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

 It's our last post of the 22-23 school year!  Ms Margocs is busy hunting down missing inventory.  She will go to great lengths to find books that are supposed to be on the shelves!

The Book Witch was prowling the halls this week!

We have over two dozen students who haven't turned in their books; please be sure to bring them tomorrow so they can be checked in, inventoried, and shelved to be ready for
next school year!

Places to look for those library books:

• under your bed
• at the bottom of your backpack
• in a siblings' room
• in a classmate's cubby
• in another same-grade classroom
• in the car
• at your grandmother's house

Please be responsible and turn in your library books! 

Looking for more books to read and share this summer?  Be sure to check out the resources on our district summer reading page.

There are lots of ways to keep reading this summer to beat the summer slide:  the take-and-keep books you got from the library, MackinVIA ebooks (and Comics Plus on MackinVIA) that you can access through Classlink, books from the public library and pop-up libraries.

It's Summer Break, Dillo Readers--enjoy whatever books you like to read!  See you in the AME Library in August!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 The only reading I've been able to stick with these past few weeks has been my morning sessions with Gilbert's Big Magic.

I give myself ten to fifteen minutes to read in the morning.  The layout of Big Magic is perfect for this amount of time, with mini-chapters of two to four pages that are easily digested as I drink my morning coffee and wake up my brain.

I'm about halfway through the book, and the content is broadening from a focus on creativity to an outlook on "creative living".  The passage I read this morning was particularly relevant to all professions, with its message on living with the downsides of a profession if you really love the pursuit of it.  That is so true of the calling to be an educator; we all have parts of the job we aren't particularly fond of, but we have our reasons to keep at it.  My passion is literacy for life, and the library is a great place to practice and promote that passion.

It's Monday, and I'm plodding along with my daily morning reading.  Do you have a dedicated time to read each day?  If not, is there a time you can carve out to read on a regular basis?

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

We are deep into inventory season in the library!

We're gathering teaching materials, scanning every book in the library, and collecting those last returns from students.  All books were due last Monday.  We still have about 100 students with library books out--bring those books back, Dillo Readers!  The Book Witch will be visiting classrooms at the end of the week to collect books and remind those who still have checkouts.

We have given out twenty prizes already in our daily clear account drawings!

Ms Margocs uses a random number generator to find five students with a clear library account each day--fifty winners total by the last day of school!

Next week, we'll be talking about summer reading plans.  Start thinking about what you'll read this summer, Dillos.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 I have to confess that most of my reading this past week has been swimsuit catalogs and vacation rental information.  My modus operandi is thinking ahead, and ahead is summer break!  I am still working my way through my grown-up novel and Gilbert's Big Magic; morning reading is my most consistent practice.

When I surveyed my students to see if they identified as readers, I reminded them that they are, at the very least, environmental readers.  I think we adults sometimes forget just how much reading we do outside of a book on a daily basis.  Here's the list I've come up with:

• Emails
• Ads
• Social media posts
• The clock
• The calendar
• Planners
• To-do lists
• Decorative print (on my coffee mug)
• Our car dashboard
• Traffic signs
• Billboards
• Stereo tuner
• More emails
• Computer programs (i.e. our inventory system)
• Reports
• Directions
• Labels
• Receipts
• Greeting cards
• Anything on our phones--the weather, notifications, app names...

I will have read most of this list before 10a this morning.  When you stop to think about what you read in a day, do you consider environmental print?

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

We are having our No-Price Bookstore this week! 

Thanks to the generous donations of new and gently used books, students are able to choose one or two books to add to their home libraries.

It is so very important that children have access to books at home.  There is a program, backed by research, that promotes the reading of one thousand books before kindergarten.  You can find more information here. 

All library books are now due back.  We will start drawing names of free and clear accounts beginning this Friday, for the last ten days of school!  Clear accounts are those without any checked out books, lost books from this year, or unpaid bills from this year.

Make reading part of your summer plans!  Ms Margocs will be sharing some tips and a check-off game for summer reading with classes during the last few days of school.

Enjoy your No-Price Bookstore books, Dillo Readers--keep reading!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 Last night, I read my copy of Indelible Ann: The Larger-Than-Life Story of Governor Ann Richards by Meghan P. Browne, illustrated by Carlynn Whitt.

I must confess that I was not paying much attention to politics when Richards was running for governor; I was in my third year of teaching in a resource setting and planning a wedding the year she was elected.  I do remember the mudslinging ads, though, and admired her high-road campaigning.  

When I met the author of this book at the TLA "Speed-Dating the Bluebonnets" event last month, I told her that this was the book I didn't know we were missing until she wrote it.  She said the same thing, surprised that there hadn't been a children's book published about Richards.  Richards is one of the only two women ever to be elected to the office of Texas Governor, and diversified the dome before diversity was even a buzzword.

It's Monday, and I'm catching up on Texas history with a Bluebonnet Award Nominee biography.  Have you read an informational picture book lately?  Were you surprised by the content?

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

 It's our last week of checking out books from the library!  Before checkouts, Ms Margocs has been polling students on whether or not they see themselves as readers.  The good news is--most of our students do!  When we stop and think about books that have been shared, what they've checked out of the library, environmental reading...then even more see themselves as readers.  Our goal is 100% on this question next year.

We concluded our Armadillo Readers' Choice voting this week.  The overall winner for our campus is Chez Bob by Bob Shea!

Our third through fifth graders are taking their reading life notebooks home this week.  Kindergarten through second grades will have them returned to their teachers, along with the rest of the Armadillo Readers' Choice book stickers to add to their notebooks during these last weeks of the school year.  Students who return to AME next year are welcome to continue requesting book stickers to add to their journals!

The library will be closed tomorrow for STAAR testing.  Our regular Thursday classes were invited to visit the library on Wednesday.

All books are due back to the library on May 8th!  Please pay attention to overdue notice emails, and look for missing books.  Usual hiding places are book cubbies, classroom library shelves, under beds, and in siblings' rooms.

Good luck on the STAAR test tomorrow!  We'll see all of our Dillo readers at the No-Price Bookstore next week!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 It's a new month...but I'm still reading the books I started last month!  Oh, well, the point is to keep on reading every day, and I am accomplishing that goal.  Gilbert's Big Magic has me thinking about making room in my day for creative pursuits, and Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons makes me wonder if I would enjoy being a dragon, too.

Summer is coming soon, and I'm planning on catching up on reading so that I can start next August with the books I've planned.

I cooked this weekend which, for me, means I was reading a few cookbooks.  Yes, that counts as reading, too!

We are in inventory season in the library, and Ms Moss has been busy scanning our fiction books this past week.  In the process, she is coming across some really great books that have been hiding in plain sight on our bottom shelves.  Some of those may end up in my take-home reading pile for the summer...I'll let you know.

It's Monday, and I am plugging along with my two books at the moment while I make my summer reading plans.  Have you started your reading pile yet, Dillos?  Summer will be here in four weeks!