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.

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!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday was a busy Wednesday at the Bush library. Here’s what went down:

3rd grade: Jody and I returned the kids’ computer catalog worksheets and talked about some of the problems we saw. Then we split into groups to do Readers Theatre. I took 10 kids to do “The Miller and his Donkey” and Jody took 4 to do a modern Cinderella. I assigned parts to the kids and we read through the play. We talked about Aesop and the moral of the story. I gave them some notes on how they could improve their storytelling, too. Next week is Mid-Winter break, but the week after that, we’ll record the plays.

Kindergarten and 2nd grade: I performed a story for the little ones today: “The Monkey’s Heart” which is an old Sawhili/Indian (depending on the version you read) tale. I wrote my own version to connect it to Valentine’s Day and when one of the students suggested a really good alternative ending, I put it in my final telling and the kids really liked it. Jody and I talked to the students about the differences between storytelling and story reading, too.

As usual, after we finish our story room time, Jody and I help the kids pick out books. I had, as usual, many requests for Star Wars. I also did some readers’ advisory with a boy who said the last thing he really enjoyed was a Woody Guthrie cd. So we found him a book about Woody Guthrie so he could learn more. There were also two 2nd grade girls who wanted to read the same book together. I helped them find books by just browsing the Beginning Readers section of the library. It’s not very big and we have a few duplicates there (though, in general, the Bush library has very few duplicates).

When I had some free time today, I also checked the catalog to see which books Bush already had from a list of Notable Picture Books Jody gave me. Bush only had 3 out of 12, so I think they’ll be ordering some.

I also contributed to a list Lindy and Lisa were making for a student designing an independent study. She wants to look at how written works are interpreted as movies, so I suggested we look at the list of Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. I also had a few favorites that I suggested:

• Clueless, based on Emma by Jane Austen
• The Shawshank Redemption, based on the short story by Stephen King
• The Hours, based on the book by Michael Cunningham and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• One Flew Over the Cuckoos Next, based on the book by Ken Kesey
• The Golden Compass, based on the book by Philip Pullman

When I took my storytelling class last quarter, we made a list of “fillers” or things you can do when you have a few minutes and a bunch of kids. I already knew a ton from my experience with preschoolers, and today I had a chance to use one while the kindergarteners waited to go to P.E. I lead them in a chorus of theme song from “The Elephant Show” which goes like this:

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Oh, Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.
I do.

What is the title of that book about that thing?

In library school, they tell you that the easiest kinds of reference questions are “known item” questions. This means the patron knows the exact book (or whatever it is) that they want and they just need your help finding it. As it turns out, today we did a known-item search that was pretty hard. In fact, Lisa and I were both working on it for the better part of half an hour. This was the basic request: “It’s a book about a kid and no one can tell if she’s a boy or a girl, so she gets thrown in a river or something. And it’s got a scary-looking cover.” Well we tried googling lots of different search terms, but we got nowhere. I finally found the book by going to the KCLS catalog and searching “gender identity.” Some thoughtful reader had tagged it as such. Let’s all take a minute and be thankful for social tagging.

By the way, the book was What Happened to Lani Garver.

Today I also did the 5th grade booktalks again. To see what I recommended, you can click here. Or, if you ever find yourself in the Bush School library, you can check out the display under the sign “Award Winners” and all the books are right there. Actually, a couple of them got checked out pretty fast, so they won’t be there. But I made a copy of the list and left it on the table if you want to write titles down and find the books at the public library.

Since I’ll be doing these booktalks regularly, I started to work on my next set of booktalks, too. I’m currently reading The City of Ember by Jeanne DePrau to see if it makes the list.

I entered the grades for the 3rd grade worksheets, too. And I put up more trivia questions on the bulletin board. It was a good day!