Barnes and Noble + DHS Library = A Great Bookfair

This is our 3rd year to host a bookfair at Barnes and Noble, and I think we finally got it right.  Three years ago we were approached by the PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Association) to help with their Barnes and Noble bookfair.  We were to provide the in-store activities and part of the money they earned from the bookfair would be donated to the library.  It seemed like a win-win situation, and it was a lot of fun.  Last year, our PTSA was practically non-existent; therefore, we ran the bookfair on our own.  So when it came around for us to organize the bookfair again this year, it seemed second nature.

The way it works is to talk to your local Barnes and Noble rep and come up with a week you want to host a bookfair.  We inherited our dates from the PTSA who setup the bookfair before we did, and we happen to like that week and kept it.  Our bookfair starts the Saturday after Thanksgiving and runs for a week. Not a bad time for a bookfair...even if we do have to give up a Saturday to work.

I guess we could have activities running all week, but we usually organize all our events on the first day of the  bookfair, which is that Saturday.  This year we were present from 12-6pm.  In the past, we went from 10am-5pm, but it took us two years to figure out that there was not much foot traffic from 10-11:30am. Therefore we adjusted our times this year with much better participation.

Our activities included face painting, arts and crafts, a Pokemon tournament, an Anime Art Show, complimentary gift wrapping, cupcake decorating in the Cafe, story time, and a we had performance area  in the music/movies area.  Since there are only the 4 of us, we had to rely on volunteers to help run the different areas.  Since we have students in abundance who need community service hours, we have no trouble getting students to come and help that day.

Our National Art Honor Society was in charge of face painting this year.  The book club hosted 2 different story times.  Our Pokemon and Anime Clubs produced the art work for our Art Show and played in the Pokemon tournament.  The gift wrapping and Arts & Crafts were manned by student volunteers not associated with any club; they came on their own for the community service hours.  Here is an example of one of our Arts and Crafts products...found on Pinterest, of course.

Pinterest Link

The Barnes and Noble Cafe people were in charge of the cupcake decorating.  The only club who took advantage of our performance area this year was the DHS Guitar and Bass Club.  They hosted a lovely rock concert for us.  Last year we also had the Latin Club and Spanish Club sing Christmas Carols for us.

As I  said, this was our 3rd year to host, and we all said after it was over that this was the most laid back bookfair of the three.  Next week we will get our totals from the bookfair.  We usually receive 15% of what was identified as our bookfair.  It's a great way to earn money and have fun at the same time.  It is definitely a win-win partnership between the DHS Library and Barnes and Noble.

For more information about our bookfair, go to http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/bookfair

                                             See you next time!  Thanks for stopping by.

Fall Fun in the Library

It's time for some "Fall Fun" in the library.  This year we went all out with a library carnival and multiple book displays.  Take a look...

For Parent Conference Night this year, we had a Library Carnival.  Last year at this time, we did an Angry Birds Night.  To see how that evening went, click here.

At the Library Carnival this year, we served popcorn and lemonade, 

had arts and crafts projects,

 iPad games, 

a book walk, (which is like a cake walk, only with books as prizes - all donated from Barnes and Noble)

face painting, 

and yes, we rented a Bounce House. 

Our library has really tall ceilings in three of our four classroom areas, and the bounce house fit perfectly into one of those.

In order to make sure everyone had a fair chance to visit all of the areas, we had a punch card that we gave to each person (student or adult) that came into the library.

The lead volunteer in each area had a hole punch.  So as the person visited the area, he/she received a punch for that place.  They could visit each station twice.  If they filled their punch card & turned it in, we gave the participants a piece of candy.  That was our system to keep any one area too crowded.  Now some siblings and parents gave their punch card to another members of their family or a friend.  We didn't care so much about that.  After all, not many parents want to jump in a bounce house!  Over all, it worked out very well. We had 200 visitors that evening.  We know because that is how many punch cards we gave out.

In addition to the carnival, we also decorated the library for Halloween.  OK...I say we, but it was mostly Blanca and Karen.  I found the inspiration on Pinterest, and they took it and ran, so to speak.

 We had four different book displays in the library, for our Zombie and Undead books, our serial killer books, our scary books, and our Vampires/Mummy books.

We gave out candy to anyone who checked out a book that day. 

Of course, on the day in question, we were in costume. We wore our British History outfits because October 31st was also the Senior's first day of research.  So it was like killing two birds with one stone.  I love it when circumstances align like that.

At the end of the day, we gave away two buckets of candy to the winners of our Monster Mash game. During the week of Halloween we had a contest.  We gave our patrons 10 monsters, and they had to find the books from which they came.  We had one contest for the students and one for the adults.  

Here is Karen with our teacher winner, Ms. Roberts.

All in all it was a productive month.  To see our Pinterest board where we found our ideas, go to http://www.pinterest.com/dhslibrary/october-ideas/.

See you next time!  Thanks for stopping by.

It's Not All Fun and Games

As much as I like to talk about the "fun" stuff  we do in the library, it's not all fun and games.  Blanca, Karen, Judy and I work hard in order to justify the play.  Not a new concept for sure, but it fits.  After looking at our September statistics, we definitely did our fair share of teaching classes, helping students, and checking out books.  However, since we all enjoy what we do, even the work becomes the fun stuff.

Above are our stats for September.  It is the first month we collected data this year, and we were pleased with the results.

As far as the circulation stats and database searches, those numbers are self-explanatory.  We checked out 2,474 books this month, and the number of searches on each database varied with the end of month report each company sent us.

According to the report above, we saw 157 classes in the library last month.  A third of those were co-taught with the teacher, which usually includes us designing a Libguide for the class ahead of time.  Then we model how to use the Libguide once the students come to the library.  Here is an example of one of our current libguides that we used with a 12th Government class last month.  http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/crights  

To see our most current Libguides, go to http://duncanvillehs.libguides.com/.  A libguide is what we previously referred to as a Pathfinder.  For those of you not in the library world, a pathfinder is a kind of bibliography of materials in our library targeted to a specific topic to help our patrons navigate through the materials we have.

These Libguides usually have a link to our card catalog, recommended databases according to the students' topics, recommended web tools for the students' presentations, and an MLA guide.  After we go over the Libguide, the teacher takes over the lesson, and we fall back to help.  In order for the co-teaching to happen seamlessly, we have quite a few conversations with the teacher before he/she comes to the library with students.  Many conversations initially start in person and evolve into a series of emails after that.  Those are the co-teach classes.

The other 2/3 of our classes this month did involve us, but we were not directly teaching the students.  In these classes, the librarian is either actively or passively facilitating the classes as they use our facility.  If we are actively facilitating, we are present with the class helping individual students, pulling a group for a Web 2.0 workshop, helping students find books, etc.  In order to prepare for our workshops and help the teacher and students, collaboration with the teacher in the form of emails or conversations is still part of our agenda, but the conversations are not as involved as the co-teach classes.

In some cases, the librarians are not as involved; these are the classes where we are passively facilitating. We are present to help with technology issues or a quick question.  No conversation or collaboration ahead of time is needed with these classes.

Our report also tracks the number of students that come through the door before school, during the day (with a pass from a teacher), and after school.  These students are in addition to and not a part of the 157 classes that we saw.  They scan their IDs into a database for us as they check in and out of the library, and we are able to pull reports by the hour, day, week, or month. Quite handy!  Thank you Dr. McHaney for designing that database for us.

Next on the list, we report the number of trainings we host in the library by week.  These can be our clubs, administrative meetings, department meetings, staff developments, etc.  We are not always running these meetings, but we do set up the area and make sure the technology is ready to go.

Technology check outs are pretty self-explanatory as well.  We track what we have and to whom we check it out.  Then the CIT requests are last.  As librarians, we are also Campus Instructional Technologists.  That means we are the first line of defense when a teacher has a piece of technology that is not working.  If one of the CITs is not able to fix it, the teacher opens a ticket with our technology help desk.  So the number in the report lets us and our audience know the number of items we were able to fix and not send to the tech department.

The first year we started collecting this information, I only shared with the library staff.  Since then, we have branched out and shared these reports with our campus administrative staff, some district administrative staff, and even a few school board members.  It never hurts to let others know what the month in the life of a librarian entails.

OK...next time I promise to go back to the fun stuff.  I just wanted you to get a picture of what is happening each month in addition to the programs and holiday fun we are having.  See why we have 3 librarians and a wonderful clerk to run this place?  One librarian would not be able to do this alone.

See you next time.  Thanks for stopping by.

Banned Books Week - September 2013

This was our second year to celebrate Banned Books Week at our library, and I hope everyone enjoyed it.  I know we did.  The librarians wore a different book t-shirt each day.  (Our new one this year)

In addition, we had 2 different displays of books that were banned from other libraries, but not from ours.

We gave out both bookmarks and buttons to students who checked out a banned book that week, encouraging them to read out of their comfort zone.

We decorated the windows with different Banned Books sayings we printed from Pinterest. (Click here for example of one of those sayings.)

We also picked one day, Thursday, and had a snack give-away for students who checked out any book, not just a banned book.  We took the idea from Pinterest (click here for original pin), and gave out baggies of sour gummie worms.  Of course we called them "book worms."  We had three different catch phrases that we created on labels and stuck to the baggies.  One said, "Book Worms Love Banned Books!" One said, "Worm Your Way into a Banned Book," and the third one said, "Take a Bite Out of Banned Books!"

Our final bulletin board display was the most fun.  We took the idea from Pinterest again (click here for original pin) and set up a space that looked like a police mugshot area.  Then we took pictures of the teachers and students who were willing to pose with a banned book.  Here is our display...

Here is a close up of Karen posing with her banned book...

And some got into the spirit of the idea more than others....

For our entire Pinterest board of ideas for Banned Books Week, click here.

Our next fun adventure will be Oct. 17th.  We have a Parent/Teacher Conference night, and we are planning a carnival theme. Last year's Angry Birds was a hit. (see post here.) This year we are planning to have a Bounce House, a DJ, and more.  We'll see how that goes!  More to come...

See you next time!

Back to the Beginning

Here we go again! It's been a great summer, but that is but a distant memory now that school has started. This year, as every year, we begin with Freshman Orientation.  No pirate theme this year, but if you are curious as to how last year's Freshman Orientation went, follow this link.

We redesigned our Orientation to fit the needs of our school initiative to delve into Problem Based Learning (PBL).  We have 8 Freshman teachers who are piloting a PBL program.  So keeping that in mind along with the fact that everyone is super busy, we designed a 45 minute class and a 1.5 hour class.  Then we gave the teachers a choice.  They could bring their students for the 45 minute lesson with the option to stay for the additional 45 minutes, or take their students back to class.  Only 2 teachers out of 8 wanted the 45 minute lesson.  Everyone else stayed for the full hour and a half.

So for the first 45 minutes of the lesson, we took the students to 3 different sections of the library for 3 different lessons.  The first area was set up as a mini movie theater, and Karen made a 5 minute introductory video showing the kids some of the things they can do while in the library.  After that, we let them read over our brochure and encouraged them to ask questions.  We are also decorating for Homecoming; so we had construction paper panthers out for the students to decorate with their names and graduation dates.  Then we hang them in the windows.

The second area we set out our iPads to show the students our subscription databases.  With all of the projects coming this year, we felt that showing the databases we have was a must.  Using the iPads was definitely a hit.  It is amazing what students will attend to with an iPad in their hands.

In the third area, we went over laptop care, checking grades in the Home Access Center, saving work to their district drive (called the Z drive), and other things they need to know when their teacher checks out a set of laptops to use in the classroom.

For those teachers who opted for the additional 45 minute lesson, we showed them our new pages that has 12 different web tools that the students could use for presentation purposes.  Follow this link to our web tools page.  We highlighted 2 of those tools, Prezi and Voki, and then gave the students a chance to use one of these tools to create a mini presentation on a book they have enjoyed in the past.  What we plan to do is use the best of the presentations and build a website of book recommendations.  Then we have a place to show the students who are interested in what other students are reading.

One of the teachers took it a step further and decided to award extra credit to any student who created a Voki to define one of the literary terms they had been discussing in class.  Another teacher wanted her class to create a Voki to discuss the novel they were reading.  We are always excited when a teacher can find a use for the tool we introduce.

Here is an example of a Voki discussing a favorite book...




If you can't see the Voki above, here is a link you can follow instead.  Voki

Thanks for stopping by!  See you soon.

I Read...What's your Superpower?

After the juniors leave, we usually decorate the library for our end of year theme.  For the past 2 years, that has been a luau theme.  This year Karen talked us into a superhero theme. The only problem with that was our lack of decorations for the library.  So we went to Pinterest for inspiration and was not disappointed.  We found lots of good stuff to help us decorate and plan for our end of year party.

If your library is not doing an end of year party yet, I would highly recommend it.  This is our 3rd year to host such a party, and we think it is the perfect avenue to thank our current supporters and recruit new ones.

We call it our annual "Patron Appreciation Day."  It happens after school for one hour, and we invite our own students and staff.  In addition,we also invite our superintendent, other district administrators, school board members, and key community members such as the mayor, the public librarians, and city councilmen.

Weeks before the party, we set a date, order refreshments (this year we ordered cookies at Tom Thumb, but in the past we have ordered cakes at CostCo), set the guest list, and contacted our area public librarians, Barnes & Noble, and Half-Priced Books to ask them for summer reading promotional information they may have. We also solicited student projects from the teachers so we could showcase the students' hard work and provide an authentic audience for their products. In addition, we talked to the Guitar Club about being our live music during the event.

Then we decorated the library and designed our flyers that we planed to hang up around the school advertising our event.  For decorations, we used this website we found on Pinterest.  It had templates that we were able to use with an OPAC projector.  From those templates, we were able to create...

Batman

Green Lantern

 & The Flash

Our biggest decoration was a message about summer reading...

The inspiration for this banner came from a bulletin board we found on Pinterest. We used Superman duct tape for the border which also helped to weigh down the butcher paper.

The inspiration for our  book display to go with the theme was also found on Pinterest.  Here is what ours looked like...

Our flyer this year was created in Word.  After we acquired our principal's permission, they were hung all over the building using this cool Superman duct tape we found at Target.  The duct tape was quite the hit, and many of our signs were found on the floor because the kids were taking the duct tape for whatever reason.  It was my hope that the students actually read the flyer before stealing the duct tape.  :)

A week before the party, we confirmed the refreshments, talked to any of the librarians that hadn't sent us information about their summer reading, and followed up with the teachers who were bringing down student work.  Then we sent out a general email invite to the staff, district administrators, school board members, and community members.  We also submitted an announcement to be read during our morning announcements each day.  

2-3 days before the event, we picked out the crafts, downloaded the Superhero apps for our newly acquired iPad lab (which we have thanks to our best friend, Vicki Smith), and created the buttons "I read...What is your superpower" that we plan to give away during the party. I think the pin looks great, and it took Blanca quite a few hours to create that "R" in the middle using Paint.

For the crafts, we turned to Pinterest again...no surprise there. After much research, we decided to create masks and make Superhero Tootsie Roll Pops.  Here are the templates from the website for the crafts we did.

Superhero Tootsie Roll Pops-Template

Masks-Templates

A word to the wise about the iPads.  When you go into the settings, make sure you block the student's ability to download the apps.  Do not block the apps themselves.  That was our one hiccup; I put a bit too much security on the iPads, and I had to go back into them and allow the students to see the apps that I had downloaded.  Of course, we did not know this until the kids had their hands on the iPad in the middle of the party.  Also, Karen was stationed in this area duirng the party to make sure the students used the sign out sheet when they took an iPad.  She also took their student ID to ensure they would bring the iPad back.  It worked; not one iPad went missing.

The day of the party, Karen set up the tables and distributed the area public libraries' summer reading information.  We had information from the libraries of Duncanville, Dallas, DeSoto, Cedar Hill, & Grand Prairie.  We also had a table for our Book Club, Barnes & Noble, and Half-Priced Books. Here are 2 examples of the tables...

Duncanville Public Library

Barnes & Noble

On the day of the party, the teachers started bringing their student products as well, and we arranged them on the tops of our shorter shelves. For each set of products, we created a sign so the general audience would know the name of the project, the subject, and the teacher.  Here are just a few of the products we displayed...

Ms. Peter's Pre Calculus projects

Mr. Tahaney's Art Creatures

Ms. Simon's & Ms. Ellis' Shakespeare projects

An hour before the party, we set out the crafts, the food, moved the iPads into place and generally took care of the last minute details.  The guitar club brought down their instruments and started to set up for the concert.  We checked out each area of the library to make sure there was something to do or see.  

• Section A - summer reading programs from area libraries
• Section B - food and drink
• Middle of library - iPads, chess sets, and book check out
• Section C - crafts
• Section D - Guitar Club concert
• Shelves - student work

Of course we dressed for the occasion as well...

Our party was from 3-4pm last Thursday, and I think we were able to escort the last of the students out by 4:20.  We had hundreds of students, many faculty members, our Superintendent Dr. Ray, our Chief of Staff Mr. Chrietzberg, our CFO Mr. Kuehler, our Chief of Security, Mr. Woolery, our head of Technology Ms. Smith, the Mayor Ms. Hodge, one of our city councilmen Mr. Cooks, our Duncanville public librarian Ms. Hudson, and our Barnes and Noble rep Ms. Howell.  We had a great time, and I think the students did as well.

The day after the party, we sent out thank you emails to everyone who showed up.  To go with the thank you, we created a Vuvox collage with a few of the pictures from the event.

Overall, this party is a great way to solidify our relationship with the students, staff, and district administrators while forging new bonds with the school board and community members.  It never hurts to have a few more friends for your library.

See you next time!

National Library Week

We had a great time celebrating National Library week at the DHS Library!  Before I get into that, I did promise to tell you who won our "Battle of the Books" March Madness event.  By only 5 votes, the Outsiders by SE Hinton beat out Harry Potter.  That is not how I expected it to go, but that is what I love about this job...never a dull moment!

Now for National Library Week.  We took an idea from Pinterest (no surprise here), and created a scavenger hunt for the students.  Our prize was an ipod shuffle.  Actually we had 2 that were generously donated by a person who prefers to stay anonymous.  The original scavenger hunt created by Kyna Hockenberry  for her library's Teen Tech Week was our model...Link to Pinterest

Blanca emailed the librarian who gave us her explanation as to how she used it and her permission for us to adapt her idea.  One big modification for us was that we made the students keep up with the paper.  The librarian whose idea we stole was a public librarian, and she kept the student punch cards posted on a wall.  We were afraid we would have too many, or something would happen to them if they were on display.  So each student became responsible for his/her scavenger hunt board.  Here is what ours looked like ...

I created this in Publisher which didn't take as long as I thought it would.  I imported a picture of an iPhone, and then created the shapes over the top of the picture.  Then I added the text or pictures on top of the shapes.

Back to the event...the idea of our scavenger hunt was to have the students doing 3 things each day, and the person with the most punches would win the iPod shuffle.  As the student completed an activity, one of the librarians used a hole punch to mark the finish of the event.  If the student set foot in the library, we punched the 1st button, which was the day of the week.  If they introduced themselves to the librarian of the day, we punched the second button, and the third button each day had them doing something different.  On Monday, students had to check out a book.  On Tuesday, they had to follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.  On Wednesday, we had cupcakes in the library for all participants.  On Thursday, the students had to email, tweet, or FB us a picture of themselves reading.  We put the directions on the back of their iPhone sheet...(because who is going to remember all that!)

We left Friday off on purpose so that the students had the day to turn their iPhone into the library.  (Note: We used different hole punches, instead of just the round, so the students couldn't punch their own.  We had the "fancy" hole punches, like the butterfly, triangle, and square.)

We had a great time and plenty of participation.  We even met some students who had never been to the library before this week.  So I believe this event was a success! If we do this next year though, we should start with the cupcakes on Monday.  We had lots more participation after that event, but it was in the middle of the week. So the students starting on Wednesday didn't stand a chance of winning the iPod.

There were 9 students who finished all 12 activities.  Since there were only 2 iPods, we had a drawing.  Two lucky students went home with an iPod shuffle; they were Willie and Morgan.  Yay!

See you next time!

March Madness

March truly was a "mad" month for us here at the DHS Library.  We were involved in teaching research to the juniors while planning our Open House Family Event and our "Library March Madness" contest.  However, my purpose today is not to talk about the 165 classes that came through the library this month.  Instead, I am going to talk about the family night where 300 parents and students attended on March 5th, and our Library March Madness. 

Our Family Event did not have a theme as our Hunger Games & Angry Birds Nights did.  We decided to go with a more generic theme of "Family Night."  During Texas Public School's Week, the high school had an Open House.  During this Open House, the area 8th graders and their parents are invited to see where their children are going next year.  So we decided to have a few fun events in the library for them and our own Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior students.  Rarely do Senior students come, but they are always welcome.

We have 4 main sections of the library, and we set up a different activity in each section.  The first section (area A) had a multitude of crafts for the students to do.  The Cosmetology students set up an area to do face painting.  We used old book pages to make butterflies.  We made St. Patrick's Day hats and bookmarks . . .



and we had an area where students could adopt a Reading Buddy (which is a pet rock from the 70s) that we started with the Junior research.  See link to our Pinterest page for details... http://pinterest.com/dhslibrary/junior-research/

In section B of the library, we asked the Football coaches if we could borrow the inflatable Panther head to blow up and use as a background for pictures...



In section C of the library, we set up Coke Floats for both the students and adults to enjoy.



In section D of the library, the DHS Guitar and Bass Club performed for us.  This is just one of 4 different bands that performed throughout the evening.



And now... Library March Madness

So far we have had a strong response to the March Madness contest.  We started with 32 books and are now down to the final four.  This week the students are voting for the championship round.  It is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone against The Hunger Games, and on the other side, it is Dragon Ball Z against The Outsiders.  Crazy match up, huh?  This idea all started with Pinterest.  I pinned a couple of pictures of other libraries encorporating books into the March Madness bracket system.  Of course, they were just pictures.  I couldn't find anyone who specifically told us how they ran their brackets.  So we made it up as we went along.

Our first step was to find 32 books worthy of the competition.  We decided on 32 instead of 64 based on the amount of time it would take to get to the championship round.  We eliminated books once a week to give students and teachers the time to vote.  We decided that 2 votes in one week would be too confusing for everyone.  So each Monday, we would reveal last week's vote.  We went from 32, to the Sweet 16, to the Elite 8, to the Final Four.  We are now in the process of eliminating two more books for the Champiomship round.

 



After we mapped out the overall plan of how long this was going to take. We sent out an "all call" for books over the morning announcements, Twitter, and Facebook. Students and faculty members submitted their 4 favorite books of all time.  Then Blanca tallied the results, and the list of 32 books was established.  To pit one book against another for the brackets, Blanca put the names of all 32 books in a basket and drew 2 titles at a time.

Once the bracket was set, it was time to create the ballots.  Each week the ballot reflected the books left, and each week Blanca put the names in a basket to decide which book competed against each other.  Since we are not at the end of this contest, I'll have to let you know who competed in the competition and which book was voted the "champion."

After the champion has been announced, we have kept all the ballots and plan to use them in a raffle (since we made the students put their names and ID numbers on them) to give away a few small gift cards to B&N or Half-Priced Books as a "thank you" for voting and supporting our "Library March Madness."

See you next time!