Busy Bees

I have so many exciting things to report!

We have about 30 students who qualified to go to Readapalooza at Montgomery Bell State Park on May 17, 2016.  If your student qualified, look for the permission slip and paperwork to come home for your signature and information.  These students worked so very hard this year.  I am happy to reward them with this trip!  We have four 1st graders, twelve 2nd graders (wow!), three 3rd graders, one 4th grader, and eight 5th graders to qualify.  Students could have passed 100 AR tests on their reading level (80% or better score) OR have 100 AR points at 80% or better in order to earn this trip.  Due to privacy, I can't release the names but they are posted in the hall at school outside my library door.

Students have been busy using the UTrust Grant books that we recently purchased.  I am required to take pictures and video the students using the items purchased.  3rd grade used the continent books I purchased to research 2 continents.  They really enjoyed the activity and learning about places so far away!

1st and 2nd graders have spent 2 weeks comparing and contrasting and retelling familiar fairy tales as well as putting the story into sequence order.  We covered Little Red Riding Hood in week 1 and Goldilocks this past week.  The students showed good listening skills and demonstrated learning how to get a story down to the necessities.  I have included a few pictures of the charts they created.

We are sending home information about summer reading with MyOn this summer.  Students will take a maximum 35 minute online reading level assessment and interest inventory to determine a starting spot.  I will be using library class this week to get this completed.  We are working on big rewards to reward student reading over the summer.  

The last day to check out library books this school year is Friday, May 6, 2016.  All books should be returned by Friday, May 13, 2016.  

The end of the school year includes the dreaded inventory.  Mine will begin on Monday, May 9.

I am busy planning my summer workshops and days of coming in and cleaning up the library.  An elementary librarian's job is not just from 7:30 to 3:15 Monday through Friday! I may make a plea for some help this summer so be checking our Facebook page!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/973367352693691/

And last, I could not do without my weekly helpers, Mrs. Betty Burgess and Lily P. and Alli H.  I am blessed to have volunteers and students who love the library and love to help! Thank you!

Spring Happenings at TDS

We are in the beginning stages of wrapping up the 2015-2016 school year.  There are several things I would like to point out as we begin this process.

First, our spring book fair was a HUGE success!  As a result, we are getting close to 200 new books and have money to pay for Readapalooza!

What is Readapalooza?  At the beginning of the school year (and every few weeks during the school year) I talked about students earning the reward of attending Readapalooza on May 17, 2016 at MBSP along with students from DES, VES, WBES, CES, and SBES.  Students that wanted to participate were given a reading log.  Criteria for attending was either to have 100 AR points (had to be 80% or better on reading quiz to count) OR 100 AR tests passed with scores 80% or better.  Students have been turning in reading logs throughout the school year and I have been awarding reading club charms as a reward along with posting the student name in the hall outside the library.  Over the last few weeks, I have weekly reminded students that the cutoff for qualifying for Readapalooza is April 29, 2016.  At this time, we have 18 that have qualified with possibly that many that are close to qualifying!  I will be sending home permission slip information and such on May 2, 2016 for students who get to travel with us to MBSP for a day of creek stomping, lunch, activities and a program led by a Park Ranger.  I am very proud of these students for their hard work!

Secondly, TDS was the recipient of a UTrust mini-grant this spring.  The money has allowed our library to purchase 98 new books to directly support the social studies state standards.  Our library was sorely lacking books on some of the topics and people covered under the latest social studies standards.  The grant money allows us to plug a few of those holes. 

Next, I would like to address overdue or lost library items.  It is Dickson County School Board policy that library books are treated like textbooks.  Lost or damaged items must be paid for before a student's final report card is released for the school year.  Therefore, if your student has lost a library book, please pay for it as soon as possible.  No report card will be mailed or handed out until the account is cleared.

And lastly, every 5 years or so, the library needs to be weeded.  According to the American Library Association (our guiding policy organization), nonfiction titles should be pulled and discarded periodically according to publication date criteria.  In this day and age of quickly changing information, certain books are obsolete and outdated pretty quickly.  ALA's stance is that no information is better than old information.  School libraries are not archives and should be cleaned out (weeded) regularly.  To that end, Mrs. Betty Burgess, my volunteer, has been coming in and helping me pull books that should be discarded.  While the ALA guidelines state many of these should be discarded after 5 years, I have been more lax and usually say pull them after 10 or more years.  My afternoon helpers are helping with the marking process and we are collecting these in the auditorium.  I will be allowing students the opportunity to take some of these books home to keep in the last few weeks of school.  It is a big undertaking and will continue through the summer.

Fourth and fifth graders are finalizing a research project and creating Power Points to teach the rest of the class.  I look forward to hearing them in the closing weeks of school!