Well here we are- the official first day of the semester.
In my library my schedule is basically semi-flex. I’m due at school at 8:30 a.m. and usually arrive around 8:15. My first scheduled class is fourth grade at 12:25. Then I have third grade at 1:25, first grade at 2:00, kindergarten at 2:30 and second grade at 3:00 and the every other week I have bus duty from 3:55 until all the busses are gone. We can leave school at 4:20.
This schedule leaves my mornings open for collaboration, extra library time, projects, ordering, etc.
Today when I arrived at school, I worked on re-shelving the 900 section of non-fiction. It was a mess and I wanted to relabel it before I started teaching my dewey lesson this afternoon.
At 11:00 I met with a fourth grade teacher about the children’s literature festival in Warrensburg. This is all new to me, but they have gone for several years. Students must earn the field trip by reading ten Mark Twain books and passing the AR test for each book with at least a 70%. So far we only have about 7 kids going. I’m of the opinion that this might be a steep reading goal for fourth graders. I’ve voiced that and not had much of a response. In effort to build relationships with the teachers I’m not going to push it this year-maybe next.
After meeting with the teacher and determining which authors we’d like to request and what date we’d like to go, I filled out the form and will turn it in to the Caring Communities lady at my school. She has offered to pay for the field trip! Yea!
For my fourth and third grade classes I had a lesson about Dewey Decimal system planned. We spent first semester learning how to search the catalog well and write down the important location information. Now we are going to become experts at finding our own books. We will continue to learn more about the Dewey Decimal system for the next several weeks. Here is a funny quote from a fourth grade student today. He raised his hand and said, “Since you are a professional, isn’t it your job to find our books for us?” I responded, “Actually I am a professional and it is my job to teach you how to find books so you can be an independent learner.” He then said, “You are a teacher?” Oh my.
With my kindergarten and first graders we are studying Tomie DePoala. Last week we read Strega Nona. This week we are looking at an autobiography and a biography about Tomie. The students were tickeled to learn that Tomie has three kitchens in his house and that he hated P.E. class as a kid. I think that introducing the biography in the second week of our author study was fun. Last week I hooked them with the magic pasta pot, now I’m more officially introducing them to Mr. DePoala and in the next few weeks, we will contiue to have fun with his other books. I love that he has both fiction and non-fiction! Good opprotunity to show them the different locations of the books and the spine labels of the books.
Today with my second graders we started reading the Show-Me books so we can vote on them in March. Today we read the “Great Fuzz Frenzy”. My clerk actually read it because I had to run to the nurses office with a very sore finger. So I’ll read it tomorrow and have something to write about!
No bus duty this week…but tonight was the monthly open library. We did Bingo for Books tonight. We had about 20 people including parents and children. Caring Communities purchased paperback books from Scholastic. Students who won Bingo were able to get books. I made up rules as the night went on-the first Bingo of a game got two books, etc . Some of the kids wanted to call Bingo numbers so that was fun. Also part of open library is the opprotunity for students to check out as many library books as they want. This allows them to take more than their typical two a day.
Well that’s about it for a busy Monday!
