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!

I need to learn this lesson, too!

I recently read this statement from James Clear: "Play — schedule time to play into your life. We schedule meetings, conference calls, weekly events, and other responsibilities into our daily calendars … why not schedule time to play? When was the last time you blocked out an hour on your calendar just to explore and experiment? When was the last time you intentionally carved out time to have fun? You can’t tell me that being happy is less important than your Wednesday meeting, and yet, we act like it is because we never give it a time and space to live on our calendars." (http://jamesclear.com/positive-thinking)

Those of you who know me personally, know that I am a schedule-oriented person.  We have many students who are also schedule-oriented and know when the daily routine is altered.  It often affects outward behavior in children and I believe it affects our behavior as adults, too.

Much research across the US and in European countries shows the importance of physical activity and play in the lives of children.  However, many lawmakers appear to think they know better because they keep heaping more and more expectations on students in spite of scientists and medical doctors advice.  As political as that sounds, I think the parents and educators in our society need to start advocating for our children.  No one else is going to do it for them.  Not only do they need playtime, they need outdoor playtime. They need time to lose themselves in creative play, imagination, pretending and having imaginary friends. 

In addition, many children do not even get home in the evening much before bedtime. They are picked up at 6:00 from after school care, stop at the grocery store, eat supper, maybe do homework, take a bath, then it is bedtime.  No time for play or it is just a video game or watching TV. 

As a librarian, I see the long-term effects of this lack of play in various ways. Students cannot sit still for more than 5 minutes because they are so full of pent-up energy.  Stamina is lacking in staying with tasks whether it is reading a book or attending to a conversation.  Reading suffers because they can't focus on it because of all of the signals their bodies are sending needing to be acted out.

Our school does its very best to provide as much movement as possible during the day. However, it needs to start at home.  We need to put pressure on our lawmakers to stop forcing our children to try to do things they are not developmentally ready to do.  Is this a soapbox? Yes. However, many do not want to hear the truth and do not want to admit there is a problem. In my efforts to start keeping a better balance in my personal life, I have decided to start speaking out on behalf of our children.  I cannot be balanced if I ignore what is going on around me.  As I recently heard at a meeting I attended, "When you are unaware of what you don't know, nothing changes. When you become aware of what you don't know, everything changes."

My job is to help educate, inform and encourage children. Sometimes that means speaking up for them and stepping on toes.

Where has the reading gone?

Today I let one of my 5th grade classes spend library time just reading. They had completed a portion of the state achievement test earlier in the day and came to me at the end of the day. This class loves to read and begs for me to just let them read. Today I did that. They got my pillows, bean bags, and stuffed animals out and sat around the room and just dug into their books. When it was time to go one of the boys came to me and asked if we could do that every library visit. My reply was that my state of Tennessee evaluation rubric does not include reading for enjoyment so it is out of my hands. He asked, "If you could allow it, though, would you?" "In a heartbeat." Because when I was in 5th grade, my library visits were either reading for enjoyment, a film strip, particularly Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or Mrs. Easley (my librarian) would read to us while she sat in her rocking chair. Of course he did not know what a film strip was. [Therefore, I have included an image of one just like we had back then!]

I think I turned out OK as did many of my elementary classmates. This got me thinking about "the good old days" and were they really better? Maybe, maybe not. However, the fact is clear that much has changed and reading continues to be a concern for employers and educators. Maybe we need to remember the simple pleasure of being read to or watching animals in countries that we have not encountered and may never visit or see. But our lives are enriched, and our vocabulary is enlarged by being exposed to something that has no "assessment" attached to it.

January 2016 Plans

As we begin 2016, I am resolving to complete some major weeding. Many of the videos and books are in good shape. However, due to age of the item or changes to the curriculum, I need to discard things. That is a painful job for librarians but an elementary school library is not an archive. The American Library Association has publication age guidelines for libraries. I try to follow the guidelines within reason. So be looking for items coming home with "Discard" written across the barcode. I will be giving these to students. 

Fall Book Fair!!!

Check out our Scholastic Book Fair home page for dates and times.  You can shop online, too.

http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/thediscoveryschool

Public Library Thanksgiving Coloring Contest

Must be turned in to me on Friday November 13, 2015 by 3:00 or the public library on Saturday, November 14, 2015.