Legend - Book Talk

Here's my book trailer for Legend, by Marie Lu.  This was a video that I created using PP and MSMovieMaker.  My students also had a chance to make their own videos for this project.

I have the info graphic on how our October Lunch Time book talk went!  It's open to any student and I thought we had a good turn out (compared to last month anyway).

A Header for one of our Elementary Schools

I'm using this as a test for the header I made for one of our feeder elementary schools.  We'll see how it looks!

Top Tested on Books

Here is the list of our top 25 most tested on books on AR (Accelerated Reader).  Some comments follow the list.

Freak the Mighty/The Mighty

Tell-Tale Heart, The

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel

Luck of the Loch Ness Monster: A Tale of Picky Eating, The

Hunger Games, The

Giving Tree, The

All-American Slurp (SF Edition), The

My Friends

One-Eyed Giant, The

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw

Cafeteria Lady from the Black Lagoon, The

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever

Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid

Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10

Splat the Cat

Paper Bag Princess, The

Imogene's Antlers

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born

Dentist from the Black Lagoon, The

In the Haunted House

Lunch Walks Among Us

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules

Bully from the Black Lagoon, The 

The top title was a school-wide read books.

Some books made the list because a class read them together, or I read them to a class (like Luck of the Loch Ness Monster!).

Some were tested on often because they were quick reads and kids wanted their points quick.

Some were just super popular, like The Hunger Games.

TLA is coming! Fort Worth FTW!

Our annual library conference is coming this week.  It's even here in the Town of the Cow, Fort Worth.  I'm really looking forward to it.

http://www.txla.org/annual-conference

There will be many great speakers and authors and I can't wait.

One that I'm looking forward to listening to is Neil Gaiman.

He is one of the keynote speakers.  He has written many books, including the Newbery winning The Graveyard Book.










I'm also looking forward to meeting many authors, including Marie Lu who has written Legend and Prodigy.

Bluebonnet Books - How many have you read?

Here's the list of 2013-2014 Bluebonnet Books that I've read so far.  It's not very many - YET - but we also don't have all of these books in our library yet.

I'm looking forward to reading Wonder.  I liked the One and Only Ivan and Looking at Lincoln best so far.

More paper crafts - my kids rock!

Here are some more great items that my kids have brought back.

I especially like the bunny with the whole Easter scene.

Maker Space is back up

We have the Maker Space back up with lots of paper crafts for the students.


The students can choose one of these papercrafts.
They seem to love doing these.

Here's R2D2 that a student made!

And another - lucky leprechaun by one of my awesome students!

New Addition to Our Library - Library Velociraptor

Here's our new friend, Library Velociraptor!
He has some messages for our students.

Captain Underpants Kawaii'ed!

One of my students made Captain Underpants, of Dav Pilkey fame, a little cuter w/a kawaii face. I love it & am leaving it on the book.

Write Your Heart Out - What my students love about the library!

So I put out hearts and a valentine's box for a week and had a sign saying "Write Your Heart Out!" and asked the students what they loved about the library or something they've learned in the library.  I put the hearts on my door and it's been fun reading them!

Here are a few - Even some asking for more books or complaining that the library is too small!

I love my students!

Fiction Meets Reality in Books!

Here's a great infographic that pairs fiction books with non-fiction books.  It even says what the subject is.  I love this resource!

Here's the link to the whole infographic:
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/3922de45-655d-48dc-844e-1ba2ba5da348#.URrAXh1EGSp
from our friends at Northwest High School in Northwest ISD!

Here's a little sneak peak:

You can also find more cool things like this on their blog:
http://www.naomibates.blogspot.com/

Why you gotta be so mean? Books on bullying.

The greatness of Librarian Andersen made a cool Prezi about some books on bullying.  Check them out on her blog page:

Peace, Love, Library Books

She has other cool things to look at ... go browse around.

Picture books rock!

Here's an article about picture books and why older readers should still read them.

http://trevorcairney.blogspot.com/2013/02/why-older-readers-should-read-picture.html

I have always loved picture books. One that I read many times when I was a kid was Caps for Sale. 

There are really great current ones too. I'll read any picture book by Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka. 

I love how illustrations in these books tell the story (and sometimes more) in picture books. 

Bowling - AR Reward Field Trip!

My kids that me their Accelerated Reader goal last six weeks got to go bowling today. I think we have about 250 kids who qualified. They had a blast!

Workshop - Next Generation School Libraries and Next Generation Librarians

Dr. Ross J Todd (@RossJTodd) is leading our time today for FW Librarians at the service center.

He's got some great info on getting a vision of what our libraries should be like and how we can make them that way.

Things that stuck out for me:

Learning Commons instead of calling it library. (More my take on making it a learning commons - why not call it that?)

Make sure you have researched based evidence to support what is happening in the library.

Make sure that a library is collaborative & more than just a check out place. It needs to be a place of understanding, analyzing, evaluating, and more.

Make sure that kids are learning respect for different viewpoints!

Deep knowledge - evidence (focus, detail, relationships) rich detail & explanations.

More evidences - metalanguages, recall of complex ideas (fluency), organized ideas (more than a list of facts), formulating conclusions/implications.

Get feedback from students. What they learned & how they learned it.

Document collaboration. Document what kids are doing.

Interventions to help stop plagiarism.

Libraries should be social places.

Use tools to gather data (zoomerang, poll daddy).

Report on instruction, collaborations, engagement w/instruction.

Build a portfolio of info - pre & post products are the best.

What Librarian Zee up to today?

I'm at a cool workshop about next generation libraries. I'll post details later!

Top 20 Books for our Library

Here's our latest top 20 checked out books!

	Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw	Kinney, Jeff.
	The Grimm Legacy	Shulman, Polly.
	Just add water-- and scream!	Greenburg, Dan.
	Captain Underpants and the preposterous plight of the purple potty people : the eighth epic novel	Pilkey, Dav, 1966-
	Cupcake : a journey to special	Harper, Charise Mericle.
	The Hunger Games	Collins, Suzanne.
	Squirrel's world	Moser, Lisa.
	Ghosts! : ghostly tales from folklore	Schwartz, Alvin, 1927-
	How to draw incredible cars	Sautter, Aaron.
	How to speak dolphin in three easy lessons	Greenburg, Dan.
	My teacher ate my homework	Greenburg, Dan.
	The twister trap	Dahl, Michael.
	The class election from the Black Lagoon	Thaler, Mike, 1936-
	The creeping bookends	Dahl, Michael.
	Day of the Dragon King	Osborne, Mary Pope.
	A house is a house for me	Hoberman, Mary Ann.
	How to draw ferocious dinosaurs	Sautter, Aaron.
	How to draw manga warriors	Sautter, Aaron.
	It's Justin Time, Amber Brown	Danziger, Paula, 1944-
	Junie B. Jones smells something fishy	Park, Barbara.

ALA Awards! 2013

The American Library Association had their awards yesterday and here are the winners!

Newbery Winner - "The One and Only Ivan"







Caldecott Winner - "This Is Not My Hat"

Click here to read an article from the LA Times about who won the other awards!

60 Second Recap - Book Reviews on YouTube

I found this fun channel on YouTube today while looking for book trailers to show one set of classes.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePickoftheWeek/videos?view=0

While I do not agree with all of her reviews (not that I even watched them all), I love her perspective.

Here's one that I picked to feature reviewing "The One and Only Ivan" since it just won the Newbery Award  this morning!  

#FWTC2013 - Building Your PLN with Twitter and RSS Feeds

So, tomorrow is the big day - FWISD's Tech Conference.

For you very lucky people in the class, here's the link to the PowerPoint with all the resources on it!

Building Your PLN with Twitter and RSS Feed PPT

Paper Crafts - Maker Spaces

Here's a little shot of our Maker Space.  Yes, our maker space is a very small spot on the wall, again, because we are in such a small space.  I had a few papercrafts earlier this year and I had some students see them and ask if they could make some too.  The demand grew and that's where my little hanging paper craft maker space came in.  Zombies are very popular as you can see by the photo.

Hey Girl! A Valentines Day Door for the Library!

I made a "Hey Girl!" door for the library for Valentine's Day. Thanks and a shout out to http://queenofthestacks.blogspot.com/ also Queen of the FW Libraries, imho.  She shared her pics and idea with me and I ran with it.

Top 20 Books Checked Out from the last 30 days!

Nothing too surprising, on this list.  Here's our top 20 check outs over the last 30 days.

Diary of a wimpy kid : the last straw

The Hunger Games

A house is a house for me

How to speak dolphin in three easy lessons

It's Justin Time, Amber Brown

The twister trap

Beastly tales : Yeti, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster

Captain Underpants and the preposterous plight of the purple potty people : the eighth epic novel

The class election from the Black Lagoon

The Grimm Legacy

How to draw grotesque monsters

How to draw incredible cars

How to draw manga warriors

Just add water-- and scream!

The librarian from the Black Lagoon

Poison pages

The pout-pout fish

Strega Nona takes a vacation

Tap dancing on the roof : sijo (poems)

Traction Man meets Turbodog

January's Spot Light Book - Redwall Series

I have a spotlight book of the month that I share with my students.  I put a poster in the hallway showing the book (or series) and a little synopsis about it.  This month is the Redwall series.  In the past it's been hit and miss with this series, but right now it seems to be picking up, especially with my boys.

Here are some hopefully, helpful links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redwall
http://www.redwall.org/
http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/Redwall_Wiki

First Post

Welcome to my blog about what's going down at my middle school library.  We have a small library, but my students love to read and love taking part of Accelerated Reader.  We have twelve computers in our small (classroom size) library and about 6500 books.  We circulate usually 2-3K per month.  Some of our most popular books right now are Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Franny K. Stein, the Rangers Apprentice series, the Clique series, and anything Rick Riordan.  Our most popular game right now is Trouble Tank (or some version of that game).  Papercrafts are also a thing that seems to be a hit this year in our library.