So I know in our last PD session, we talked about advocacy. I got this idea from ALA about sharing with stakeholders what their money actually gets them. I recently constructed an email to Denton Elementary administrators and stakeholders about how far our DCS allotment goes. The email went like this: "We just recently processed the book orders using the allotment from the county for Denton Elementary. The allotment was for 526.50 and we spent 501.25. This is what we purchased:
Just thought I would share....
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Thanks to veteran teacher now first year SLMC, Amber Crotts, for this fun post. Amber said that just writing this post was a helpful reflection that will help her set up her spring fair. I think we all remember our "first time".... Kudos to those who are veteran Book Fair Chairpersons and those who can organize all those boxes/cases by yourself. (I need to meet with you sometime to grab a few pointers!) I must admit, when I arrived bright and early on my shipment day, I became a little apprehensive when I met my delivery guy face to face and saw all those boxes and cases. My first thought was, “Oh My Goodness! What on Earth have I got myself into?” I knew I still had to teach classes that day, but thankfully I had help coming in. My delivery guy was awesome, and he patiently answered my zillion questions, especially when he found out this was my first fair and he could see the puzzlement I had on my face. I had a few ideas on how I wanted to organize, but I am one of those people that I need to take a little while to process before I start jumping in, especially when I realized we received more books than ordered (no problem, just more time to think and plan. “I can do this”—my motto was in full drive.
After classes were finished, I had a few volunteers who helped tremendously with making my ideas work. I can’t thank them enough for their patience because I was very overwhelmed, not making a lot of sense, and we moved and shoved so many tables and changed so many things around. However I was told “this is my show” and I needed to make it how I wanted it. Finally, we created it into a beautiful enchanted forest that I was very proud of. I couldn’t wait for the teachers and students to come into the fair. One of the main things I have learned from this experience is not being afraid to ask for help. I think being in a middle school classroom for so long, I was used to being independent and making things work on my own. However, being in a library setting it is different. You must ask for help because you cannot do everything on your own. It is okay to ask for help, and at times, I struggle with this, yet there are so many people out there that are willing to help… if you ask! I went to the PTSO and they provided yummy snacks for my teachers during our Teacher Preview, which was a huge success. They helped me decorate and reach out to parents to volunteer. This allowed me to meet with students during regular Enrichment time and the volunteers ran the Book Fair. I asked about having Lunch for Loved Ones, and planned with our phenomenal Administrator, Ashley Lemley, who is a Rockstar herself, and our super Cafeteria Manager, Patrick Coppley. With their help, we were able to provide 2 different days of Lunch with Loved Ones, which had families visiting after they had lunch. I felt like our school community was able to come together during our Book Fair Week to take part in helping make our fair successful. Another key part that helped with my Book Fair was planning early. Since this was my first fair, I started checking into the Book Fair once I got my first contact email. I started participating in Webinars and those pre-recorded videos. This sure helped a newbie like me with zero experience have somewhat of an idea as to what to expect for my first fair. I loved the ideas on the Scholastic Book Fair Facebook Page and I think I contacted my Rep a hundred times; sometimes I emailed her ten times a day asking questions. I am now not afraid to ask questions, especially if there is something I am unsure about. I learned how important that is when being in the library, that’s for sure! Throughout this experience, the most important part I have learned is trying to be calm and just enjoy the fair. Even though it is hard work, seeing the students’ faces when they come into the fair is the most rewarding experience ever! The part that will always stick with me is when we opened to the students on the first day, and I had this little girl come into the fair. She was jumping up and down with excitement and told me this was her favorite part about school because she could buy a book. Just being able to see the students happy because they are being surrounded by books was so powerful… well, at first it was books, then closer to the end of the fair it was the “stuff” (that’s what I call the miscellaneous items –not the books–in a silly voice to the students). I did have one student walk in and say this was a “really neat yard sale!” Oh goodness, the funny things you hear when students walk in. Just being surrounded by students and trying to instill a passion for reading, being able to recommend book choices that will hopefully encourage them to read on their own, is part of the reason why I enjoy the book fair so much. It has definitely been a learning experience that I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to participate in and I am already planning ahead for the spring fair. As always, this is the BEST job ever!! PS: I didn’t want to bore everyone with pictures, but here is a folder that has some pictures of the fair. We had a Dress Up Week and one day we had “Enchanted Forest Day” where students dressed up like a creature that would be in our enchanted forest. There are pictures from that day. Some of the costumes were absolutely amazing and some were even home-made costumes!! Side Notes: The large unicorn is a 7ft. Sprinkler, it shoots water out of its horn. She will be transformed into “Jingles the Unicorn” during Christmas in our library. The Unicorn that looks like a carousel was made by my brother, Chase Hanes. I recruited my mom, Marlene Hanes, to help make a lot of the decorations. Sadly, I didn’t get the creativity/artistic gene, it skipped me and went to Chase, lol! 😉 Most of the Hasty Battle of the Books team attended author Sharon Draper’s talk and book signing at Bookmarks in Winston-Salem earlier this month. It was an excellent turnout for a team that was only selected three days before the event.
The team enjoyed the humorous incidents told by Draper in her talk. Her enthusiasm for writing was contagious, and two of the team members asked several questions during her talk. I think I may have budding writers on the team this year, since their questions were about frustration and giving up. Drapers words, “Just keep writing.” She also gives high marks to taking a break and getting ice cream - Madagascar Vanilla Bean! Draper read a portion of her new book “Blended” about a bi-racial middle school girl who goes week to week between her parents’ homes. Each of the girls purchased a book to be signed by the author. They enjoyed speaking with her and asking her questions about her career (“Are you rich?”) Draper fielded the questions with grace, and told them she made about 25 cents for each paperback book she sold. A former educator, Draper told a story about a trip to Africa where she discussed testing with an elder there. “In my country, when we want an elephant to grow, we feed it, we do not measure it,” the elder spoke. Words of wisdom spoken from another continent. Kristi Allred, SLMC at NDMS, is super excited to bring her family literacy program, Reading Knightly, back this year. After last year's successful event with Fish in a Tree, Allred is receiving even more support from staff and administration to launch this year's event. >>>Click here for the promo video<<< Students and families are getting the information soon, but the program will launch with a kickoff in January and culminate in April. To follow progress of this awesome, engaging literacy event, follow Kristi on Twitter at @NDMSlibrarian.
This post comes just in time for Halloween! Mary Howell continues to do a great job collaborating with the Denton Public Library by bringing cross-programming to South Davidson. This collaboration really benefits those students that don't have transportation to the public library and helps them to build relationships with the public librarians there. Even though some events had to be cancelled due to weather, it still proved to be engaging for students. Thanks, Mary. During the month of October students at South Davidson Middle and High have been having some Halloween related fun! During the week of October 9th - 12th the Denton Public Library visited South Davidson for special programming. On October 9th, students from two 7th grade science classes and one high school class came to learn about zombie preparedness and put together their own zombie preparedness kits. On October 10th, they partnered with the high school theater teacher and the high school art class came to learn about make-up and created their own zombie looks and wounds. Unfortunately, zombie week was cut short due to the hurricane; however, students were still able to complete and turn in zombie posters which have been on display throughout the remainder of the month of October. The zombie poster contest participants received a goodie bag on Halloween! Thanks to SLMC Daniel Everhart for sharing this personal reflection about his own school library experience. To begin this blog I must take the time to reminisce about my library experiences as a child. There are two vivid memories I have about the public and private libraries I attended as a little boy. The first memory is the children’s librarian at the Davidson County Public Library. My mother brought us to the library about once a month and it was certainly a highlight of our various activities. I wasn’t one of those readers who always picked up a thick novel that had that new page smell. Many times I would prefer a piece of non-fiction that focused on my current obsession. I went through many obsessions over the years from dinosaurs to old horror movie characters. Regardless of what I was excited about at the time our local public librarian knew what it was. She knew my name, what I was currently interested in, and always smiled when I walked through the door. At the time I thought this was because I was just such an awesome kid. In hindsight I know better. She knew how to make me salivate over books and was ringing the bell just like Pavlov. When I came in she asked me how I enjoyed the last book I checked out and asked what I wanted to find that day. She was as specific as she could be given the number of children that walked through her door but it was obvious to me that my interests were of importance to her. She led me to the exact spot I needed to go each visit and shared the new books that were available. I felt special when I was there and it was because she took the time to make me feel special. The second memory was at my local school library, which happened to be Southwood. The librarian would hang large posters up in the library with artwork from high quality books. She had collaborated on this with the art teacher. The librarian would always take time to share about the books and get us excited while still longing for more. After this introduction to the book, it was every student for themselves in regards to checking them out. I remember waiting months to finally lay my hands on a copy of Superfudge. I had read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing about a million times and I anticipated the continuance of the characters’ stories. Every time I came to check for the book and found it gone, there was always that beautiful poster reminding me how bad I wanted the book. The strategies used by these master librarians aren’t extremely complicated. They suffered from the same lack of time we do today, work with the same large number of students, and would have liked to have a larger budget. These things didn’t deter me from falling in love with books. Sometimes it just takes remembering what kind of books a student checks out, giving a smile, treating books like they are gold to be searched for, and building a relationship with your clientele. Their slick library skills were smooth enough to slide me right into this position a few years back. I have tried to keep these experiences in focus each time I make decisions about the library. Yes, it does matter that students take care of books, it is important that we get books back into the library, and it is important that we try to build collections that are connected to library expectations. Thirty years from now there will also be some things that don’t matter. Overdue books will be forgotten and that book that was left in the rain and wasn’t paid for will never be thought of again. I do not say these things because we should simply forget about teaching students to be responsible and caring of the books they are borrowing but instead I say them because they don’t align with my main goal as a librarian. That goal is for a kid to look back 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now still loving books, still drooling over an upcoming release, and still actively using their surrounding libraries. What I don’t want them to feel is that using these local institutions is a hassle, to feel uncomfortable in their surroundings, or to lose a love for books. Maybe I am just an idealist but I think that goes hand in hand with being an educator. We have to be pragmatic idealists in order to build lifelong lovers of books. My Mother Leesa in the center, my brother Adam on the right, my sister Hannah in the middle, and me on the left with the funky face. Bless my mother for sharing a love of reading.
If you ever need ideas for promoting your book fair, look no further than Shanna Leonard at Southmont Elementary. Shanna also welcomes her new ETMS, Keely McConkey! Southmont has transformed into a magical forest as we host the Scholastic Enchanted Forest Book Fair this week. We started our Book Fair fun with a teacher preview party on Friday, October 5th. We had the following enchanted snacks. Unicorn cake (cake) Enchanted drinks (water/soft drinks) Twigs (pretzels) Branch dip (Ranch dip) Unicorn food (Fruit Loops) We decorated the entrance of the media center with a magical tree, mushrooms, and unicorn pumpkin. The students brought in their spuds for the Spud Love Book Fair contest. They are extremely creative! The spuds will be judged on Wednesday of this week. Thanks to Tracy Varner for sharing her successes with the Giant Map of North Carolina in this blog post! If you have additional ideas for map lessons, please be sure to share below or submit your own blog post. A GIANT map has taken over the media center at Reeds Elementary!! If you haven’t had the opportunity to experience the National Geographic GIANT North Carolina map, you don’t know what you’re missing!! The students absolutely love it, and it gives them an awesome opportunity for hands-on learning. It’s been great having the map for an entire week this year, since Davidson County purchased our very own map to travel from school to school in our district. I’ve been able to individualize instruction for each grade level, and really focus on including Common Core Standards for those grade levels. In fourth grade, it was easy to choose a great topic, since many of their standards include topics about North Carolina. We are in the midst of starting our eWise research on North Carolina Native Americans, so I decided to take advantage of the giant map, and have them locate where each tribe settled. We had already had our “Wonder” session, and this was one of the things they wondered--where the tribes had lived (or still live) in North Carolina. The Giant Map lesson enabled them to “Investigate”. Our fourth grade classes are very large, so I divided them into three groups. Using stations for each group, I had some who were doing research on laptops, recording information they discovered about where these tribes settled in North Carolina. Another group used laptops and headphones to view a 10 minute video about Native American tribes of North Carolina, which was provided by the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. They took notes as they watched. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCexDy_9FfE) The third group actively located these tribes on the Giant Map.
We will continue investigating next week, however, the National Geographic Giant North Carolina map was a great way to interactively investigate. I just wish we had had more time! It flew by, and we could have probably used another whole day to do everything! Thanks to the Authors in Schools program from Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, Scott Reintgen was able to visit two schools in Davidson County this week. SLMCs Kelli Pendergrass from Central Middle and Lorie Steed from Central High hosted the Durham author. |
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