It's the end of August! What's been happening in the AME Library?

Welcome to the 23-24 school year, Dillo Readers!

Image by Bryan Spear, Austin artist!

We have had a BUSY beginning of the school year!  To support our teachers' professional learning and collaboration time, the library is on the specials rotation this year.  This means that students will come to the library in their color groups during their teachers' planning  periods for approximately forty-five minutes.  

So what have we been doing this month?  Library orientation lessons on book care and shelf-marker use; reviewing library expectations to be safe, respectful, and responsible with each other and with materials; and essential agreements on how we want to be treated have been the focus of these first couple of rotations--as well as checking out books!  

Boosterthon huddles have also been a part of specials this past week, and will continue into next week!  Be sure to have your student log onto mybooster.com to join our school's fundraising efforts.

Interested in volunteering in our school library this year?  Be sure to register as a volunteer with our district first  , and then contact Chris Margocs via email:  christine_margocs@roundrockisd.org .

September library events and lessons will include an author visit, nonfiction text features, use of the online catalog, and introductions to our Bluebonnet and Armadillo reading programs.  Lessons and events vary by grade level.

It's been great to see students excited to check out books already.  Keep on reading, Dillos!

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?