February 28, 2013 by plemmonsa

Skyping with Little Free Library

Our 5th grade Little Free Library Project is moving ahead. You can read about our progress here and here. A few weeks ago, I talked with Rick Brooks, co-founder of the Little Free Library movement, on the phone. He contacted me after seeing my Youtube video introducing the project to our 5th graders. After a few emails and facebook posts back and forth, we finally had a long phone conversation where we discussed other Little Free Library projects in schools as well as some potential ways that technology could be incorporated into our Barrow project. I shared with him how our students were working in teams where each student had a specific job to do such as researching, writing, designing, and presenting. During our call, he offered to help us in any way he was able to, so I suggested a Skype session with our students. He was happy to do this.

On Tuesday and Thursday, Rick skyped with researchers, writers, and task managers from Ms. Cross and Ms. Slongo’s Class. He told them a bit about the mission and vision of Little Free Libraries, shared specific parts of the website students might visit, and suggested some videos for them to watch. The kids were able to ask Rick questions about things like green building techniques, location of little free libraries, and which libraries seemed to be more popular than others. We even had a student have a conversation with Rick in Spanish.

More than anything, this Skype session made the project more “real” for the students. They left the session with a new energy for the project. Rick is following what we do, and we appreciate the time and energy that he has put into this worldwide movement and especially for taking time out of his busy schedule to support our small project here in Athens!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fSwT_kEU9s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JokmwJiPfoE

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 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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06i0B5LQl3s

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3e7i8ANmwo

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?

December 19, 2012 by plemmonsa

Polar Express 2012 & Participatory Culture

5th Graders received special blue bells this year

Every year our Polar Express Day is an event that students, teachers, and families look forward to. We of course wear our pajamas and listen to the story in the school library, but it’s much more than that. We want students to experience the story. A conductor with a flickering lantern meets classes and leads them to the train tracks of the Polar Express. The path is lined with multiple decorations: lights, student-made art, train tracks, a ticket booth, railroad signs, and more.

Here’s what the students saw this year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY9JhnDH9I0

A sample of music from the Polar Express movie plays while students enter the library and take their seats. A spotlight illuminates the book that awaits them. The hot chocolate song comes on and students are served hot chocolate with marshmallows. After listening to the story, every child receives a bell placed around their neck with the words “always believe” whispered in their ears. Students immediately begin shaking their bells, which sounds like this:

http://youtu.be/dKS9hjRXFXI

As they exit the library, they receive a candy cane. Many of our 5th graders cry on this day as they experience their final Polar Express Day. We have even started having a Polar Express alumni night for people to come back and experience the magic.

This year, I’ve been thinking about our participatory culture and how much participation is involved in this event. Here are some examples:

Our principal organizes a schedule, volunteers, and materials
Our lunchroom staff makes hot chocolate
Parent volunteers purchase all of the materials and supplies
Parent volunteers (and some students) string the 450 bells
Parent volunteers pour and serve the hot chocolate and place bells around students’ necks
Teachers and students work with me to decorate the library and hallways. Many teachers come back at night to decorate in order to have the element of surprise on the morning of Polar Express. Every year, the decorations are different depending on what the teachers dream up in the moment.
This year, for the first time, many students made decorations to line the hallways with. One of our enrichment clusters made decorations and some students made decorations on their own.

At times, I’ve felt guilty that so many people help with this event, but this year things began to click in my mind as I realized that this is an event sponsored by the library that is truly owned by the entire school. I hope to think more about this in years to come and look for more ways that students can be involved in this special day.

: 5th Graders received special blue bells this year

November 15, 2012 by plemmonsa

Our Staff Recommends: A Participatory Idea for Picture Book Month

November is Picture Book Month. This is the 2nd year of the event, and we kicked things off on day one by starting a reading incentive. Students & teachers are trying to see how many picture books they can read during the month of November. To encourage their participation, each student and teacher received a sheet explaining the incentive with blanks for writing down each picture book read this month. Each grade level had their own number of books with smaller numbers for lower grades and 25 picture books for upper grades. All students who finish their sheet will receive a cool bookmark: Scaredy Squirrel, Ladybug Girl, Elephant & Pigge, Babymouse, or Duck for President. Students will also receive a certificate and be entered into a drawing to win autographed books by: Kevin Henkes, Suzanne Bloom, Eric Litwin & James Dean, and Meghan McCarthy. These incentives really inspired students because we have several sheets already turned in on this mid-way point of November.

On the Picture Book Month website, there are multiple resources for celebrating picture book month. One of the tools is a shelf talker that says, “Our Staff Recommends”. These can be displayed along a shelf for library staff to place books that they recommend to students. At first, I wanted the shelf talkers to say something besides “library staff”, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that as part of the participatory culture of our library, I really consider every person who enters our library a part of our staff. I ask students to be accountable for checking books in and out, placing books in the reshelving area, teaching other students how to use technology, etc, so why not consider everyone staff?

So….I made a quick video with iMovie and advertised to the school that anyone could put books on the shelf talkers just inside the library doors.

http://youtu.be/bvHRgijX17U

The shelf sat empty the first day, but it didn’t take long for people to start recommending picture books to one another. Several students have checked out books from this area and several have replaced the books that they have selected. It’s a small thing, but it gives one more opportunity for our school community to participate in our library.

Happy Picture Book Month!

November 13, 2012 by plemmonsa

Student Co-teaching: A Participatory Experience!

Lucy shows off the page in Thanking the Moon where she helped me pronounce the word correctly based on her knowledge of Chinese.

Today something wonderful happened. I was doing a lesson with Kindergarten comparing and contrasting the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival with Thanksgiving. We used PebbleGo to read informational text about Thanksgiving and fact check with what we knew about Thanksgiving. Then, we read Thanking the Moon by Grace Lin to learn about the Moon Festival. At the end, we used an interactive Venn diagram from Read, Write, Think to compare and contrast. During the story, I was first thrilled when a student was so excited that he recognized some of the names for sister, father, etc. in the story. It made me remember the importance of students being able to see themselves and their cultures in the books on the library shelves and in the selections that are chosen for whole class lessons.

The second amazing thing that happened was when I came to a word in the story for older sister, Jei Jei. I of course did not know the correct pronunciation, and I immediately knew I was wrong when the student who was so excited about the book did not recognize the word that I read. Amazingly, Lucy, a student, was in the library working on a project and checking out a book. She just happens to take a Chinese class after school, so she graciously shared the correct pronunciation and got us back on track. She did this without any prompting. I was so excited that she chose to participate and that she felt comfortable enough to interrupt my lesson in order to share that information. These small moments really inform my bigger vision of the library as a site of participatory culture. I hope that by sharing this, students will continue to find ways to get involved in any way they can in our library program.

November 13, 2012 by plemmonsa

Paul Revere Transliteracy: A Third Grade Collaborative Project

Back in September, third grade took a transliteracy approach to exploring rocks and minerals. After participating in this experience, Mrs. Shealey, 3rd grade teacher, had some ideas for how the transliteracy approach could inspire the Paul Revere standards that 3rd grade was about to work on. She scoured the internet for resources and developed her own Sqworl pathfinder to share with students. She also developed a menu of projects that students could choose from. After introducing the idea to her team, we all met together to continue brainstorming and think about how technology could be incorporated with the menu ideas.

Ideas included:

Make a map of Paul Revere’s ride with important events, photos, and videos using Google Earth & Google maps
Create a newscast of Paul Revere’s ride with eyewitness accounts. Use the iPad to film the newscast and iMovie to edit.
Use Museumbox to create various cubes about Paul Revere: his ride, his character traits, events leading to American Revolution, etc.
Create a piece of art related to Paul Revere. Use Photo Story, iPad, or Glogster to display the art and talk about it.
Write a poem or a song about Paul Revere. Use the iPad to film a performance of the song/poem.

Ideas continue to be added to this menu. We decided to narrow the technology focus to just a few tools: Glogster, Museumbox, Photo Story, Animoto, iPad & iMovie, and Google Earth/Maps. Many of these tools were new to students so we wanted students to have a chance to explore each tool before committing to a project or tech tool. We decided to have a technology fair where each class could come and tour through the tech tools to gain some familiarity with each tool to inform their decisions. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring in student expertise, so Ms. Hicks, a spectrum teacher, helped identify students who could teach other students about each of the tools. Google Maps and Museumbox were new to all students, so I led the station on Museumbox and Todd Hollett, technology integration specialist, led the station on Google Maps.

The students and adults setup their stations, and each class came through the library for about 30-40 minutes to see mini-presentations and play around with each tech tool. Students freely moved from table to table and at times needed encouragement to move on. Many students wanted to stay at one table to become an expert in a tool, but that was not the point of the tech fair. Expertise will develop later. We just needed them to be familiar enough with each tool to know what it was capable of doing. Even though all students did not make it to all stations, each class had a good representation of students who visited enough of the stations to be able to share back in class.

Our next step is for students to decide on their project and tech tool. The teachers will then group these students into groups based on their tech tool. Then, during a block of time each day, students using the same tech tool will meet in the same room so that they can support one another as needed. I’ve seen amazing things happen when a large group of students using the same tool are in the same room. They discover things that I would have never had time to figure out or teach to everyone and they willingly share their learning with other students. I think we will be pleasantly surprised by the knowledge that students gain about these tools during this process.

The teachers and I will also support students with the technology, but we also want our focus to be on supporting students in locating quality information for their projects. We will rely on the pathfinder as well as books from our library for this endeavor. I can’t wait to see what students come up with!

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October 23, 2012 by plemmonsa

A Lunch Lady Connection

Remember this post about our virtual comic workshop with Jarrett Krosoczka? After the workshop, Jarrett read my blog post about how many students created comics as a result of the workshop. He and I chatted via twitter and email about the event and how inspiring it was to my students (and students around the world who watched).

One of the neat stories from within our school related to this workshop involves Marquavious, a 5th grader. He is a huge Lunch Lady fan and has read all of the books multiple times. When I announced that teachers could send students to the library to view the virtual comic workshop, his teacher immediately signed him up. Marquavious took it a step further, though. He found other 5th graders who were also interested in comics, graphic novels, and lunch lady and worked with his teacher to arrange for all of them to attend the workshop during lunch.

Now that I know about just how much Jarrett Krosoczka (and lunch lady) mean to Marquavious, I often share with him tweets and blog posts that I read from Jarrett.

Another amazing thing happened as a result of my blog post and the work students did during the virtual workshop. Jarrett Krosoczka mailed us some of the original artwork that he created during the workshop, and he autographed it to our school!

Today, that artwork arrived in the mail. As soon as I opened it, I went to get Marquavious. He was beaming when he saw the art. I let him take a look, and of course, took his picture with the pieces. I told him we would frame them and hang them up in the library. He asked if he could help me when I was ready to hang them up, and I of course said yes.

Making connections and opportunities like this for individual students is a huge part of the participatory culture of our library. I push myself to look closer for these kinds of opportunities. They are hard to catch, but when I notice them, they result in powerful learning and contributions that truly matter to the members of our library.