Lately... in a nutshell

I just realized I hadn't posted anything in about 3 weeks, and I can't imagine why...  LOL, life's just as busy and chaotic as usual, so why can't I squeeze in one more thing?

We've been busy gearing up for the holidays at school.  All my winter and Christmas books are out and being snatched up by the staff and students.  I've got pics to snap and a K-2 and 3-4 video to put together on Animoto for our upcoming Christmas sing-alongs.  We've got a Christmas program to finish putting together...

My just day-to-day activities have been overwhelming.  Guided Reading, Acceleration, Character Education, Mentoring, the school website...  Plus lessons, stories, check-outs, material gatherings...  About half the staff at my school followed suit and ordered the free glofish.  As soon as they arrive they want me to go set up their tanks.  Hello?  I'm the only person in the whole school whose fish died??  You sure you want ME to do it?

On a side note, I must say I'm actually a little irritated that my fish died.  You get the tank and are supposed to set it up and get it ready for the fish which come about a week and a half later.  We had a teacher who got her tank and set it aside and forgot about it.  When her fish came, she set them aside too because her tank wasn't ready.  TWO WEEKS LATER the fish (which had been over-nighted and are clearly labeled as being "live animals" which you need to "open immediately") were still sealed in the bag, enclosed in the box.  Clearly they're dead, right?  Nope.  When I mentioned mine had gone on to that great big goldfish bowl in the sky it dawned on her that she'd forgotten all about hers.  We opened them.  They were fine.  We filled her tank with ice water out of her Culligan bubbler (mind you, they're supposed to be in water that's about 70 degrees), floated the fish, eased them in, and the suckers lived happily ever after.  Blah.  Color me bright green with the worst kinda glofish-envy.  She says her fish are a "Christmas Miracle."  Bah Humbug!

At any rate...  I've also had to rearrange the library's computer lab so I could do away with a mini-drop which we were about to lose support of.  I've created 7 of the 10 cybersafety prezis I want to use to go along with the commonsensemedia lessons our county requires we teach.  I've worked on some of my NC Falcon modules...

Oh, and I wrecked my car so I spent quite a few afternoons taking care of that...  meeting with the body shop, the insurance adjuster, getting a rental car...  Another great, big BLAH!!!

On the upside...  The kids are so much fun!!  We've been reading Christmas stories online at We Give Books which is currently donating a book to a school library recovering from Hurricane Sandy for every story read.  I got my free Elf on the Shelf out at the library keeping an eye on the kids.  We named him Dewey.

At home, I had my dog and cat both fixed.  My cat is back to being her evil self, so we know she's feeling better.  My dog had to wear one of those Elizabethan collars which he was BEYOND thrilled to get off after a week.  Now all our bruises will heal where the big lug would run into us at full speed with that thing and knock us over.

Unfortunately he's apparently not a fan of Christmas.  He began by first destroying every Santa in the house and clearing all the ornaments from the bottom half of the tree.  Now he's moved on to snowmen, angels, and candycanes.  Every day I come home to a new pile of what used to be merry Christmas paraphernalia in the middle of my living room floor with Dexter laying in the middle of it.  Here he is laying on his blanket (he drags it around like a toddler) playing with an ornament he removed from the tree.

My evil cat also likes Christmas -- though she prefers hiding in the tree.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful time -- I was especially thankful for Wednesday and Thursday since I didn't have to work.  I'm anxious for Christmas to come so I can enjoy a couple more days off.  And that, I suppose, has been my crazy life in a nutshell...  See, ya haven't missed much, huh?  :)

Sister Library Project

Yesterday I received this book from a librarian in Paris who organizes the Sister Library program I joined a couple years ago:

My Favorite Book by Amy Reggio

It's an absolutely gorgeous book, filled with amazing pictures.  Not only can you see these beautiful young people with their favorite books, but you can see the world they live in.  In the background you can see the other villagers, their homes, children farming, their library of books we would have long-since weeded...

At any rate, this books is the inspiration for a Sister Library activity I agreed to do with another library in Malawi.  We are going to recreate this book with our students, and they will recreate it with theirs.  Then we will exchange copies of our books.  I'm so excited!!

For anyone interested, you can read more about the program HERE.

Just Google It!

I've been introduced recently to two great resources, both of which harness the power of Google Earth and can be used in our classrooms.  The Google Cultural Institute and Real World Math are both wonderful resources for our teachers, to make learning meaningful and to give our children a greater world view.

If you haven't played with it before, you might be interested in spending a few minutes at the Google Cultural Institute (if it's not blocked at school!).  From the front page, if you hit "explore" you end up on their contents page where you can see what they have available.  You can view resources by decade, partner, channel, or project.  Your kids can take a virtual 3-D field trip all through Versailles!   The World Wonders Project is an incredible way to take your kids around the world -- you can see the locations on a globe and then go explore places like the Great Barrier Reef, a scientists' research station in Antarctica, Pompeii...  They used Google Earth to put these together so it's like you're standing right there and you can turn and look all around you, zoom in and out, etc.  There are also things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nelson Mandela Memory Centre.  The Art Project is a link to THOUSANDS of art museums from all around the world.  This is an amazing, free resource we can use to give our kids a lot of the culture they miss growing up in little ol' Goldsboro, or wherever your hometown may be.

Another very cool website (especially for the higher grades) is Real World Math which also incorporates the power of Google Earth.  The lessons here involve things like learning to apply math concepts through studying crop circles, tracking whales, figuring out who needs tsunami warnings, lunar sports, oil spill estimations, racing in the Iditarod...  These real-world and project based learning plans are a great way to bring the common core to life in your classroom.  It's worth some time, even if you only look to get an idea of things you can try in your own classroom that tie in which places/events you study and the math skills you teach.

Elf on the Shelf

He arrived today!  This is the free Elf on the Shelf doll, poster, and storybook I sent for.  You can follow the directions for your own free elf and book in my Freebies post from last week.  Hurry, though!  They were only giving away 5,000!

Karma...

Well, Sandy came and went...  She (or He?) decided just to view the NC Coast from a distance and save her (or his?) gusto for New England.  We had some wind and rain, but nothing significant.  It wasn't any worse than a regular rainy weekend in my neck of the woods.

My media center, however, had a rough start today.  I blame Traci from the classroom underneath it, though.  You know what they say about Karma...  

On Friday, Traci came up and helped us cover the stacks.  She made the point of saying we were wasting our time.  Terry, my media assistant, told her flat-out if we cover the stacks, nothing happens.  If we don't cover the stacks, the ceiling falls in and we lose books.  We have the holes in the ceiling in 3 or 4 places to prove our theory.  Traci informed us she, however, didn't need to bother covering things in her room because, "The only way my room will get wet is if the library floods out!"  

Yeah, good thinking, Traci.

The roof didn't leak.  The stacks were dry and secure when we came in this morning.  I walked the whole library inspecting the ceiling all the way around.  Traci said, "See, told you it was a waste of time."

About 30 minutes later, a pipe burst.  It flooded the library and ran through the floors down into Traci's room.  She's lucky I had the good sense to run downstairs to check and move her computers out of the way cuz that's EXACTLY where the water was dripping.  It eventually spread to drip on her kids at their desks, too, but we eventually got to the pipe and could cut the water off and start working at drying things out.  Nasty pink water, too...  The floors were soaked in the workroom and the carpet on either side of it at the doors.  The copiers were standing in inches of water...  It seeped through the into the video room and flooded that out, and it seeped under the cabinets, through the walls, under my Fiction stacks and out into the carpet of the Fiction area by my seating out there.  It was lovely.  Blah.

It took a while for the custodians to bring up a shop vac and fans, but things were drying out by the time I left.  I'm sure it'll be moldy and yucky soon, though.  My poor library!

I blame Traci.  LOL, even if you THINK it, you should NEVER EVER say it out loud or it happens.  Kinda like car trouble -- it only happens if you forget to grab your cell phone off the charger before you left...  Oooh, and you only get stuck behind a school bus when you're running late...  All those wonderful things.  :)

Tomorrow's election day -- the kids in school are coming up to vote for President.  Let's see how that goes. :)   Hopefully everything will be dry and cooperative!

Here comes Sandy

We spent the last part of the day preparing for the storm.  We're supposed to have 40 mph winds and 5 inches of rain -- not a big deal normally, but our ceiling leaks something awful.

This lovely hole is from just a typical rainy day -- and this wasn't even a spot we knew to be leaking.  That lovely little leak took an entire stack of books with it -- it collapsed over my 000-300 stacks, taking out everything on one stack, and the right side of the stack beside it.  So now we cover for everything.  Here's my lovely assistant coming through with some more plastic...

HOPEFULLY we won't have any damage, but we covered all the stacks, the SmartBoard, the circulation desk, and all the computers just to be on the safe side. 

I'm off to work -- I'm late!  Have a happy and safe Friday night!

Hoorays and Hurricanes

There is a hurricane hitting this weekend, and I had no idea until about 3:30 today.  Where have I been, living in a bubble?  Although, with a sigh of relief, I see that weather.com says it's going to hit New England, not here.  SO...  probably just a windy, rainy Saturday -- no big deal.  I'll be at work anyway -- can't even enjoy it.

It's been a very busy week for me, actually, so I'm not entirely surprised I missed the big news.  I teach reading and acceleration all morning, followed by back-to-back (and sometimes overlapping!) classes all day, and character education at the end of the day.  I had a meeting after school Tuesday that kept me there till after 5.  In the evenings, after I cook dinner, feed the dogs, clean the house, run errands, I've been working on lesson plans, playing on Twitter, catching up on the blogs I follow, and trying to finish reading Under the Dome by Stephen King.  I've only got about 60 more pages to go!  I'm enjoying it, but I've just taken forever to get through it and I'm anxious to move on to something else.

But, tomorrow's Friday, so all is well.

I actually don't know why I like Fridays so much.  It must just be force of habit or something...  Fridays are crazy-busy for me -- I've got back-to-back classes all day, no assistant most of the day, and when I'm done with that, I pick up my daughter from school, head home to throw on a pair of jeans, and head back out the door to my 2nd job where I work the 5-10 shift.  By the time I get home it's nearly 11 and I'm wiped out.  I need to just get cleaned up, crawl into bed, and get some sleep so I can get up in the morning and get back to work...

Yep, there definitely must be something wrong with me.  I love them regardless.  :)

I did manage to finish a prezi last night.  I've messed with it a few times, but hadn't actually ever FINISHED making anything I've started.  We are required to teach cybersafety lessons in my county in accordance with a grant we receive.  I took the plan from one of the required lessons and just put it in a prezi just to help guide the discussion.



I'm working on one for my 2-3 classes now, but my laptop crashed while I was working on it after school today, so I gave up for now.

Alrighty...  I guess I should call it a night.  I've still got a lot to do before I can crawl into bed to hopefully finish my book tonight!

I LOVE Getting Free Stuff!

Don't you?  I mean...  who doesn't, right?

I just got a FREE Shelf on the Elf and Storybook.  How cool is that?  Want one?  They're giving one to the first 5,000 teachers who sign up.  You kinda have to jump through hoops with this, but it only takes a few minutes in the end...

Go online to http://www.elfontheshelf.com and sign up.  It's up in the top right corner.  You'll have to verify your email address and create a profile.  Once you've done that, go to http://www.elfontheshelfteachers.com and sign up again.  They'll ask you to pick your grade level (K-1, 2-3, or 4-5).  This will take you to another screen with a "Join This Group" button off to the right near the top.  Once you click that, you join the group to access the teacher resources, and if you're among the first 5,000 there will be a screen for you to fill out your name, mailing address, etc. for them to send you your free Elf and Storybook.

Bonus:  There are cute games, activities, crafts, etc. on the website to keep in mind as you're doing your holiday-time lesson planning.

In addition to that...  I was given a link for free glow fish from Carolina Biologicals today.  The kids LOVE the aquarium I have in the media center, and are always eager to see the fish when they come up.  They'll love these glow fish when they come in.

For those of you who are interested in free Glow Fish, or one of the other pet-grants available (we're not allowed to have "pets" at school -- only fish), here is the link to the website:  http://www.petsintheclassroom.org

Enjoy your freebies!  

No Walls

My friend, Jonathan, came in last week (with only 1-1/2 days' notice) to teach what turned out to be the entire 3rd grade about turtles.  Originally it was one teacher, and then she asked if he'd mind doing a 2nd class, and by the time he left he'd done them all.  He's so sweet!  And the kids had a great time.  Here's a pic of him with the original class.

I love him to death, but the man is chronically late.  We work together at my 2nd job and he's forever getting in trouble for being late to work.  Mrs. T wanted him there at 1:20, ready to begin, so I told him to be there at 1.  He said he'd be there at 12:30.  He got there at 12:45.  Worked for me!

So anyway, the whole point of all of this was that I brought him up to the library to get his stuff ready before going on to the classroom.  The class was in math lab, and he had pics on his phone he needed to pull off and move to a flash drive.  He'd never been in my school before and even he, an "outsider" if you will, was able to immediately recognize our layout as a "bad idea."

My school was built in the 70's using the open classroom concept.  We have no walls.  It makes the school architecturally interesting, but it's very noisy.  All the time.  

In the last 10 years "temporary walls" were put up to divide the classrooms up.  These are moveable, thin, and don't reach all the way from the floor to the ceiling, nor all the way from one end to the other.  It gives us a place to put our posters and things on the walls, but does very little for keeping the peace.  

My library, however, stands as the crowning jewel above it all.  The school is round, the library is raised -- they go up any of the 5 staircases or the ramp to come in to the library.  There are 3 classes underneath us, as well, that they go down the stairs from the main level of the school to reach.  In addition, we have 6 lofts that surround the library.  None of which have walls, so everything is open to us, and we are privy to all the sounds, noise, and foot traffic.

Here's an animoto tour I put together a few years ago for a project in one of my MLS classes.  This is my pre-SmartBoard days, so the layout is a little different now, but you'll get the idea...

So, at any rate...  I'm not sure what they were thinking when they came up with this "open classroom" concept.  It makes me wonder if it was someone who knew nothing about education.  Or were they thinking about the one-room school houses where everyone learned together?  We moved on from that for a reason, ya know...

We still have some of the architect's concept portraits at the school.  They're in a closet in the artroom.  They show small groups of 2-3 kids together in areas, well away from other kids, working cooperatively on things.  It would be great if we only had maybe 100 kids, all at about the same grade level.  Unfortunately we've got 30-some classes ranging from Pre-K through 4th.  

I went into a 4th grade class the other day while the teacher was trying to teach math.  The kids were humming along with the kinders in the next room who were essentially drowning her out singing their "Days of the Week" song (to the tune of the Adams Family, which is all I ever think of when I hear them).  

Well, now you have a better idea of where I "live" during the school day.  I need to get going before I'm late for work.  :)

Fighting Frustration

I'm back!  I've been blogging back on my Wordpress page...  I've been going back and forth trying to decide which platform I prefer.  I'm currently starting to I think I might like this one better.  Honestly, I liked that I could use Wordpress at school without logging out of my school Google accounts, not that I'm supposed to do that...  But I follow blogs with my work gmail account, and then logging into my personal one to do anything with this logs me out of that.  In the end, I'm not supposed to be accessing this at work anyway, so it really shouldn't matter.  Other than I couldn't share a blog post or anything on the spur of the moment without trading off logins.

On the downside of Wordpress...  I wasn't able to share things.  It gave me a hard time with photos and videos.  Blogger's acting more user-friendly for me.  :)

So anyway...  Here I go again.  I guess I'll use this blog for a little while and decide which I ultimately prefer. I do like that more teachers tend to be on this one.

Ready for Programming to Begin...

Tomorrow is it.  October 1st.  The day all school-wide programs start at my school.  I've been dreading this since Day 1.

I don't know what it's like in other school libraries.  Quite honestly, when I was a classroom teacher, I didn't usually stay with my class when they went to the library.  When I taught at Coats, I stayed a few times.   It was story-time and she used puppets.  Usually while she was working with the kids, I was in the professional loft gathering resources though.  I just watched as I did what I needed to do.  When I taught at W.T. Brown, classes didn't go to the library -- they only did checkout and it was flex so it wasn't a "bring your class" thing -- just a send the kids in pairs when/if they asked.  When I taught at Wayne Avenue, we had a fixed schedule and we dropped them off.  She did a worksheet-based lesson with them, then checkout.  And then at North Drive...  my assistant usually took them and dropped them off.  I think it, again, was just a story and/or a checkout.

Now that I'm the media coordinator, I have an entirely flex schedule...  With a few exceptions.  I teach reading to 2nd graders from 8:35-9:05 in the mornings, and in the afternoons I teach character education lessons to kindergarten.  We lost an assistant, and that same class lost a scheduled computer lab time, so to accommodate, I keep that class in my library's computer lab one day a week for 30 minutes or so, allowing that teacher the opportunity to attend her grade-level planning meeting.  And I have 12 mentees that I work with.  

I don't mind doing any of this stuff.  I love working with the kids.  It just makes it hard for teachers to schedule time to come.  My blocks of time that are carved out seem to be the times they want the most.  

And what about collaboration?  My teachers want to use the library as a drop-zone.  Ditch the kids and run!  I'll get a teacher who wants me to work on a skill from time to time, but it'll be, "What are you doing with my class today, cuz it would be great if you could give them a lesson on nuclear fission for me -- I haven't had a chance to touch on science this week.  Just read them a good informational book and we'll call it done."  Really?  Sorry, Hon.  If you want to plan something, I need notice.  If you didn't give me a request when you signed up a week or two ago, then you're getting the library skill or thematic story I planned for them, and a checkout.  And if you want them doing a PROJECT, you need to plan it WITH me.  It's YOUR job to teach them this stuff.  It's my job to kick it up a notch and make it interesting.

I'm excited about the mentees though.  I know all 12 of the kids.  A couple of them ride my last nerve...  But they're all sweet (when they wanna be), and mean well (most of the time, at least).  A few are actually readers who'll be glad about spending time every week with me.  Most won't.  So, I want to do something interesting with them.  I want to teach them how to do things with the computers.  I want to teach them to blog.  I want to teach them to use animoto and photostory.  I can teach them to use the digital cameras and flip video cameras.  There are lots of things we can do to make their learning fun, and get them excited about coming to the library.  I'll give them the chance to "show off" what they've done to their classmates when their classes come.  The kids love book trailers -- they'll be so excited to make them for books they've read and show them off to their friends.  :)

So anyway...  it all starts tomorrow.  I've got 2 weeks' of reading lesson plans done and the materials gathered.  I've got my first two weeks' worth of character ed lessons lined up too.  Now to just keep up the pace for the rest of the year...  Only a hundred and how many days left till summer vacation?

Books I Grew Up With

This is a trending topic on Twitter, but I’m hesitant to participate.  When I think back on my childhood I know I read.  A lot, in fact!  But what did I read? I remember Corduroy and Paddington from when I was young.  More importantly, I remember that my mom, older sister, and younger brother would gather together at night to read bedtime stories together.

As I got older I read the classics like Black Beauty, Tom Sawyer, and A Tale of Two Cities.  I read these at home (books I owned), not at school.

I don’t remember reading much in middle school either…. Flowers for Algernon, Of Mice and Men, and The Diary of Anne Frank were all assigned in my 8th grade English class.  On my own I read a lot of King and Koontz.

By high school I read very little beyond what was assigned.  Unless you count magazines…  I wasn’t a big fan of most of what was assigned.  Catch 22 and 1984 were tolerable.  I despised most of the other books.  Through self-selection, I developed an appreciation for Faulkner, however.  I read The Sound and the Fury in both the 10th and 12th grades for self-selection assignments.  I mimicked his style for a writing assignment in a college writing course.  How can you not like reading about families way more dysfunctional than your own?

But the book I grew up with?  The one that made the biggest impact?  The one I loved the most?  The one that somehow shaped me into the reader I am today?  I really can’t say.

If forced, I’d probably have to say the big treasury of stories we read from at night.  My time with my mom, sister, and brother.  More for the experience than the stories themselves.  I always loved those times and cherished spending that same quality time with my own children as they were growing up, no matter what it was that we read.

Book Trailers

I don't know about you, but I like love book trailers.  It's so irritating that so many sites are blocked at school -- I can't find them during the day when I'm at work!  So, I come home, and find them on youtube.  Then I save them so I can share them with my students.  There are great sites for this that make it so easy.  Zamzar is the one our county used to recommend.  I don't think our tech person offered an explanation, she just told us that another site was somehow "better."  Unfortunately, I can't remember which they said for us to use.  Not that it matters, since I'm doing it at home on my personal computer...  But at any rate, there are several sites available for this.  Today I'm using KeepVid.

Do you make book trailers?  I've made trailers myself for about half the books on my Battle of the Books list.  Due to a lack of time (and the fact that I still haven't even had a chance to READ all of the books) I'm using some that others have created.

I want to teach my team members to make trailers this year, too.  And to do book talks.  I've also got a group of 12 second graders that I'll be mentoring.  Most of them are boys who aren't particularly interested in reading, so I'm hoping that teaching them to do "cool" stuff with what they read will make it better for them.  I've already set up a blog for them to use to write about books.  I have a schooltube channel, and an animoto account.  I need to add photostory to the computers they'll be using, as well, if I'm going to try that. I think they'll like narrating their own book trailers, as opposed to just typing words like they'll have to do with animoto.

Well, back to my search...