“You get a bag of books! And you get a bag of books! Everybody gets a bag of books!” I feel like Oprah when passing out Bernie’s Book Bank bags!
Harrison School is so lucky to be partnered with Bernie’s again this year. Bernie’s Book Bank is an amazing organization that provides bags of six books to PK-6th grade students in Title I schools two times per year. These new and gently used books are donated to Bernie’s and volunteers help sort and fill bag the books. Many studies show that book ownership is an important predictor of reading success. Many low income families don’t have many books in their homes so Bernie’s is filling a big need for us.
Several staff members from Harrison School had a wonderful opportunity volunteering at Bernie’s this summer for a few hours. While there, some of us helped sort out donated books that were in poor condition or not appropriate for PK-6th grade students. Others helped put Bernie’s stickers on the books. It was interesting to see their well-organized system and we all agreed that we’d love to volunteer there again!
Earlier in the summer, Bernie’s contacted us to see if we’d be willing to get our first donation before the school year started. They are trying to service more schools and they need more days to deliver. Of course, we said YES! School started for us on Wednesday and students received their bag of books on Thursday and Friday.
What a GREAT way to start the year! Our lucky students now we have new books to read at home and we are start the year by reinforcing a love of reading through book ownership.
We are so thankful for this great organization and we are looking forward to a great year of reading!!
Welcome back to a new school year!
As our students return this fall, they will see a new and improved biography section in our library! Previously, most of our biography books were organized alphabetically by who the book is about and our "Who Was..." books were in a separate spinning rack. While the "Who Was..." books have always been popular, the rest of the biography books rarely get checked out.
This summer, I decided to rearrange the biographies based on topic and I hope this will make it easier for our students to find biographies that they are interested in. Our topics include: Presidents, Musicians & Artists, STEM, Authors, Athletes, and other Important, Influential & Historical people.
Each topic is a different color with a color dot on the spine of the book to make them easier to put back on the shelves.
Also, all of the books were scanned into different sub-locations in our catalog system (for example: Biograph-President (Red)). This allows students to see where they are in the library when searching the catalog.
We still have the "Who Was..." books in their own location but hopefully students will now begin checking out the other biography books this year.
I'm looking forward to another GREAT year of sharing reading and books with our students!!
