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!
