Halloween in the Library 2016

We have been getting into the spooky spirit of Halloween by decorating the library, reading Halloween books, and doing some Halloween activities. Check out the fun below!

I enjoy getting to decorate the library for each holiday. I especially love decorating for Christmas, but Halloween will do for now.

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere!

I also love getting to choose book recommendations for each holiday. These are just some of the Halloween books I have displayed. We have quite a collection in our library and they keep flying off the shelves/tables.

The students were excited to read with spooky witch and vampire fingers during library time. I told them they had to be actively reading in order to keep using their finger. It was so quiet in the library it was spoooky!

1st graders enjoying reading their witch fingers.

These two first graders chose vampire fingers to read with. 

PLC classes created their own monster crayon inspired by Michael Hall's book Frankencrayon. This was not in my plans for this year, but when the book arrived with our order I knew it would be a fun activity for Halloween time. The crayons all have names and are so creative!

Here are the books we have been reading this week during storytime. They are fun reads that are not too spooky for my kindergarten and first grade friends. 

We even involved some Halloween candy into our makerspace by having a candy corn building challenge. The students worked in groups to build towers with their candy. This was also a part of our library being involved in #GlobalMakerDay and #TexasLibrarySnapshotday.

It was great to see all the teamwork going on during the tower building. The students had some great ideas on how to use the toothpicks to make their towers grow.

Of course the kids were also excited to get to eat the candy after building, but not surprisingly they found out that candy corn is not very tasty!

Finally, I just have to share a cool moment from makerspace time this week. These first graders (dressed up for cowboy day!) were practicing their news reporter skills. The box they were using is about telling the weather. I asked the student with the microphone what the weather was going to be and she replied "I am not doing the weather. I am reporting New York news." Then, she told me in an amazing reporter voice all about the twin towers being hit by a plane on September 11th. 

I love my job! :)

It's Like Christmas-It's New Books!!

The end of book fair week coincided with our big book delivery. It was quite a maze of book fair leftovers and brand new boxes. I thought I would show you the process of getting the books from the boxes to the shelves.

I had to unpack the new books after packing up the book fair so there was lots to do! Luckily, our fabulous P.E. teacher Mrs. Newberry and amazing art teacher Ms. Bedolla helped me out with the unpacking since they are #superspecials. Mrs. Newberry stated that it is like Christmas day getting to open all the packages.There were 14 boxes!

The new books come labeled with their spine label. barcodes. and an AR level on the inside. I have to go through each book and see which level it is. Then, I put the coordinating color sticker on the book.

I also look through the books to see if they need a genre sticker or a holiday sticker. This year we had several historical fiction and graphic novels that needed to be labeled. Can you tell which color you do not see above? I ran out of brown stickers (4th grade level).

As I was labeling books, I just had to send our art teacher and music teacher pictures of some new titles that I was excited about. Be on the lookout for these coming to a specials' class soon.

As you can imagine, my desk gets pretty messy during new book time but it is a lot of fun to see all of the new books. It takes me a little longer because I like to stop and look at the books.

Then, I select the books that I want to read first. That is a perk of being a librarian. :) My stack this year is very tall so hopefully I can read quickly to get the books back to the new book display.

Lastly, the books are ready for check out! In the past I have put them all on one big cart and when they are gone, that is it. However, this year I decided to prolong the newness of the books by having a new book display where our reference books used to be. As the books from the new books' display get checked out, I will put more new ones over there. I think this will help with allowing more kids to get a "first" time book.

Our library is somewhat back to normal now that the book fair has been packed up. Check back next week to see how we get into the spooky spirit of Halloween around the library!

Fall Book Fair 2016

This week has been dedicated to our fall book fair. Students have been coming to shop, while also checking out library books. It makes for a crazy, but fun week. So far we have made over $1,000 and our school gets to keep a portion of that. Our goal is to make enough to buy the PebbleGo Social Studies database and maybe the Science database. Remember, the book fair will be open on Thursday until 7 p.m. and also on Friday until 11 a.m. We do take debit and credit cards along with cash.

For the month of October, I challenged our teachers to a Trick or Treat Twitter challenge. I will be sharing some of the fabulous tweets that have been produced and details about the prizes in another blog, but I wanted to share some of the amazing "shelfies" that our staff has taken with book fair books.

Our wonderful counselor Ms. Green (or Super Green) with Gone Crazy in Alabama 

Our amazing Ms. Orsini took this picture of Pete the Cat's Train Trip

Myself with There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey because I love this whole series so I had to buy the latest one. I cannot wait until November to read it with the kids!

My people (or my peeps as we say in my family) are from the hills of Kentucky. When I read the description of this book, I knew I had to read it. This is a great story of being persistent and believing in yourself as well as your values. I also really enjoyed the words and their definitions.

H.E.R.O. Week

In Garland ISD, we are celebrating H.E.R.O. week. H.E.R.O. stands for help everyone respect others. It is an anti-bullying campaign that teaches kids that they can all heroes. We have had theme dress up days all week: crazy socks, team shirts, rock star, blue shirt, and superhero. Shout out to our amazing music teacher Mrs. Nelson and cool counselor Ms. Green who participated in the dress up days and the October Twitter challenge! (joined in this picture by our awesome secretary Mrs. Owen and our fabulous bilingual aide Ms. Garza)

I read the book The Little Bully by Beth Bracken to my PLC classes this week and we discussed how words can hurt. As a group, the students brainstormed ways to help others and how to be a friend instead of a bully.

Then, the students created superheroes that do and say nice things. The students were very creative with their hero costumes!

I also displayed our cyberbullying books that students made last month for cybersafety week. It shows students that you need to be a H.E.R.O. online too!

Our book fair set up is tomorrow and I am so excited to see all the wonderful new books. Please join us for shopping Friday, October 7th and all of next week. We will be open until 6:45 p.m. on parent conference night and open during Friday morning conferences on October 14th.

Hispanic Heritage Month

Our school has been celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month everyday in September by telling facts on the announcements. In the library, we have been focused on learning about Hispanic Heritage Month this week. Our school's bilingual classes are following a dual-language model this year. That means that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays the students in bilingual classes are taught primarily in Spanish. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the language of the day is English.

To support the dual language program, I found some books that are bilingual-written in English and Spanish. The students read the book in their groups, then sorted words from the book into English and Spanish, and then they did three column note taking.

We also have been reading two fun books by Hispanic authors. Both of these books take a familiar story and tell it in a new way...using both English and Spanish words!

We are excited about the upcoming fall book fair and will be learning about some of the titles featured in this year's fair all next week. 

Ozobot, Sphero, and Safety!

Before school started, the librarians were all excited because our coordinator Richelle O'Neil was able to give each of us an Ozobot for our library makerspaces. If you are unfamiliar with what an Ozobot can do, check out this short video. Once the craziness of back to school settled down, I tried out the Ozobot at home and fascinated my dog with it. I brought it to school after being absent as a reward to the class that was the best while I was gone. The students really enjoyed getting to see Ozobot follow their commands based on what colors they used. They even named Ozobot different names and talked to him like he could understand them. We had some trouble getting Ozobot to show off his tricks, but as I told the kids...we just have to keep trying!

I am the i3: Innovation in Instruction person for our campus again this year. At our first training of the year, we got to play with a robot called Sphero. Check out this short video to learn more about Sphero. We were all very intrigued and we also started Googling how much it would cost to write a grant for a Sphero robot. Little did we know, as soon as it was time to put Sphero away...we all found out that each school was going to get to take one back to our campus! Thank you to Brian Dean and the Garland Education Foundation for giving our students the opportunity to learn using Sphero. I am still learning about Sphero and will be photographing all of Sphero's parts before he starts getting checked out by teachers to use across Bradfield. Soon, Sphero will be the most popular robot in the school!

Lastly, it is Cybersafety week in Garland ISD so students have been hearing a tip each day on the announcements, receiving lessons during library and in their classrooms, and there is a poster contest going on across the district. I cannot wait to see which poster wins for our school and goes on to compete for a BB-8 robot like Sphero. Here are some of the cybersafety booklets that my 3rd graders created today.

#DotDay

September 15th is International Dot Day! This was the first year that Bradfield students got involved with Dot Day in the library. Students either viewed The Dot by Peter Reynolds on Tumblebook or heard it read aloud by my sub. The book encourages students to leave their mark and to not doubt what their contribution can be even if they think they do have talent. I love the message of this book because it shows that everyone has their own genius. We, as teachers, just have to help kids believe in themselves.

Monday's flex day classes each started with the same blank circle. They used markers, pencils, and colored pencils to make their mark on their dot. Check out the amazing display of dots below.

I had to be out on Wednesday for a technology training (more exciting information about that is coming soon!!), so I saved our dot drawing activity for my Thursday morning class. The 4th graders worked together or individually to create a dot using sidewalk chalk. Not only did they make the playground look awesome, they were excited to have no restrictions on what their "dot" was supposed to look like.

Even the rain and the sun decided to collaborate on making a dot! I cannot wait for next year's #DotDay. I hope to help the students make it even bigger and better.