Everyone knows that I'm a media specialist for my day job, which means I'm obviously passionate about books, literature, and finding that perfect book for a child who is desperately in need. Connecting kids with great literature is one of the best parts of my job! Over the summer I heard about the Little Free Library project and I just KNEW I had to have one at my house. (You can thank Pinterest again for this one...). What is a Little Free Library? It's a weatherproof box of books, placed outside for public use, curated by a steward, and used by the community! Here is mine: This Little Free Library lives in front of my house in Greencastle, PA. It is filled with books for birth - 10. I've advertised it on our neighborhood Facebook page and so far it's been well-received. Neighborhood kids love to drop by and borrow a book, and can often be seen reading standing around the library. Here's what happened a few weeks ago when the kids were sent out to play... this picture wasn't staged, I swear! The two on the right belong to me, another one was my BFF's daughter! So now you want to have a Little Free Library, too, right?? Good news - Pinterest has loads of plans for building one. Lucky me had the box given to me, and the awesome students at Williamsport High built the post with these directions!
The books were culled from my own kids' collections. As you can imagine, Mommy LOVES books and we have too many at our house. It was easy to pull out books to place in the library. Now my kids visit some of their former favorites regularly. If you aren't as obsessed with books as I am, you can get them free or cheap from yard sales, used book stores, and even library giveaways. Neighbors will also provide books - within a matter of days, one neighbor supplemented what I had placed in there with books from her children's collections! If you do install a Little Free Library at your house, make sure you also register it on the website so you can get an official charter. It took about 5 weeks for my charter to arrive, so we are officially official! A teacher recently asked me - do they have to "check out" the books? Nope! Just take one to enjoy, return it when you are finished, then borrow another (or several)! Come for a visit - take a book, return a book, love to read!
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Our fall Scholastic Book Fair just wrapped up, and it was even more successful than I could have imagined. We sold $1000 more in books than the same book fair last year - a little over $6,000.00 in materials total! Hooray!!! How did this happen? You'll get tired of hearing this answer: Yep. AGAIN. Can you tell I love this app? Guess what - so do the tweenagers. This app is one of the most popular apps with the middle school set, and I used it to my fullest advantage. Here is a slideshow with some of my posts from the week leading up to and the week of the Book Fair! I advertised, advertised, advertised... and it worked! I always take the profit in Scholastic Dollars - so now we have $3,300 in books to buy for the library, plus the $500 in books I already pulled out from materials for sale at the actual book fair! YES!!
These days, data is king in public education, including in the media center. I have always done a collection development survey with my students, even in elementary school. As I prepared to place my book order for 2015-16, I decided to add some other questions to my survey. I am not a survey writer, so I cannot promise that these questions are without bias - but I think they served my purpose well. I created a google form survey for the students to complete, then I shortened the sharing URL with bitly so it wasn't so much for the kids to type into their browser. The survey looks like this: Each grade level is taking the survey over a 3 week period, and every student in the school will have answered it (save the absences). At the time of this blog post, I have only completed the 6th grade survey, but the data is already telling! 1. On a scale of 1-5, please answer the following questions: I enjoy coming to the media center.Clearly something is going well in the library! This was the very first question I asked of the students, and the overwhelming response was very positive! This was heartening to me as this is my first experience in middle school. I want the library to be a warm and welcoming place where they feel valued - but middle schoolers are different from elementary school kids, and I worried about connecting with them. They are too cool for everything, especially anything that adults like or recommend. I have discovered though that they are just like giant elementary school kids - they want the same attention as the younger kids, just delivered with a smidge of humor. 2. On a scale of 1-5, please answer the following question: I can usually locate what I need in the media center.These results were not unexpected - the students are new to the school, and the entire library was recently reorganized (see THIS blog post) - so what can I do to improve those neutral responses to agrees or strongly agrees? Definitely something to reflect on in the coming weeks! 3. On a scale of 1-5, please answer the following questions: I feel welcome in the library.And here is my warm-fuzzy for the day... almost all of my students strongly agree that they feel welcome in the library. I must be doing SOMETHING right, even if I feel pulled in 10,000 different directions at once on any given day. Since these 6th graders are new to the school and have only ever had me as their media teacher in middle school, I can be confident that this data point is the result of my efforts to connect with them. YAY!! 4. On a scale of 1-5, please answer the following questions: I read my books mostly at home.These last two questions are just for my own curiosity... and the results were interesting. Elementary schoolers typically read their books at home AND at school. The 6th graders I polled so far read overwhelmingly at school. 5. On a scale of 1-5, please answer the following questions! I read my books mostly at school.Study after study has shown the importance of reading to kids... but after elementary school, we don't do it! We SHOULD read aloud to our students, and encourage them to be read to at home as well.
The last two questions in my survey asked the kids 1) what titles, authors, series, or subjects they would like to see purchased and added to our collection and 2) what other materials they might like to check out. I'll be polling staff similarly - what's the sense in buying books that no one will read or use in instruction? Also, the overwhelming response of "IPADS!!" to the last question has given me more data to prove that our kids want this technology - now I can start championing the cause even more! Surveying our students and staff is critical to staying relevant - we have to make sure we are meeting the needs of our patrons, and not just by our own measures of whether or not we are being successful. We have to reflect on patron data to truly transform our libraries into the spaces that our students and staff members need! Have you created a survey for your patrons? What were the results? Share in the comments below! I wrote a previous post about the power of social media in the classroom where I challenged you to engage your patrons with a variety of social media platforms. I have had a couple of people asking me for ideas, so I wanted to share with you one easy way I've been using Instagram to increase library usage! Instagram is a photo-sharing social media website that allows you to tag users (with the @ symbol) and photos (with a # hashtag). It is VERY popular among the tween-ager set. Check out this article if you need more explanation of why teens prefer it over Facebook. The two questions I get most often are: How can you use Instagram instructionally? I use it to share interesting information with my followers, to post pictures of my reading, and to advertise for upcoming events. As of yet, I haven't used it for direct instruction - BUT - a teacher at my school has an Instagram scavenger hunt planned for an upcoming field trip. The students have a list of items to find, photograph, and post with an explanation. She made up her own hashtag, too! How awesome is that?! When do you post on Instagram? My school has a BYOD policy, so I post at all times of day. You may want to check out this article and see what times would work best for you based on your target audience. This means that I am indeed on my phone during class - just like my students! I model good digital citizenship by asking permission before I take their photographs. 99.99% of the time they say yes (and then immediately ask me to tag them!). Here are some samples of my recent posts with details on how I use Instagram to engage my patrons: 1. ShelfiesShare your #Shelfie (a selfie with a book)! I share what I am reading with the hashtag #spmsshelfie - this allows my patrons to get to know me and my family, forging that personal connection that is oh-so-important to quelling behavior issues. I have also found that I have a hard time keeping materials on the shelf if it's something I have recommended on Instagram. Make up your own hashtag for your school! 2. QuotesI love to post quotes - about reading, about life, about anything! In high school I had an ELA teacher who gave us an assignment each marking period. We had 100 quotes to choose from, and we had to select at least 15 to analyze each marking period, so 60 over the course of the year. It was a beastly assignment, but it really resonated with me. To this day I still love to look at famous quotes! 3. Advertising Special EventsPaper flyers are SO yesterday. Students don't read them, and if parents aren't checking backpacks, they aren't reading them either. Enter Instagram! I use it to advertise all my special events, like the monthly shelfie challenge, the book fair, and more! The kids see it online and word gets around fast. 4. Personal StuffThis one comes back to building relationships with the the students - I post personal (but school appropriate) pictures on Instagram to show them glimpses into who I am and what kind of stuff I enjoy. These sneak peeks can help me be known in a large student body, which is critical when I only see them every few weeks. Again, those personal relationships are critical, and they are what the kids will remember.
Will my students remember every picture I post on Instagram? No. But hopefully they will remember that their media specialist was cool, and she hooked them up with good books. It's all about developing them into life-long readers by any means necessary. How will YOU use social media in your classroom? |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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