It's Monday! What are you reading?

I tell students that favorite books are like good friends--we don't just visit them once.  So last night I pulled Jarrett J. Krosoczka's Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco from my coffee table for a reread.

The Field Trip Fiasco is the sixth book in the Lunch Lady series.  They don't necessarily have to be read in order, which is a plus in an elementary library with a clientele that really likes their graphic novels.  With spare language, only one to five frames per page, and illustrations in black, white, and yellow, the Lunch Lady series is a perfect fit for strong first grade readers on up, or those who struggle with reading and visual literacy.  Food references abound with phrases like "Sweet salami!" and "Salty crackers!".  Spyware comes in the form of a spork phone and GPS tracking gum; weapons of choice are truth-serum brownies and plastic wrap.

Vocabulary words I could pull from the first half alone of Field Trip Fiasco:

fiasco	magnificent	statue
medieval	pigments	curiosity
samurai	majesty	admirable
chaperone	"concerned citizen"	dungeon
mathlete	dense	Middle Ages
enrichment	hieroglyphics	European
artifacts	surrealist	mosaics
congratulations	ancient	spectacular

Our Lunch Lady books fly off our library shelves!  It's Monday; what graphic novels have you read lately?

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the Sommer Library?

We are right smack in the middle of our Wonky Week in the Library!

On Monday, Ms Margocs attended the monthly district librarians' meeting.  She got lots of new basketball books for our shelves, gifted to us by a former librarian!  

Ms Margocs was out on Tuesday, so Mrs. Melton and Mrs. Q kept the program going with library in the lobby.

Today and tomorrow, some classes will be coming in by appointment for a quick checkout.  No lessons or read-alouds; we are just getting students to the books this week!  What's on display?  Books about inventors and inventions!

The good news is--we have NEW books to check out!

The school picture folks will be using the library on Friday, so we're moving back into the lobby that day.

We'll be back to our normal routine of lessons and read-alouds for the next two weeks.  Coming soon--book fair news!  Here's a sneak peek:

Happy reading, Stallions!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

Today is the autumnal equinox--the first day of fall!  Even though the temperatures here in Texas don't feel very fall-like, we can pretend by looking at our favorite fall books.

One book that seems to get checked out over and over again in our library is Fall is Not Easy, by Marty Kelly.

This poor tree knows its leaves are supposed to change...but into what?  A happy face?  A rainbow?  The story makes everyone smile!

Looking at the fall section of my home bookshelves, I came across this oldie-but-goodie:

I have this first edition copy, published the year after I was born!  The TV special aired when I was just seven months old.  If "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is one of your children's favorite fall TV traditions, there are several newer editions of the book available to share.  

It's the first day of fall!  What are your favorite seasonal read-alouds?

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the Sommer Library?

We started our week off with a wonderful visit from THE Bookworm in our library!  The Pre-K and Kindergarten classes really enjoyed her stories, ventriloquism, and magic.

Our counselors let us know that next week is our first-ever "Start With Hello" event--and we've got books to support the cause.

Read-alouds this week:

Kindergarten classes are looking to the skies in science, so we're reading the nonfiction picture book Sun: One in a Billion.  Our Depth and Complexity icons are "Language of the Discipline" (words astronomers might use), "Details" (we learn a LOT of facts about the Sun!), and "Over Time" (the Sun has been around a long time, and will be for a long time to come!).

First grade is listening to Ms Margocs practice her French in Escargot, the story of a snail who wants to be your favorite animal.

The other half of second grade is thinking about the "Language of the Discipline" for herpetologists while listening to Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor: The Woman Who Loved Reptiles--a picture book biography.

Lessons this week:

Third grade gets to explore our databases to prepare for upcoming research and personal learning!  We're using iPads and qr codes to navigate to the research resources.  Home access passwords have been sent home.

Fourth and fifth grades are adding EasyBib to their district Google accounts to create bibliographies of their sources for upcoming classroom projects.  We're practicing by citing books and websites and learning about using our database citation tools.

It is a "Wonky Week" in the library next week:
Monday--Ms Margocs at monthly district librarians' meeting; library closed for Hearing and Vision screenings
Tuesday--Library closed for Hearing and Vision screenings; Library in the Lobby for checkouts and returns
Wednesday--Checkouts and returns by appointment only for K, 1st, and 5th grade classes
Thursday--Checkouts and returns by appointment only for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade classes
Friday--Library closed for school pictures; Library in the Lobby for checkouts and returns

Coming up next month:  Stephen Swinburne will visit fourth graders to work on writing, and.....Fall Scholastic Book Fair the last week of October!!!

Keep on reading, Stallions!

It's Monday! What are you reading? (Professional edition)

 

I am beginning my personal professional learning this year with a self-care book entitled Take Time for You:  Self-Care Action Plans for Educators by Tina H. Boogren.

Boogren, an educator and professional development provider, takes this topic seriously.  This is not a read-and-contemplate book; there are reflective questions to answer--with space provided to do so--starting in the introduction.  Worksheets can be downloaded from a website if you don't want to write in the book, including pre- and post-surveys to gauge progress.  Boogren recommends taking several weeks to months to work through the exercises.

One of the first questions to answer is "Why are you reading this book?".  My answer:  I am proactively avoiding burnout.  

My first round of teaching lasted six years, and I walked away feeling burnt to a crisp, never wanting to return to the classroom.  Two decades and three educational positions later, I find myself back to working longer and longer hours and feeling farther and farther behind in personal and professional pursuits.  Most days, I come home too exhausted to do much more than water my plants and go to bed. 

I truly love my job as a librarian, and do not want to reach the point where my life is so out of balance that I feel like I need to walk away again.  I'm hoping this book, as well as the two to follow, will help me achieve the balance I need to continue working the circulation desk for many years to come.

P.S. I know I'm not alone in this pursuit.  Here's a segment from yesterday's edition of "CBS Sunday Morning" about teachers leaving the profession.  It focuses on the financial issues, but workload and hours are also cited.  Click link here.   

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the Sommer Library?

There's been lots of great student chatter in the library this week:

(To a classmate) "I know where those books are!  I can show you."

(To the librarian)  "I remember you reading this book to me last year in kindergarten."

(From a kindergartener) "Are the fifth graders helping us today?" (They didn't--time for kindergarteners to practice their library skills on their own!)

This week's read-alouds and lessons:

Kindergarten:  Another Armadillo Readers' Choice book, Escargot by Dashka Slater.  Ms Margocs gets to practice her French--magnifique!  The question of the day is--Would you kiss a snail?

First grade is checkout only this week.  

Second graders are learning about being scientists in their classes, and learning about a "dragon doctor" in the Book Nook--Joan Procter!  She was a real-life herpetologist who helped introduce England, and the world, to Komodo dragons.  Joan Procter,Dragon Doctor is a Texas 2x2 book.  We are talking about "Language of the Discipline" for reptile studies.

Third grade is getting to explore the databases--there is so much to learn through them!  Home access passwords should be going home this week or the next.

Fourth and fifth graders are logging into their Google accounts to add-on EasyBib for citation use.  We are talking about the importance of giving credit to information sources for both moral and legal reasons.  They will be required to provide bibliographies for upcoming assignments, and EasyBib makes that, well, fairly easy!

Upcoming visitors:

Margaret Clauder, aka The Bookworm, will be visiting with our Pre-K and kindergarten classes on Monday!

Steve Swinburne, author and honorary 4th grade writing coach, will be helping our fourth grade students on October 16th; be on the lookout for book orders soon!

A big THANK YOU to all of our volunteer shelvers helping us with our daily "book flood"--especially on Wednesdays!

See you in the stacks this coming week!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

We have a district-wide librarians' meeting once a month here in Round Rock ISD.  When there's only one of you on a campus running an entire program (two at high schools), it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, and it helps to have an entire day with colleagues once a month.

Another perk of the meetings is choosing books from the review table.  Most of the time, I pick books that I think my students will like.  Sometimes, I pick something just because I like it.  This one, I think, will suit us all:

All the Ways Home is  Elsie Chapman's debut middle grade novel (her previous books have been YA and adult).  We meet Kaede, the twelve-year-old main character, as he narrates from the very first page.  It is the beginning of summer after a spring of hardship; Kaede's single mother was killed in a car crash, a loss Kaede has dealt with by acting out in increasingly dangerous ways.  His emotionally distant grandfather arranges for Kaede to visit Japan to see his father and brother for the first time in nine years.  As if that situation isn't awkward enough, Kaede must complete a summer writing project on the topic of "home", and do well enough to convince his principal and teacher to promote him to the next grade.

I must confess that I chose this book for the connection to Japan, where our daughter lives and works.  I am enjoying the descriptions of the people and places, reminding me of our own trip to Tokyo to visit our daughter while she was studying abroad.  Kaede's big brother lives in the same area as the restaurant that served us Thanksgiving dinner--and the chef was Canadian, just like Kaede.  I am learning how to read kanji, and I'm a bit jealous that Kaede can read it fairly well despite his childhood in Canada (if one can be jealous of a fictional character!).

I also have students who are immigrants from Japan.  I'm hoping the setting and details in All the Ways Home may bring a smile to their faces as well.

It's Monday, and I have a lot of personal connections with this story!  What book have you connected with lately?

It's Wednesday! What's happening in the Sommer Library?

We've got back-to-school books on display!

We're also featuring series books each month.  Here are some of our September offerings:

In the Book Nook, kindergarteners are talking about making kind choices (Ethics) while listening to We Don't Eat Our Classmates, one of our Armadillo Readers' Choice books.

First and second graders are listening to All Are Welcome, discussing what "welcome" means to them.  Ms Margocs is reminding them that when we feel welcome and safe, we learn better, too!

It's the second week of our lesson cycle, so the other half of third grade is working on genre identification and learning about our Bluebonnet reading program.  Fourth and fifth graders are exploring our databases in preparation for upcoming research projects in class.

Playaway forms will be going home soon for our third through fifth graders.  Playaways are portable audiobooks, and can cost up to four times as much as a regular library book; parents need to be aware of the cost for replacement before students check out Playaways.

Home access passwords for our online database resources will also be going home soon.  Please look for the sheet in your child's take-home folder.

Stay tuned next week for news about some special visitors coming to our library soon!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

If a book has the word "library" in the title, I'm apt to pick it up; occupational interest, I suppose.  This was on the review table at our librarians' meeting--how could I resist?

The Library of Ever by Zeno Alexander opens with a description of Lenora, the main character. The bored daughter of wealthy parents, she manages to slip away from her nanny in the library.  Her search for the children's section leads her to a completely different kind of library, one which has a job opening for a new librarian.  But is Lenora up for the task?  

I'm a few chapters into The Library of Ever, and already I've met suspicious characters in bowler hats, a time-traveling robot, and I'm a bit worried about Lenora as she tries to navigate a traveling balloon.  Her library is a tad more exciting than our own stacks at school!  This book is a fun, light fantasy choice for upper primary to middle grade readers.

It's Monday--do you read books about your past, present, or future careers?  Do you prefer fact or fiction?