If you don't have a lot of time or money to decorate your school library, these simple tips and ideas will help you create an inviting, welcoming space.
A monthly library book display is a great way to bring awareness to different topics, seasons, and celebrations. Check out these ideas!
Time to inspire and motivate your students with these 4 fun bulletin board ideas that are perfect for schools, classrooms, or libraries!
Some school libraries are reinventing themselves as makerspaces, but this Ohio library took a slightly different approach and has seen incredible results.
Are you looking for some school library fun for your students? Read on to learn how something as simple as cute animal stickers can: facilitate community
The 2016 Summer Olympics are just around the corner! And so of course this presents the perfect opportunity for a book display (I do enjoy creating book displays—see all of them here). Anyway, this idea was pretty straightforward and it's awesome because it's really versatile, too: you can highlight any award winning books. I, of course, like the children's book awards. For instance, all of the Newbery's that you see in the collage above. Or Caldecotts... But really, you could do whatever you like. I made a simple, free printable poster for the display. You can download the 8.5x11 .pdf from Google Drive. OR if you want to be more creative, you could also just download the medal (click on the image) by itself and make your own fantastic be-ribboned display of awesomeness... Okay, so maybe I have too much fun doing odd little bits of graphic design. But hey! I love me some gold (and silver) medal books... ...and my baby, too!
One of the things I’ve become known for is my colorful and visually engaging (and non-typical) shelving strategies. I like to call this “Dynamic Shelving” and I love employing the…
Create a dyslexia awareness display to help spread the word. In this post, we'll discuss why it's important and what you can do!
Pokemon Go was all the rage in 2016. Fortnite in 2017. You get where we are going with this! Getting back into the swing of things of a new school year can be tricky, but we can help! An easy way to connect with your students is to make your back-to-school lessons relevant and relatable. How can you do this? We have compiled a list of several ways that you can easily incorporate teen trends into your back-to-school lessons for the first few weeks (or anytime!) of the year. Most teens love music and connect with it on a personal level. You can bridge that connection by incorporating music into your daily routines. For example, play an upbeat song between bell work and discussion time to motivate your students. If you struggle to know what's popular with your students, just ask them! The beginning of the year is the perfect time to find out more about them and their music preferences. You can give them a writing prompt asking what their favorite songs are or be even more specific; ask them: Which song makes you want to get up and dance? Which song could you listen to over and over again and never grow tired of? Once you have compiled a list of their favorite songs, search the lyrics of a few. You can often find the best examples of figurative language in song lyrics. If the lyrics are appropriate, print them off and play the song in class and ask students to find examples of figurative devices. This activity can be done anytime, but it's for great back-to-school to review figurative language and to gauge your students' learning levels. Another way to incorporate music directly into learning is to compare popular music artists with writers or subjects you are reading. During poetry and Shakespeare units, I love challenging students to see if they can guess whether the line or phrase is from a song or a poem. I created an entire series with various poets and musicians that you can download here. I'll start out with a presentation and a student handout so the as whole can engage in the activity. It's so much fun to see their reactions when they swear there's no way the line came from an old poet, but it actually did! The next day, I'll display the bulletin board (below) so students can continue to interact with the lines of poetry and songs. One way to grab the attention of your students is to explore books that may have been released since school has been out and/or sharing some titles of books that will be released in the coming months! Talk about anticipation! :) Here are a few YA books that came out recently: Girl Gone Viral by Arvin Ahmadi The Haunted by Danielle Vega We Walked the Sky by Lisa Fiedler Here are a few YA books that will be coming out soon: Frankly in Love by David Yoon The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh You can also see what your students are interested in by displaying these Genre Reading Cards around a few tables in your classroom (or in the library). Simply, set out the different genre cards, select a few books that fit within each genre, set a timer for 2-3 minutes and let your students explore the various titles. Follow-up with a brief discussion on their favorite books they may have already read (or discovered) through the stations. This is a quick and easy way to see what genres they are interested in or may be interested in exploring this school year. Whether it's the World Cup or the Super Bowl, chances are many of your students are fans of sports or are familiar with at least one sport. Using this FREE survey at the beginning of the year, ask your students which sports or teams are their favorite. (Click HERE to get an editable digital copy of the survey ready for distance learning!) Once you have an idea about their favorites, you can incorporate them into your lessons. For example, if you are writing a sample sentence for a grammar lesson, name-drop a player from one of their favorite teams. My students are usually divided between being either a Chicago Cubs or a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan, so a sample sentence may be: "Anthony Rizzo and Dexter Fowler sat down together to have pizza after the Cubs defeated the Cardinals last night." Every two years, you can integrate the Olympics into your lessons. Re-word the titles of your activities or assignments by using Olympic-themed names. Instead of calling it a class discussion or a "think-pair-share," call it the "Opening Ceremony" or "Passing the torch of knowledge." A quiz can be called a bobsled competition or a vault competition for gymnastics. Award the top three scores with gold, silver and bronze medals. If you teach multiple sections of the same class, have your classes compete for the overall winner. Awards points for the class with the fewest tardies, the highest scores on quizzes or assignments, and/or the liveliest discussions. Better yet, have your students create the areas for competitions and what they'd like to call them. They can even pick which country they would like to represent (or create their own country). Some students may not like traditional sports, but love video and online gaming. The popularity of videos such as Minecraft and Fortnite paired with the rise of schools adopting eSports as official extracurricular activities indicate that our students still love gaming. Instead of fighting it, try to embrace it by giving students opportunities to utilize both the skills they learn through games with academic skills. For example, I asked my students to recreate a scene from Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. One group built Rome in Minecraft and reenacted one of the scenes live as the class watched. My head was swimming a bit, but it was pretty amazing to see what they created together and how they adapted it to the text. They learned more about the play from that one assignment and had so much fun doing it. This particular assignment may not work with other games, but if you allow your students the possibility of incorporating their favorite game into a project, you may be amazed at the ideas that they come up with. I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things as a student was when we were able to follow-up a book with a movie. As a visual person, I always appreciated when I saw a book come to life after reading it (even though most people prefer the book over the movie). Watching the movie after reading the book can lead to a lot of fun class discussions. Here are a few fun prompts that you can use to follow-up after your are done reading and watching! What did you like better, the book or the movie? Why was the book better than the movie? Why was the movie better than the book? What did the book have that the movie didn't? What did the movie have that the book didn't? A great way to grab the attention of your students would be to plan a unit around an upcoming movie release based on a book. This might be an older book or perhaps, a newer one. Regardless, your students will think it's pretty cool that they are going to be able to watch a movie. I realize it's not possible for all classes to be able to watch a movie in a theatre, but it's a fun and quick field trip if you can make it work! Movie theatres usually give a discount on larger groups and I usually try to work in a price that includes popcorn and a drink for everyone, too. If you think money may be an issue for some students, it does not hurt to ask your administraton for some assistance. They will, almost always, find a way to make sure everyone in your class is able to participate. You can also plan a unit around a particular theme of a movie coming out (or already in stores), if you're looking to take a break from reading for a few weeks. Once students gain a better understanding or appreciation about a particular theme, you can show them a movie where they can explore that theme even more. This way, if taking your students to a movie theatre isn't an option, then show a movie in your classroom instead! Note: You can ask your students which movies they may be interested in watching at the start of the year, then surprise them with the themed unit based around that film! One of the easiest ways to incorporate both social media and pop culture all at once is incorporating current events into your classroom. You can do this on a local, national or international level. You can simply ask your students to start talking about what's happening in your town, in the world, or even more specifically, with their favorite movie actors, singers, bands, etc. What's the gossip with their favorite celebrities? Once your ideas have been shared and topics have been listed, you can use this list as a means for an impromptu writing activity, as an essay topic, etc. The possibilities are endless. If you're interested in checking out more ways on how you can incorporate pop culture into the classroom, click HERE. You might also be interested in: Soundtrack of my Life/Playlist of my Summer
This is a collection of fun ideas for middle school library orientation. It includes video clips, an elementary vs middle school presentation, and more!
Set the stage for a fantastic school year with these fun, foundational, and differentiated September library lessons!
Since February is Library Lover’s Month, I wanted to showcase something that librarians work very hard on and that patrons love: all those wonderful book displays!
Time to inspire and motivate your students with these 4 fun bulletin board ideas that are perfect for schools, classrooms, or libraries!
You can’t spell book without BOO!
A monthly library book display is a great way to bring awareness to different topics, seasons, and celebrations. Check out these ideas!
How to manage centers in the library with ease! Tips and tricks on organization and links to center ideas from a librarian herself.
Over the last several years, I've done at lot of change up our library space at Stewart. Here's some of my tips to help you rethink your library.
As we approach Winter Break, I realized I haven't written many blog articles lately. I moved to a new city and started in a new-to-me library this year. I've been too busy to do much blog writing beyond my infamous New Releases posts and a couple of random book reviews. I'm about 10 book reviews behind, and they may never get written at this point. It's been an exhausting few months, but Winter Break looms large and lovely on the horizon...only one more week to go!
Next week marks the start of National Library Week!
Yes, it has it's own board on my Pinterest account. I used to be embarrassed by how fascinated and excited I was about classroom libraries. I paroused thrift stores, hit up retiring teachers, and planned my weekends around library book sales for months leading up to my first year in the classroom. By the time
Students will color their Croc shoe and then add genre charms to it. It is suggested that they add AT LEAST two - their favorite genre to read and one that they are interested in trying this school year. It also includes a blank charm they can design to represent their personal interests.Students wi...
Are you looking for fun Summer Reading Activities that the kids will love? We've got them for you. Scavenger Hunts, Bingo, Roll & Read, Reading logs & more.
Even though libraries are citadels of silence, guarding humanity's best thoughts, it doesn't mean that humor is forbidden there. To prove that a giggle can easily accompany a pleasant read, Bored Panda has collected a list of some of the funniest examples of librarian humor.
