Heavy Medal

Award season is coming and, with it, a host of mock award blogs are guessing what books might earn medals for the 2015 year. I tend to follow both Heavy Medal and Someday My Printz Will Come because books discussed on both blogs are likely to be popular with my students. Heavy Medal recently posted a shortlist of guesses as to which books might be in the running for the Newbery this year. I'm trying to read all of them before the awards are announced. I finished two this weekend (both by authors who have been touched by Newbery magic in the past):

Written in diary format, The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz follows Joan as she runs away from her father's farm in order to better herself in the city. I giggled and cringed at the same time as a young Catholic girl works to fit into--and learn from--her Jewish employer's family. Joan is optimistic and funny--I loved her voice throughout the story.

Told in second person, Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead is the story of Bridge, Em, and Tab, three longtime friends going through the trials of middle school. My eighth grade daughter picked this up when I brought it home and finished in less than 24 hours. When I asked her what she thought, she just sighed and said, "So great." We all have a little bit of each of these girls in us and this book reminded me of what it is like to be in seventh grade.

I started Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan this morning and am hoping to also read Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson this week. What books have you read in 2015 that might be in the running for an award?

NetGalley for the Win!

I have used NetGalley on and off for many years. I love that I can get galleys of books without having to worry about what to do with the physical copy when I am done, but I also miss having copies to pass on to kids when I finish. The biggest bonus for me of having access to e-galleys is being able to preview books that I might consider for MS, but am not sure about. Sometimes books end up slanting more toward the HS range, so I'm glad I have previewed them instead of ordering and hoping.

This is a roundup of my NetGalley reads from the past couple of weeks:

Bennett, Jenn The Anatomical Shape of a Heart Two artists: one who draws cadavers, one who is a notorious graffiti artist. They meet by chance one night at a train station and form an instant connection.

Coutts, Alexandra Young Widows Club Just weeks after getting married to her high school sweetheart, 17-year-old Tam becomes a widow. This tear-jerker follows Tam as she goes through therapy and picks up the pieces of her life.

Huang, Charlotte For the Record After losing a reality singing competition, Chelsea is recruited into a band. The most important rule? No hook-ups between band members. What happens if someone breaks the rule?

Redgate, Riley seven ways we lie Seven high school students, seven perspectives, seven deadly sins to avoid. I just started this one and am looking forward to untangling the plot.

NetGalley allows librarians to enter their ALA membership number so that publishers know they are professional readers. You can be pre-approved by publishers so that you can be automatically download their titles. How have you used NetGalley or other professional preview sources to enhance your practice?

Focus on Bulletin Boards

The bulletin boards in our main hallway represent a lot of real estate. One of my small goals this year is to keep them updated. I spent some time on Pinterest in order to get some ideas (I barely made it out alive from that rabbit hole!) In the end, I decided to start the year with a few things that I have seen posted around the Internet.

Our teachers do some work on Mindset with our students, so I thought a bulletin board in the main hallway highlighting what this concept looks like would be a good way to start the year. I found several versions on Pinterest and, ultimately, settled on this one because I could print PDF files from this blog which made the creation of it so much easier. There are a lot of great ideas on teacher blogs and Pinterest pages--I'm grateful that others are willing to share their work.

I am also concerned about how our students are using technology. I want them to take advantage of their devices for good instead of evil, so I created a version of the popular "Before You . . . Think" bulletin board using social media icons. However, I also added several options of great ways to utilize devices as well. My suggestions include signing up for their teachers' Remind notices, following our PTSO on Facebook, and using the online resources (e books and audiobooks) from the school library. I added QR codes to the posters to make it simple to find the resources. The icons, images, and fonts for this one came straight from the sites themselves and it was pretty simple to create. 

My other displays are located right outside the library doors. I use one to keep students and staff updated about community activities that might be of interest (it was author visits earlier in the year and will be updated to reflect the Social Justice Book Bowl this month). The other display is currently a "Read Box," the librarian's take on Red Box. I was able to use a font and poster created by another librarian/blogger. I then added several book jackets. I will continue to rotate and update the book covers throughout the year. 

I will be changing the larger bulletin boards soon and am always looking for new ideas. What sorts of displays and/or bulletin boards have you created to focus on learning and keep your school attractive?

Our Visit With Jacqueline Woodson

When I first started my job here, I began working with several teachers to bring diverse books to the library and classroom shelves. We created core collections that every classroom would have, focusing on authors that displayed diversity and addressed our students' interests. All of the collections included several Jacqueline Woodson titles, and I wrote an article for Knowledge Quest about how this transformed our school. We dreamed of one day having Jacqueline visit and talk to our students. It seems crazy that ten years later, our students were gifted a visit that we had spent years hoping for.

Several groups of sixth and eighth graders read Brown Girl Dreaming in anticipation of Jacqueline Woodson's visit to Kalamazoo. She spent an hour with us last week and her words continue to resonate with me. During the visit, Jacqueline read from Feathers and Brown Girl Dreaming, as well as referencing Each Kindness. She wove stories of her life and how her books came to be between questions from the students and passages from the books. Jacqueline's responses to the questions created a space in which the students could connect to the stories, as well as her life.

One of the students asked about perseverance in the face of doubt and she encouraged the students to believe in themselves--that way it does not matter if anyone else believes in them. What powerful thinking. She also talked about just having time to do nothing--or, "being bored." Having grown up as a Jehovah's Witness, she had hours of religious study each week. This became time to think and create stories. I wonder if my students have time to just do nothing--to think, create, daydream, play, and just be? This time is invaluable. I hope they do.

I was not able to attend the evening presentation at KPL or the seminar at WMU due to a conflict with the AASL National Conference. However, I've already heard lots of positive feedback about Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, KT Horning, and Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan. We are so fortunate to have a public library that brings amazing author guests to speak to our students and community. I am thankful for KPL's ongoing service to Kalamazoo.

Jacqueline reading to us from Feather

A few students had books for Jacqueline to sign. We limited book signing so that the students could enjoy the experience and learn more, rather than just standing in line.

We Need Diverse Books Because . . .

If someone had taken

that book out of my hand

said You're too old for this

maybe

I'd never have believed

that someone who looked like me

could be in the pages of the book

that someone who looked like me

had a story.

-Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

I have been following the We Need Diverse Books campaign and wanted to connect with my students regarding diversity in our library. I decided to create an activity for seventh graders that would allow us to talk a little about what being diverse means to us, as well as looking at some of the resources available in our collection.

In order to facilitate a discussion, I had the students start with a Circle Map. Each Thinking Map has a thinking process that students must go through when completing it. A Circle Map is meant to help define a word or concept. I created a map with "diverse" in the center and students were asked to define it using synonyms and/or words that remind them of diversity. After a short period, students shared their ideas with their shoulder partners and then we shared as a class, adding to our own maps and checking for words we already had written down.

Following the mapping process, I displayed a series of book covers and asked the students to decide if they thought each one was diverse or not and tell why. This was a fascinating look into how kids view book covers and diversity. We discussed how sometimes it is possible to discover diverse attributes from the cover alone and how we often have to look beyond the cover to find out more before we decide.

After our discussions, students wrote exit tickets that are now displayed on a bulletin board in the library answering the prompt, "#Weneeddiversebooks Because." The answers vary from not wanting to be "bored" by the same types of books, to wanting to read a variety of genres, to wanting to see myself, to wanting to learn about other cultures. In other words, the students viewed diversity through a variety of lenses and then responded with their personal viewpoint.

 I am planning to follow up this activity with a series of displays that will help the students see diversity in all of the forms they mentioned, as well as other views. As we continue through the year, I'm hoping that my students will have the opportunity to experience both windows and mirrors in the books they choose from our library.

Social Justice Book Bowl 2016

The secondary schools will be competing in the Social Justice Book Bowl at Western Michigan University again this year. Teams of four sixth graders and teams of four seventh and eighth graders will be reading one fiction and one nonfiction book and then answering questions in a competitive format.

The books that have been chosen are as follows:

Sixth Grade

Draper, Sharon Stella By Starlight

 Lowery, Lynda Blackmon Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom

Seventh and Eighth Grade

 Friesner, Esther M. Threads and Flames

Burgan, Michael Breaker Boys: How a Photograph Helped End Child Labor

Students wishing to participate should listen for announcements at their school. Good luck!

  

Goal Setting and Getting to Know a Class

With about 780 students each year, it takes me time to get to know everyone. The sixth graders are especially difficult because they are all new at once and generally only visit once every two weeks. As part of the evaluation process, I have to set a personal growth goal that will also impact my students. After the second visit of one of our new sixth grade groups I knew I wanted to set a goal to work with them to help increase their interest in reading in order to help improve their literacy skills.

During their visit, I noticed that the students had very little direction and seemed to be struggling to make any decisions at all. Then, after they had books in their hands, most were reluctant to settle in and read. This may be the result of a combination of factors, any of which would cause issues. In order to get to the root of this and help the students make better book choices, I approached their teacher about using that class for my goal. Not only was she willing, but she also set a similar goal and we purposed to work together throughout the year to help these students.

We agreed to start with having this class visit the library weekly instead of bi-weekly. This change will allow further positive interactions. In addition, these students generally have higher needs, so they will benefit from the attention of an extra adult for one day each week. We also decided to pull out some of our professional reading resources and think through some ways to focus on the needs of each student. We have both read The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller and decided that the best place to start was with a survey to get to know our students better. We used a lot of the questions from the book, but modified some and added some of our own. I was able to write the survey and my colleague put it into a Google Form so our students could fill in their answers using iPads. We now have data on each student that can inform our future steps.

 There were a few surprises about giving the survey. I thought that they students would jump at the chance to tell us about themselves. However, they just viewed the survey as more work and took some convincing to settle in and complete the questions. They complained about the length, which, again, I thought they might not notice due to using the iPads instead of paper/pencil. The other thing I noticed without looking too closely at the data is that these students spent a long time listing television shows (Q5). I wanted to have an idea of pop cultural interests so that I could find books with similar themes, but I had no idea just how much TV these students watch. It will be a challenge to draw them into books and away from television.

I will spend the next few days looking at the survey data and then developing the activity for this week. I would like to do a book pass, but with the intention of drawing books from the shelves that closely match the interests listed on the surveys. I'm looking forward to developing a relationship with this class and finding ways to draw them into books and reading as a part of their daily lives.