"Microblogging" in the library

I have been blogging with my students and decided to introduce them to the idea of microblogging after seeing a few classroom Twitter walls on Pinterest.  I made a Blurb wall on my library door using laminated sentence strips.  I read somewhere (probably on Pinterest...I'm obsessed!) that you can use laminated paper with dry erase markers and decided to test it out - it works!

The pink strips are mine and all of the others are by the kids.  Kids can stop by any time and add a quick blurb, as well as add blurbs during center time.  

The neon colors are pretty in-your-face so the blurb wall has been catching everyone's attention.  Classes wait right outside the door before coming into the library so it gives everyone something to look at if they have to wait.  The blurbs have also been good advertising for the library.  Teachers can see kids' enthusiasm for library, students' mini book discussions, and my news and announcements they might not otherwise hear.

Genre Word Clouds

At the end of my 3rd grade genre unit, students did some carousel brainstorming to come up with ways to describe each genre.

Then, we took all the brainstormed words and made word clouds using ABCYA:  The kids LOVED the word clouds.  I printed them out and put them around my fiction collection.  After the kids learned how to use ABCya, I was able to use it as a center activity.  

Zoinks!

This is Zoinks the Answer Alien:

Every week, he asks my students a new trivia question.  Students must use library resources to answer the question.  I have links to library resources on my website and they can use the library catalog and books as well.  Some of our online resources are Grolier, Kids InfoBits, Word Central, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Fact Monster.  Once the kids find their answer, they write their name, class, answer, and source on a slip of paper and "feed" it to Zoinks.   At the end of the week, I count up answers and choose winners out of a basket (1 winner for every 10 answers) The winners get to choose a book from my book prize box.  


Some trivia questions I have used are: 

• what do koalas eat?
• what year was Martin Luther King Jr. born?
• what is the capital of Iceland?

I came up with Zoinks as a way to encourage students to use the resources offered through the library.  I want them to think of all the great resources we have available as options for research, rather than immediately going to Google.  At the K-5 level, it's really hard for kids to differentiate between reliable and unreliable websites they find via Google and the results they find are generally not at their reading levels.  Hopefully, the more comfortable the kids are using our other online resources, the more they'll use them on their own.

Kids can answer the Zoinks question during center time in library class, first thing in the morning, or whenever they have free time and are allowed to come down to the library.  Here is his center set-up on the laptop cart:

 
**update - 2/19/12**
Zoinks has been around for about 7 weeks now and I have definitely seen an improvement in a research skills!  The kids (2nd-5th) zip right on to my resources page and get where they need to be, find their answers, and cite their source in just a few minutes.



He continues to be a big hit! 

Library Crossword Center

This center is Pinterest-inspired.  If you aren't using Pinterest, you're missing out on some really amazing classroom and library ideas!  Pinterest has a really amazing teaching community and it is such a great way for teachers to share ideas about what is going on in their classrooms.  There's a good deal of school library ideas too.  I also find I can easily take "classroom" ideas and make them work in the library.  

Here is my Library Crossword Center: 

Set up: 

I don't have any magnetic surfaces in my library so I bought an oil drip pan (pretty cheap for the size  ~$10 at AutoZone).   I cover the Blitz logo, which is raised, with a sign telling the topic of the week.  I change this sign weekly using topics such as: library, genre, mystery, nonfiction. 

To make the letters, I cut foam sheets into squares, wrote letters on them, and stuck a magnet strip on the back.  I realized after the fact, there are TONS of Scrabble and Scrabble Jr. games at Savers that you could use.  These letters were more work but they are pretty and colorful!

This center gets the kids thinking of vocabulary and lets them work together.  It also helps them practice spelling.  I even had kids using dictionaries to check their spelling!  I love seeing what words they come up with.  I think my favorite was when they incorporated my name into their library crossword :)

This center is available on TPT.

Puzzle Center

This center was also inspired by The Centered School Library.  Be sure to head over there for many excellent ideas!


The Puzzle Center is by far my most popular center!  Even more popular than any computer center I have.  I had expected the kids to think it's fun but perhaps not nearly as exciting as some of the other centers I have. That is not the case at all!  I have a 5 kid limit due to the space around the table and everyone races to get to the puzzle center!  


This has been a really good community/collaborative center.  The kids in each class work together on the puzzle but they are also working together with students at all grade levels to complete the puzzle.  I even have teachers joining in to add a piece or two.


Set up: 
My Puzzle Center has the puzzle, instructions, and any books that go along with the puzzle's theme.  This puzzle is a two sided U.S. and World map so I set out my states books.


I bought the puzzle mat from A.C. Moore that looks similar to this.  It comes with a cardboard tube and elastics.  This allows me to roll up the puzzle on Thursdays if it's not done.  There's another library teacher in my school on Fridays for K-1st and she does not do centers, so I clean up the puzzle  at the end of my week and put it back out on Mondays.


The kids love to see what the new puzzle is about.  Right now I have a Harry Potter puzzle going on but I have done different animals, pirates, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the kids have been jazzed about each and every one.



Where I get puzzles: 
I had a few puzzles at home since I enjoy doing them myself.  I also dug through my parents' basement since I was sure there were some puzzles from when I was a kid (and there were!).   I found a few good deals at The Christmas Tree Shop, Target, and the Dollar Tree.  However, the BEST place I've found to get puzzles is Savers, a thrift store chain in my area.  Every puzzle I've bought there has had all it's pieces, and the puzzles are $.69 to $2.99ish.  I've bought a few really nice Melissa and Doug puzzles and even a few brand-new, never been opened puzzles there.  Such a good deal!

Bookshelf Bulletin Board

This is a bulletin board I made using 5th grade work in the beginning of the year.  To review parts of a book and fiction call numbers, students created their own book spines.  They needed to make up a book title and design a book spine.  They also included their call number.  Some of their titles were very creative!

Fiction Genre Reading Program

While studying genres with 3rd grade, I used genre passports as a reading incentive program.  Kids were able to get a genre "passport" during library class.  After we discussed each of 5 genres - fantasy, realistic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, and science fiction - students could read the genre and fill out their passport.  On the passport, I asked students for the book title and genre clues - how did they know their book fit into this genre?  I added a sticker to their passports as each genre was completed.  A full passport equaled a prize from the prize box and their picture on the genre passport bulletin board outside the library.  

Genre Passport - Front

Genre Passport - Back

Shelf Talker Center

Shelf Talkers is one of the first centers I started using regularly during library classes.  I got this idea from The Centered School Library.  I tell the kids these are little advertisements for books they have enjoyed and want to share with other readers.  So far, students at all grade levels have done a great job creating shelf talkers for our library!    


In our library, we use 3"x5" index cards, folded in half.  After students complete their shelf talkers, I laminate them and tape them to the shelves in front of the book they advertise.  I have definitely seen an increase in check-outs for the books that are "advertised".  Here are some shelf talkers you can see decorating the shelves in my library: 

Spine Poetry

Spine poetry is a fun project I did with 4th grade this year.  I don't love teaching poetry but this project really got the kids excited to create poems.  Students worked in small groups to make poems out of book spines.  Here are a few of my favorite examples:  

Library Centers

I started regularly using centers in my library a few months ago after reading Cari Young's website (now blog).  I had used centers a few times during Thursday afternoons when the specialist teachers cover common planning time for classroom teachers.  It hadn't occurred to me to use them all the time but Cari showed it can be done!

Why Centers? 

My library classes are on a fixed schedule where I see 2nd-4th grade classes once per week for 30 minutes and 5th grade every other week for 45 minutes.  Classes are structured so I teach a lesson for about 15 minutes and students select and checkout books for the remaining 15 minutes.  I was running into issues getting students to use check out time productively if they weren't getting books.  Students who were not checking out books were often wandering around and I felt like I was losing valuable library instruction time.  

With centers, I teach my lesson and then kids who are checking out books go search for their books and kids who are not go straight to a library center.  Now, everyone is engaged in a library activity for the entire library class.  I am able to work with students to find just right books without worrying about any funny-business going on in the background.  It's also wonderful to be able to interact with kids at centers - I especially love working on the puzzle with them!  


The best thing about using centers is how much the kids love them.  They are working on library skills for the whole library period and having fun doing so.  It makes my day to hear a collective groan when I turn off the lights to signal library is over.  The kids don't want to stop working at the centers and line up to leave!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!  I am a library teacher in a K-5 elementary school in MA.  I love teaching library and information literacy skills and engaging students in reading and technology.  I am always interested in learning what other library teachers do in their libraries so I thought I would share what goes on in mine.  Thanks for stopping by!