Lewis and Clark Learns

Today,  September 14, 2016 was a day to share with the world what goes on in 21st century libraries on a daily basis.  I remembered to take a few photos & post them on twitter, but below is a list of what happened in my life and library today... Started my day with a stop at Starbucks for a latte for Mrs. Haynes and I. Opened the library around 7:20. Welcomed some kiddos who thought our bookclub started this morning instead of next Wednesday. Chatted with a teacher about a way to best support a particular student. Asked our nurse to check over my list of summer readers for allergy issues before our ice cream celebration. Tried to trouble shoot why my Britannica database isn't working on ipads...argh! Greeted students outside the library as the bell rang and we started our day.  8:55 Taught my first of 6 classes of the day-5th grade  We started with a book trailer highlighting a great series and moved into a discussion of books kids were reading....

We are entering our 2nd full week of school and I have seen each class two times. So far we have reviewed our Missouri Reading Award Programs, checked out for the first time, learned how to access digital materials at home, set up Google Classrooms, and become familiar with Overdrive ebooks.  Mrs. Haynes met with each class before their second checkout (first with their classroom teacher) and chatted with the kiddos about checkout expectations and a couple of other new things she is working on.  She is so good about being proactive instead of reactive to what we know happens each year in our library. Tomorrow each grade level will begin their first maker unit.  These units will include inquiry, mini lessons as necessary to teach/review note-taking, selecting best sources, questioning, citing sources, locating materials in our library and on our website, and instruction/exploration on databases and apps we will be using. This is our plan... Fifth graders are des...

We are a school of readers!  Dozens of kids read award books over the summer, kids can't wait to check out for the first time, we see some kids everyday to checkout new books, teachers value the importance of a great class read aloud, and as a school we spend the last 20 minutes of our day reading for pleasure.  

I started taking photos of my library for the new school year and realized just how much has changed since May.  At the end of each school year, Mrs. Haynes and I always have some ideas about what to change in the library based on the kid's library survey that they take each January.  Mrs. Haynes fabulously captures the kids' thoughts and ideas each year and shares with the kids what changes will be made.  So, the photos you see below represent the kids' input and some other ideas that Mrs. Haynes and I had to make things a little easier for kids to find what they want in our library. This isn't new, but the question is! New signage for the genre sections. Our focus board. We gathered our maker books (and MAKE magazine) and placed them next to the MakerSpace. The kids said that we needed more search stations in the library so we added two more.  Still waiting for the laptops from our tech. dept.  They are busy getting everyone in the di...

Day 3 of Summer MakerKid's Camp was our cardboard creation day.  I truly think the entire week could have just focused on cardboard and the kids would have been thrilled.   (Something to consider for next year) Building a car for a mini figure Glue guns save the day Day 4 was a day of circuit exploration.  Kids worked in stations and really loved working with Mrs. Haynes' daughter in the LED card making station.  Anna taught the kids all about circuits and then using 3v batteries, LEDs and copper tape, they created a quick card that would light up.     Mrs. Haynes worked the littleBits station. LED cards with Anna Haynes littleBits with Mrs. Haynes Day 5 was a day of movie making.  Each pair of kids learned about stop-motion, selected/built characters, wrote a storyboard and filmed a great stop-motion video using the Lego Movie app.  This was a very busy day of wrapping up the week and unfortunately didn't get pics of t...