Non-fiction picture books and MacBooks

Here’s my final book talking list. It went really well. I think I’m starting to get the hang of what the fifth graders are looking for and what they’re like. (Tragic, really, that I’m almost done with my DFW, but that’s how stuff like this goes…)

After I did my book talks all the fifth graders came down to check out books. All my book-talked books got snatched up. In fact, the kids ran through the library to get to them, which is not safe or right, but still made me a little proud. I’d only talked about 12 books and there are over 30 fifth graders, so I had a lot of kids to help with readers’ advisory. Mostly they wanted books about certain animals (chameleons, cows, horses, etc.). I had book talked Teammates, which got checked out fast, but there was more demand for baseball books so I suggested Heroes of the Negro Leagues, Baseball in the Barrios, A Picture Book of Jackie Robinson, The Story of Baseball, and Who Invented the Game?.

After the fifth graders left, I helped a tenth grader tackle a technology problem. He had created a Power Point presentation on his MacBook, but in order to project the presentation he had to send it to a PC with the proper hook-ups for the projector. The trouble was, the pictures in the presentation didn’t show up on the PC version because they were TIFF files. So I looked up the problem on Google and saw it was a common one. The help page I found said to go back to the Mac and re-insert the pictures as JPEGs. So I got him going on that he fixed it in about a half an hour. As he left Lisa said, “Who are the coolest people in the school?” and he said, “Librarians.” Darn skippy.

Today Lindi and Lisa were working on a list of dystopian literature for sixth graders. They already had a pretty good list with some of my favorites on it: The Giver and City of Ember. I could only think of one more to add, but it was a good one: Feed by M.T. Anderson.

Anecdote: A couple fifth grade girls came in today to complain about the factual accuracy of a horse book. I think it’ll probably get weeded now. Such is the beauty of empowered youth.

Third Grade Readers’ Theatre Recordings

Liz’s class:

Or go to: http://staff.washington.edu/destinee/miller_liz.mp3 

Mary Beth’s class:

Or go to:  http://staff.washington.edu/destinee/miller_mb.mp3

Erin Go Bragh

I’ve been working on an assignment for my School Library Management class of late, and today I asked Jody and Lisa for some feedback in regards to the direction I’ve been headed in with it. My assignment is to create an action plan for the Bush School library to somehow make it better. Some of my classmates working in different school libraries have their work cut out for them, but the Bush library happens to be in a very enviable position. So how can I make a great library better? Well, part of my assignment is to incorporate the new AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner, which the Bush library doesn’t currently use. So that was one new thing to include in my plan. But what else could I do? As of now, I’m recommending that the library create more learning artifacts as evidence of what they teach and that they publicize their value to the school more aggressively (using the ALA “@ your library” promotional tools). But I’m still working on it…

Getting back to my DFW duties, today I helped fill in the St. Patrick’s Day display (a picture is forthcoming).  I also helped Jody collect books for the Kindergarteners on gardening and collect more St. Patrick’s Day picturebooks. Then Jody and I talked about my lesson plan for the third graders on Wednesday. I’m working on a lesson plan that reinforces my previous lesson (on how to use the catalog) and also gets the kids thinking about their inquiry process. I’m going to have them sing “Plan, Do, & Review” (a Mike Eisenberg hit) and then write about their experience in their journals.

Today at the desk I helped two girls with known-item reference questions. They were fifth graders, so I expected them to be able to use the catalog, which they could. But I was a little disappointed when they seemed lost as to where to find the book on the shelves. So I guess it certainly won’t  hurt the third graders to get in more practice.

There were some major technology problems today (and one or two non-major problems). I accompanied Lisa on  a trip to help a teacher whose projector wasn’t projecting so I could get a taste of what it’s like to be the school-wide go-to person when gadgets misbehave. It turned out to be an easy fix, but there were bigger problems waiting in the library when we returned. No one was able to log on to the computers! For this size of a problem, Lisa calls in the technicians-by-trade (as opposed to the librarians-by-trade/technicians-by-default). They came and fixed it, but we were out of touch for a while. We had to write down check-outs by hand! The madness!