Ah... bookfair, thieves and dictionary days! What a combo. Sad that a couple of kids made bad choices but almost all made good choices and enjoyed looking at the books. One of my big goals is to get kids to realize that there's good stuff in books and that there's a book for everyone. Even though I won't buy Bart Simpson for the library, I think it's good that kids were interested enough in something in print to want to sit on the floor and read through it. Good stuff.
Although watching the author video is good, a lot of the kids can't sit still through the whole 15 minutes. Even though I asked them to watch it and think about which books they liked and thought we should get for the library, it still wasn't quite as engaging as I'd like. Next year, I need to preview the video and plan something a little more structured for the rest of the lesson - particularly for the 4th and 5th graders since they have more time. Scholastic has some lessons online that go with the books in the bookfair so maybe I can use one of two of them and correlate them with some of the library/LA standards.
Giving them 3 bookmarks and having them choose the books that interest them was a good way for me to get feedback and have them make some critical choices. Interesting to see the differences among the classes. Pretty predictable based on reading level.
Another note to self: Don't schedule the bookfair during dictionary days. Makes it difficult to do justice to both.
'nuff.
Well.... 20 days later.....I'm back. Need to get into a routine for posting.
Bibliography is working pretty well. Good for kids to know what it is and practice doing it and also a good kickstart for talking about library organization - one of the first components of information literacy... knowing that information/books/data is organized.
Next step - more on fiction organization for younger kids, Dewey Decimal for older (after brief review of fiction).
Interesting that this is actually more complicated in elementary school than for older kids (especially for 3rd graders) because fiction comes in red, blue, green, yellow and "regular" flavors. Just when you're teaching them that the library is organized, they have to figure out what fiction section to put something in and why they label is different for "regular" fiction than Easy Fiction. Same problem with Easy Non-Fiction.
Found a good book in reference class this weekend from the American Library Association with a pathway to Information Literacy for K-6th grade, complete with blackline masters and short lessons. Should be useful for getting kids moving down the road to understanding how to find and use information.
Note for next year: Given the emphasis on Halloween costumes being book related, it would have been good to do a lesson early in October to help kids figure out what character they could create a costume for and what it would look like. Good tie-in to characterization for both Library Skills and LA skills.
The first day
Wow! I did it. Now, if I just buy about $3000 worth of hardware, I'll be technologically up-to-date.
Not sure about this whole thing. My style is pretty formal, reinforced by too many years of corporate-speak so I think it will be a good exercise to work on a less stodgy style.
Today probably isn't the best day to start. Somehow, even when you do 9 things right, it's always the 1 that didn't go well that sabotages your mind. Maybe, though, that makes it a good day to start.
Concentrating again this week on being very structured to keep things in hand. It worked well last week when the whole session was a lesson but once they get out of their seats to look for books, it's a whole other story.
Things that went well - kids did the scanning for 4th and 5th. Needed almost no instruction and handled it very well. Most classes were fairly quiet and followed instructions.
Things that didn't go so well - Wordsearch had too many rows and columns for most groups. Too hard to find words. Several kids who were asked to keep track of 5 minute checkout time and then ring the bell couldn't tell time well-enough to figure out when to ring the bell. 3rd graders need more help in choosing appropriate level books.
Checking with districts for books for W who needs large print. Maybe book on tape would be better?
Tomorrow's another day.
