I'm shocked to see my last post was back at the beginning of September, but truth be told, I have been a busy little librarian!
I've been buying books, lots and lots of books! I started off with my wish list of books I'd compiled over the summer from reading reviews in Publisher's Weekly. Then I started picking up stuff the kids had requested. Note to other librarians: if you put a direction sign with "Gotham City" on it up in your library, the kids will hound your mercilessly until you get some Batman books. I was able to get them in the 2.5-3.9 range as well as 4.0 and above (AR levels).
My latest project ('cause I don't have enough on my plate) has been to rework the dreaded green-dot section. The first step was to sort the books and remove anything over a 2.5 AR level. This section is where kindergartners and first graders get most of their books as well as second graders with low AR levels. How terrible do I feel telling a child, "You can't take the one and only book I have about leopards because it's a level 7.2." I also think there was so much in that section that the kids were mistreating the books without even realizing it. The next step was to work in the Nonfiction section getting everything with AR available labeled - our school district has unlimited use of tests, so no worries about whether or not we own that test. Now that we know what most of the books are AR-wise, we can start pulling lower level stuff to move over to the revamped "J Nonfiction" section. I did get permission to order my new shelves and I'm so excited for when we get them installed!
I also decided that I needed to create a section for kids just starting to read, like high-reading kindergartners and first graders. These books are not nonfiction so I created a new classification called "JrE". JrE books are usually below 1.5 AR level or extremely simple (think Dick and Jane books). They also have a green dot but will be located in their own shelf.
On the lighter side, I had a lot of fun decorating for Halloween:
This is Charlotte. The kids loved her and I was constantly telling them to leave her web alone. I am thinking of making a more permanent display for her...so she can weave "Some Pig" into her web with no worries of little fingers touching it.
The animals got into the Halloween spirit! Pooh is dressed as Tigger, Franklin is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, the Cat (from If You Give a Cat a Cupcake) is a red cardinal, the Pig (from If You Give a Pig a Pancake) is the Phantom of the Opera, the Mouse (from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) is a cat and the Moose (from If You Give a Moose a Muffin) has on a sunburst mask. I made them quickly using yarn, craft foam and permanent markers.
I went a little batty behind my desk. For $5 I got a set of multi-sized vinyl wall cling bats from Target. Then we cut bats from black construction paper, curled their wings and added them to the mix.
Now that Halloween is over I have to be a touch more serious...yeah, right! The kids have been begging for the new Wimpy Kid book, Hard Luck. I finally created a hold list and put this up since I only bought 5 copies to satisfy 500 kids!
And finally, I was bored with my Choose Your Own Adventure bulletin board so I decided to have some fun with a new one. I totally lifted this idea from another librarian but I did mine a little different:
Here is the inspiration (above.) I copied the phrase exactly when I did the board.
So, why is the phrase different now? Well I work in a building with teachers, a.k.a. grammar police. Apparently the word
There's doesn't point to the word
minion, it points to
reasons, so the correct phrase is,
There are a minion reasons to read. I also made my board a little differently. I went online and found coloring pages of minions I liked and an image of a stack of books. Then I copied them onto transparency sheets. Then we turned the entire school upside down looking for a transparency machine. There was only 1 left in the entire school - thank you to our Art Teacher! The design was done on a solid sheet of white in pencil and then retraced in black marker. I originally thought I'd have time to color it in but never got it done. I kind of like it this way. Oh, and I'm extra proud of the titles of the books. I searched my library catalog for titles with Apple and Banana in them, since what else would minions want to read about?
The kids love the board so much that I think I might have a minion themed Christmas tree this year. I could have each child color a minion for my tree since they are all my "reading minions."
