Our new initiative is literacy this year which makes me happy. English teachers are bringing back SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) in the classrooms which means the students need books. Yay! In addition, all core teachers are using literacy strategies with their students.
So I have been to department meetings, checked out boxes of books to classrooms, hosted a few rounds of book speed dating in the library, and I have introduced my 2nd Family Literacy Contest of the year. I also have a weekly Twitter post called #wordywednesday. One of the SPED teachers started to bring his students to the library every other week for a good old fashioned story time. Of course I call it "Read Alouds and Book Talks" to dress it up for the high school crowd. Lastly, I brought back the "Jags Read" signs for the teachers to model reading to our students while keeping track of what they have read. To top it all off, the Mansfield High School Librarians met with the Arlington High School Librarians to talk shop and share ideas. Being busy feels good.
My book speed dating is not new, but it is still fun. Here are a few pictures of what that looked like this year. For a more in-depth account of book speed dating, here is my blog post about our 2018 TCEA presentation "Socially Booked."
The Family Literacy Contests are taking the place of the monthly book challenges. Last year, I had individual activities for the students to finish once a month to help encourage reading. This year I have created the same activities, but I am trying to encompass the whole family. I guess I feel that a family that reads together will become life-long readers. I only had a handful of families that participated in the first go-around, but I am always hopeful there will be more as the year progresses.
I did all of the usual advertising... social media, website, morning announcements. Then I thought to ask Mr. Taylor (our principal) if he would include the literacy contests in his weekly email out to the SHS families since our initiative (we call it our "one thing") is literacy. He was more than happy to do that. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
The 1st six weeks we did a family literacy BINGO game. . .
#wordywednesday came about after a faculty meeting where we found out our students' knowledge of ACT vocabulary was lagging. I had already seen library social media pages with "SAT word of the Week" or "SAT word of the Day." So I adapted that to meet our campus's needs. I researched top ACT vocabulary words and went with the top 15 words according to Prep Scholar, https://blog.prepscholar.com/act-vocabulary-words-you-must-know
Then I put each word on a PPT and converted each page into a jpeg so the words could be loaded onto all of our social media platforms with ease. Here is an example or two of what the #wordywednesday posts look like.
#wordywednesday on Sept. 19th https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1042415125733539840
#wordywednesday on Sept. 26th https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1045041321042481152
I think I am most excited about "Read Alouds and Book Talks." So once every other week, Mr.Scretchings brings his English I and II students down to the library. I read one book aloud to the group, and I introduce vocabulary, ask the students about the characters, plot, setting, etc. Then I book talk 3-4 other books. Somehow the book talk books are related to the book I read aloud. So then we have to make that connection. After that, we check out books.
I decided to open up the class to anyone who has "B" Lunch, but so far there are no takers. Here's my latest tweet which served as both an introduction to the books and advertisement for the class.
https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1044685266622054400
Here is an example of our "Jags Read" sign.
I first introduced this to the faculty after a math teacher introduced it to me. This year we started at the beginning of the school year. I have asked the teachers how many books they read this first 6 weeks. So far we are at a total of 107 books read. Not too bad! https://spark.adobe.com/video/mJfYJDIMvFBs2
I hope this is just the first of many meetings with our Arlington friends. I love learning from others. We talked about our goals, the strongest element of our program, where we could grow, and discussed ways to do just that. It was a fabulous way to spend an afternoon of PD.
In the midst of all this, we still managed to do a bit of decorating to make the library more inviting.
The Family Literacy Contests are taking the place of the monthly book challenges. Last year, I had individual activities for the students to finish once a month to help encourage reading. This year I have created the same activities, but I am trying to encompass the whole family. I guess I feel that a family that reads together will become life-long readers. I only had a handful of families that participated in the first go-around, but I am always hopeful there will be more as the year progresses.
I did all of the usual advertising... social media, website, morning announcements. Then I thought to ask Mr. Taylor (our principal) if he would include the literacy contests in his weekly email out to the SHS families since our initiative (we call it our "one thing") is literacy. He was more than happy to do that. Thank you, Mr. Taylor.
The 1st six weeks we did a family literacy BINGO game. . .
and this six weeks we are doing an online website scavenger hunt.
#wordywednesday came about after a faculty meeting where we found out our students' knowledge of ACT vocabulary was lagging. I had already seen library social media pages with "SAT word of the Week" or "SAT word of the Day." So I adapted that to meet our campus's needs. I researched top ACT vocabulary words and went with the top 15 words according to Prep Scholar, https://blog.prepscholar.com/act-vocabulary-words-you-must-know
Then I put each word on a PPT and converted each page into a jpeg so the words could be loaded onto all of our social media platforms with ease. Here is an example or two of what the #wordywednesday posts look like.
#wordywednesday on Sept. 19th https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1042415125733539840
#wordywednesday on Sept. 26th https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1045041321042481152
I think I am most excited about "Read Alouds and Book Talks." So once every other week, Mr.Scretchings brings his English I and II students down to the library. I read one book aloud to the group, and I introduce vocabulary, ask the students about the characters, plot, setting, etc. Then I book talk 3-4 other books. Somehow the book talk books are related to the book I read aloud. So then we have to make that connection. After that, we check out books.
I decided to open up the class to anyone who has "B" Lunch, but so far there are no takers. Here's my latest tweet which served as both an introduction to the books and advertisement for the class.
https://twitter.com/jagsread/status/1044685266622054400
Here is an example of our "Jags Read" sign.
I first introduced this to the faculty after a math teacher introduced it to me. This year we started at the beginning of the school year. I have asked the teachers how many books they read this first 6 weeks. So far we are at a total of 107 books read. Not too bad! https://spark.adobe.com/video/mJfYJDIMvFBs2
Here is a picture of our first meeting between the Mansfield and Arlington high school librarians. Thank you, Pam Pinkerton for taking the picture.
I hope this is just the first of many meetings with our Arlington friends. I love learning from others. We talked about our goals, the strongest element of our program, where we could grow, and discussed ways to do just that. It was a fabulous way to spend an afternoon of PD.
In the midst of all this, we still managed to do a bit of decorating to make the library more inviting.
In the end, being busy feels great, but exactly how busy were we?
I share with you the 1st Six Weeks usage report for the SHS Library.
·
First Six Weeks, at a glance
· First Six Weeks, the detailed report https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zjcSbdbe989jsWL9uquQ2jzIwBhZnATRrTNOP62FiEw/edit?usp=sharing
