Friday, October 24, 2014

Global Read Aloud Week 3

This week, the book that we read for the Global Read Aloud program was ish by Peter H. Reynolds.



   
ish is about a boy who loves to draw but becomes discouraged when his brother makes fun of one of his drawings.  When he finds out that his little sister has been hanging his crumpled up drawings on her bedroom wall, be begins to realize that his drawings don't have to be perfect.

Here is a Tackk that I created to share our ish artwork with other classes.  Enjoy!

 

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Library Organization and Flexible Spaces

We recently had some new shelving installed at Harrison School.  The timing wasn't the most convenient (October-when school was in session) but it was so worth it! Our bookshelves had been overflowing!!  Now that all of the books fit on the shelves (at least until May when all of the books will have to be returned), we were finally able to add some organizational features that will hopefully make it easier for the students to find the books that they want.  Perhaps some of these ideas will be useful to other teacher-librarians out there...

First off, we added several shelves to our easy reader section. This allowed us more space to add shelf signs indicating different popular fiction and non-fiction easy reader sections.  We chose topics that our students seem to ask for the most.



The shelf signs are made from cardboard magazine boxes from Ikea with colored duck tape.  It was cheap and they were easy to make. 

The next thing we added was shelf labels for the series of books in our general fiction section.



For these labels, I printed out the title of the series along with a picture of one of the covers of books in the series.  Then I used contact paper to attach it to the top of the shelf in front of our books.  Our shelves are pretty deep so this works well for us.  This should make it easier for students to find the series they are looking for.

Finally, here are some general pictures of our library:




We are a PK-8 building so our YA (middle school) section is separated from the rest.  Each section is color coded with a different color (colored duck tape on the magazine boxes for the alphabet/Dewey sections).  The sections are: general non-fiction, general fiction, easy readers, and young adult.



All of our tables are on wheels and the tops fold vertical for easy moving if we need to clear the area for an assembly.  The chairs are also on wheels and they stack.





Finally, we have our cozy reading rug and our booths.  The kids LOVE reading in the booths and it's a great place for staff members to work with a small group of students.  

Our new and improved library space is fantastic for reading, lessons with entire classes, small group work, and assemblies!  What are some of your favorite features of your library?



Sunday, October 19, 2014

GRA14: I'm Here Paper Airplanes Around the World Project




Here is the finished video from Mr. Balcom.  Harrison School is at about the 3 minute mark.  How fun!!

Global Read Aloud Week 2!

This week, Harrison School participated in the second week of the Global Read Aloud Program! The Peter H. Reynolds book that we read was I'm Here.
I'm Here is about a boy who presumably has autism and who doesn't like the loud recess noise. While sitting off to the side by himself, he makes a paper airplane and sends it flying. A girl finds the airplane and returns it to him with a smile. Could he have found a new friend? To go along with this book, I started a Google presentation to share with other schools. Each school added a slide describing ways that students can make sure everyone feels included at school. Here is the finished presentation that our third grade students helped with:

A paper airplane plays a big part in the book I'm Here. Our second grade students wrote things they can say to help someone else feel included on sheets of paper. Some of their ideas were: "Do you want to play with me?", "Let's go play somewhere quiet" and "Do you want to be my friend?". They then turned their papers into paper airplanes. Mr. Balcom, a technology coordinator from another school, is putting together a video with students across the world throwing their paper airplanes to other students in other schools around the world. I will show the finished video when it is finished. Harrison students had so much fun participating!!

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Global Read Aloud Week 1

Welcome to the Harrison Library Blog...I'm so glad you're here!  The purpose of this blog is to inform others of all of the wonderful things happening in the Harrison School Library.  Also, blogging is a great way to reflect on lessons and gather feedback from others.  So, check back often and feel free to leave feedback!


  

Harrison School is proudly participating in the Global Read Aloud program! With this exciting program, students from all around the world are reading the same book at the same time and connecting with each other in various ways.   This past week was the first week of the program and most of our 2nd and 3rd grade students read The North Star by Peter H. Reynolds.  The students were excited because they were already familiar with Peter H. Reynolds from when we participated in the International Dot Day back in September.  If you haven't read The North Star yet, the book is about finding your own journey and following your own dreams.  After we finished reading the book, the students had LOTS of predictions about what might happen next for the boy's journey in the book.

I created a Padlet for the book and shared it with others participating in the Global Read Aloud program.  If you are not familiar with Padlet, it is basically like an electronic sticky note and it is one of the easiest programs to use.  Students from 11 different schools from across the United States and Canada posted their dreams and thoughts onto our Padlet!!  How cool is that??



Created with Padlet

In addition,  our new friends in Grand Rapids, MI in Mrs. Gauck's classroom created a very cool Tackk about the book which both of our 2nd grade classrooms responded to.   A Tackk is an easy way to create a beautiful webpage or poster and can be shared with others to collaborate or comment on.



I can't wait to see where the Global Read Aloud takes us next week!!