May 2019 in the Library

May really flew by with testing and end of year craziness! I feel like this month was definitely the fastest one yet in my library career. 

I spent Mondays and Wednesdays in May teaching computer classes to adults at the beautiful GRCTC high school.

My partners and I conducted classes about various topics like social media, Google, and digital resources. It was a super program that I hope continues in the future. 

Parents loved learning how to email their child's teacher and even sent a few messages thanking them for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Book projects poured in this year so we celebrated degrees. These students earned a lunch party with their degree!

One first grade made it all the way to doctorate level so she earned a bubble party for her whole class!

My fabulous webmaster partner and I went to the district luncheon to celebrate our hard work. 

Muffins with Mom was a success!

I hosted the talent show with wonderful acts that our music teacher Mrs. Nelson helped to prepare.

The PTA carnival finally happened after weather postponed it a couple times. Everyone had a great a time and loved the games along with the petting zoo!

Coach Thompson planned another fun-filled Field Day and our team rocked it. 

One last team picture that summarizes personalities so well. :) There will be some big changes next year, but I have faith that it will be a great 2019-2020 school year because of this awesome staff! 

I took some adorable videos of first graders doing a scavenger hunt for their summer reading book packs. It was so fun! You can check those out on my Twitter @readingray Between the district's summer reading contest with MyOn, the public library's contest, and Bradfield's summer reading bingo card...our kids should be rolling in the prizes! https://www.smore.com/3cgm8

Here is the recap of the whole year...it was a great one, but now it's time to do summer!

https://spark.adobe.com/page/a7Z52EG2bxjl4/

April 2019 in the Library

April is always an exciting month in the library because we celebrate National Poetry Month and School Library Month!

Mrs. McCarragher made this beautiful sign!

Kindergarten friends gave my flowers and treats!

The office staff gave me this wonderful basket of goodies!

The cards and sweet words made this week awesome!

True words!

We had a fabulous bio poem contest for National Poetry Month!

Our new makerspace items are a big hit!

We finished the month rehearsing for a PTA program with first and second grade! 

We are in the last month of school! I am excited to wrap up the year and head towards summer. 

March 2019 in the Library

March was a short month due to Spring Break and testing, but it is also one of our busiest months in the library. I keep forgetting to take pictures of my displays, but we celebrated Women's History Month and all things green. Check out the exciting recap of what I did remember to take pictures of!

Besides our spring book fair, we also celebrated reading by dressing up each day to match a different book. There was also a genre contest each day.

March 4th was our annual reading celebration day. The kindergartners Skyped with author JoAnn Sky. She is the author of a great book called Santa's Dog. The kids loved hearing the story and what inspired her to write it. Even Coach T asked her a question!

Second grade got to hear Mrs. Martinez from the Digital Learning Team read My Technology Tail and discuss digital citizenship. It was a great experience for the students!

Fourth grade did a Skype call with author Mike Graf. He discussed his nonfiction books and took students on a photographic tour of national parks. It was very informative and cool!

First graders loved their Skype with author Rebecca J. Gomez. They had a lot of questions and comments about Moose from the story!

Our new SRO Officer Price stopped by to read a nonfiction book about police to our third graders. We appreciate him stopping by and showing us the tools that police use.

Friday, March 8th was our annual storybook character parade. Prek had a blast dressing up!

My team of fishes from One Fish Two Fish! We had two black fishes :) 

Look at all of these amazing storybook characters!

I earned my Masters degree from #GISDchat University! It's my second Masters, but it still meant a lot...trying to get that first doctorate before school ends!

The 5th grade STAAR tests are rapidly approaching so I have been working with students on reading about science topics using our balanced literacy books. They are amazing! We also incorporated AVID by doing a one-pager about electricity. 

I spent 6 weeks working on the course to become a Virtual Digital Leader for GISD. It was a really great course that I mined a lot of info from to share with our staff and students for next year. 

The month ended by getting this awesome grant from the Garland Education Foundation! I am so excited because we are going to purchase a novel for the whole school to read together and do activities with throughout next school year. I had hoped to get it last semester, but I am glad I tried again. We will be all set for August!

April starts today and that's no April Fools joke! I cannot wait to see what happens in the library as the year winds down.:) 

February 2019 in the Library

February was a busy month with tons of different activities going on. Check out just a snippet of the fun we had in the library this month!

We began the month by celebrating World Read Aloud day with a winter favorite!

I used some of our fall book fair Scholastic points to get 100 books to give away on the 100th day of school. It was great to see kids so excited, but sad when the cart was empty.

Our Bunnicula lunch book club for 3-5 graders wrapped up on February 13th. We celebrated the kids' success with a cookie party. 

GISD nutrition donated a Dr. Seuss book to give away and this special girl was chosen by her teacher due to her love of Dr. Seuss books!

The Brook Dale Assisted Living Center donated this bench to our school. It is handmade! 

The librarians enjoyed a full day training with information about budgets and learning about the new TEKS for ELA.

It was great to have time to examine the new TEKS' strands so we are prepared for next year!

I did a 5 week afterschool book club for 1st and 2nd graders. We loved reading More-Igami and creating cool fish out of paper.

Since February is Dental Health month, we read about keeping our teeth healthy and then made posters with tips on them. 

We read about the White House and then they designed their own colorful houses.

For Valentine's Day, our club read a festive book and made 3D cards.

Our final club meeting was full of the students creating their own exercise routines to celebrate Healthy Heart Month. 

Since it was also Digital Learning Day, we filmed the routines on an iPad.

My 5th grade novel study group did a Kahoot about Wonder on Digital Learning day too. 

We finished our novel study by watching the movie Wonder and comparing it to the book. These kids definitely earned their popcorn and movie party!

March is already half-way through and it has been a whirlwind!