than half the class, we stopped and discussed and voted again. If few people raised their hands, we left the box blank.

For the first class, this was the end of the lesson, but for the other two classes we looked at the summary of responses in Google forms to see what folktale elements were the most common in the stories we read. I sent the form to the 3rd grade teachers and they are going to share it with their students. A next step will be for students to read folktales on their own and fill out the form. Then, we’ll really be able to notice the trends of which folktale elements are most common in our library folktales.

One piece I didn’t incorporate into this, which would be really cool, is to insert a question about where the various folktales are from. Then, I could have embedded a gadget to put a pin on a world map (like I did in this lesson) to track where our folktales were from. This might be an addition for next year.