Fiction Sorting and Alphabetizing

We are back to square one in Libraryland as we are every year when it comes to teaching the basics. A good refresher never hurt anybody! Carrie came up with the idea to have a game where kids sort books according to alphabetical order, but also to our cataloging system. I then took a really fun presentation from SmartExchange and changed it to fit our needs...and also my pickyness about colors.

Here's what our stations looked like the first time we had the students play the game:

It worked well! The tables were a bit tricky because the students then had to maneuver bookends. We decided to put them on carts instead, that way we could wheel the game wherever we needed to suite the schedule for the Lower School Learning Commons. This worked out perfectly because it gave students an easier way to prop up the books while sorting them and also divided our three fiction sections with three shelves.

I was fortunate enough to help teach this lesson this past Friday. We were crazy booked in the library, so I proctored the game in Carrie's office. The kids still had fun, refreshed their memory, and I got to teach. Those are three pretty great things to end a crazy week on!

They did get a bit loud, but I only assume it was because they were so excited! I encouraged them to really work together as we had seen some previous groups take advantage of working in a group. I was pleasantly surprised by their helping each other without much disagreement about what goes where.

In case you are interested, here is where I found the SmartBoard lesson that I updated. It had already been adapted by somebody else, but I tweaked it even further. I prefer to use cleaner fonts like Verdana or Calibri for my lessons as they are less distracting and easier for most kids to read. It also helps me create the slide to look more like a non-fiction text, with different types of text using different fonts or colors.

If you are interested in checking out the slide that I did, leave a comment and I can e-mail it to you! :)

Graphic novels-woo hoo!

I am so excited to be ordering graphic novels for the library. I've probably mentioned it in every post that I've written lately, but hey, I'm easily excitable. SO excitable, in fact, that I have created a Tumblr just for my graphic novel reviews and to help me keep track of them.

This will keep me on pace here with writing about what's going on in the library, as well as other new books. I can promise that I will be trying harder to update more frequently. That's a mini goal of mine, I guess. Keeping on top of my stuff.

The URL for my tumblr is: http://littlegn.tumblr.com

It's a New Year!

Welcome back to school to all faculty, staff, and students.

The summer flew by quickly, but I am ready to get back into a routine. This new school year, the Lower School library is focusing on further developing and fine-tuning our collection, collaborating more with teachers, and I am trying to decide on an after school club.

Our theme this year in Lower School is bowling! Who doesn't love a fun bowling game? We thought it would be great to use all the bowling terms and, for lack of a better term, puns when creating our reading incentive program. Students will read ten books for a strike, and after they fill out our awesome tracking sheet, are eligible to have their sheet hung on the wall along with their picture!

There is another bulletin board on the same wall but its at least three times as big. This is where we have our student recommendations. They write it on a bowling ball, which we then staple to the lane. We had to cut down on how fancy we were trying to make the lane look. There will be so many recommendations on the board that it won't matter.

One of the new challenges this year will be late start day. We will have a different grade for two-ish hours on a late start day. Carrie and I are researching storytellers, but we also have some cute activities found on Pinterest that we are excited to try.

We are also the lucky recipients of a classroom set of iPads! This is so exciting, as Carrie and I have both been going to training the past couple years about iPads and how to utilize them in the classroom. Since we never had the opportunity before, we're looking forward to introducing our kids to this technology and hopefully using it in some cool ways.

This year will be challenging, but we are ready to bring our library game to the next level. Hopefully this year will be full of collaboration, revolutionary ideas, and more school participation in the library program.

May 15, 2014

I just realized that today--this day--is May 15, 2014.

It's a Thursday.

There are just a few short weeks until summer vacation starts. Parts of me are excited and happy, knowing that I'll finally be able to start on projects and cleaning and whatnot, but there is still MUCH to be done here at work.

All library books were due this Wednesday. Many of our students in lower school went above and beyond and have returned most things already! We're proud of them, and are thankful for the couple volunteers that came and helped us knock out some of our carts of books. We could not do it without them.

I have so many lists of things that I need to finish. Inventory, covering books, straightening up and covering up shelves, packing up decorations and toys, as well as my desk, and probably a million other little tasks.

Oh, definitely Lysol-ing the couches and everything touchable! That is like one of the top ones.

Happy May 15, AKA we are almost there!

Trying to keep up the pace :)
-ch

Spring Fever

It's not just the kids that are catching it. Looming around every corner, the tease of something called "summer vacation" lingers. There are giggles, excitement, even sneezes. All of this amounts to one thing:

Spring. Fever.

Spring fever usually hits a little earlier than this, but due to our crazy weather, I feel has been delayed. Because of this delay, there has been more spring fever harboring in these children (and adults) for longer than ever before, causing quite a ruckus.

Summer is merely four weeks away.

To quote George Takei:

 

FOUR WEEKS.

I'm not going to be lounging about eating bon-bons this summer, oh, no. I have tons of projects up my sleeve, and hopefully I will still like doing any of my hobbies this summer. I'm also looking into getting a part time job because I will be going back to college to finish my undergraduate degree.

This makes me happy and hopefully will help further my status in life.I will finally have tackled that elephant that has been in my life for so long!

Sorry about the gifs. I'm gif happy lately, simply because they are adorable and my new favorite TV show has a ton of them (Parks and Recreation).

We've done SO much this year. Thinking back about it all, I've compiled a list of the great stuff we've been able to accomplish in our library.

We have:

• Learned how to use a SmartBoard, as well as our new lower school learning commons area
• Weeded tons of books
• Added tons of books, such as popular series with Bound to Stay Bound, country books, junior readers, and holiday
• Held faculty meetings in the LSLC
• Used LSLC as a flexible space, holding 2 or more classes at once (that was fun!)
• Helped 4th grade with a stats/math project in the fall
• Provided materials for other 4th grade projects, such as biographies and the American revolution
• Provided 1st grade with biography materials
• Provided 2nd grade with materials for their Texas unit, including a Weebly and tons of Texas books
• Gone to TLA in San Antonio
• Worked on our own library benchmarks/objectives and standards
• Held Bluebonnet voting for 3rd and 4th grade...
• ...which also included an awesome party for the winning classes!

I personally have:

• Gained more responsibilities, such as dealing with periodicals and mail, placing orders through various vendors, and setting up inventory
• Taught several lessons to various groups, mostly 2nd grade and Primer
• Read books that I never thought I'd enjoy!
• Helped students of all ages and grades find material for pleasure and research purposes
• Learned how to cover books with our CoLibri machine
• Processed God knows how many books
• Covered God knows how many books
• Read a ton of review magazines

 Now, it's all about finishing up on inventory, reading shelves, any final weeding, and processing the last of our orders. This year has flown by for me, probably because I got married smack in the middle of it. Oh, then got a concussion. But, you know, I'm trying my best to keep up even when I do feel a little slow still.

I'm grateful for an interesting, and ever changing school year. It's been a blast so far, and with one month to go, I can't wait to see what we get done.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

That's right, friends, it's the best time of the year in a Librarian's life! Aside from summer vacation, that is.

It's time for...

TLA CONFERENCE!

Last year, I attended my first TLA conference, which was held in Ft. Worth. This year, I get to feel fancy and fly to San Antonio for exciting workshops, speakers, author talks, and buying comic books. Er, they're for...my husband? Not me. Certainly not. Ahem.

As I was saying, TLA is the most fun time of year. It's a chance to learn about your job and experience it through the eyes of many different library employees. There's also a chance to hear authors speak, which is super inspiring to me as a writer. I had more ideas come out of the author talks than I could shake a stick at.

Plus, Henry Winkler will be there.

Duh, that's obviously the best part.

I'm so excited! Cannot wait. Carrie is there now for pre-conference, and tomorrow the conference will officially start. I will be there Thursday and Friday. Thursday was the day that has the most stuff I'm interested in, so I honestly have no idea how I am going to cram in everything. I have a list of the things I want to see most, plus alternates. Oy. I'm exhausted just thinking about running about a huge convention hall!

Maybe this year I will actually be able to buy a Pigeon doll.

Spring Weeding

If you're not familiar with libraries, you're probably thinking...weeding? In a library? Uh, there aren't plants in there, are there?

Nope! Just lots of books, that were once loved and have become forgotten, torn and twisted, or just plain gross.

It's always a sad thing, weeding books. Though necessary, it feels as if you are sending away a close friend. Maybe even one that held your hand through childhood. As library staff, it's nerve-wracking to consider you may be doing the same thing to someone else's childhood friend.

I tried to do what I could before Spring Break, but this week has been a lot of catching up on tiny tasks. The last bits of mail, weeding more and more books, and starting inventory. I realized weeding before inventory=good, weeding after inventory=really bad use of time!

I'm also working on the Greenhill Goes Global displays for the library. It should be coming along soon, but there is seriously not enough hours, nor arms on my body, to seem to get everything done when I want it.