The WCPS Library Media Team put together an elementary and secondary book pass videos. Check out what we're reading while we are teaching from home! The Elementary Team: The Secondary Team: What are YOU reading during quarantine?
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A message to our Cougar students from the SPMs staff: "Hey Cougars! All the teachers here at Springfield Middle school love all our awesome students very much and want you to know how much you are missed." Stay safe and keep reading - we'll be back soon! <3 Each year, the SPMS Media Center holds a bookmark contest. Students can enter original artwork for consideration as the school bookmarks for the year The students vote for their favorites. Here are our 2019-2020 winners! 6th GradeCongratulations to Sergia N. and Tessie D.! 7th GradeCongratulations to Kristalyn N., Catherine B., and Averie B.! 8th GradeCongratulations to Libby F., Peter R., Hope D., and Lucas O.!
Banned Books Week is always the last week in September. As in previous years, I ran a contest for Banned Books Week! I took a photocopied page from a popular banned book that the students would know, shredded it into thin strips, and put it in a jar for them to guess. Students guess using a QR code on the top of the jar that takes them to a Google Form. If you can't tell, the book is The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey. We had over 100 students enter the contest. Special congrats to Olivia, who correctly guessed the book and is the winner of a $5 Sweet Frog gift Card! Students are always SHOCKED at the books I select for the banned books contest. They can't believe that they would be banned or challenged. It opens up great conversations about books and censorship. I recently read a great article about Banned Books from the National Coalition Against Censorship that I would encourage you to read, too. My favorite quote from it is: “This week is not just about all the books that were challenged or banned. It is also a reminder of the real people whose self-expression is suppressed and whose stories are silenced. It is a shout out to every reader who is told that characters they identify with are unworthy. Every Banned Books Week is a recognition of those who are made to feel unsafe so that others can avoid conversations they find difficult and maintain their status quo.” Of the top 10 banned books of 2018, many of them were banned or challenged for LGBTQ+ content. Look at this video from the ALA showcasing the top 11 most frequently banned and challenged books from 2018: I am proud to say that I have almost all of the 2018 banned books in my collection!
Have you ever had a book challenged? What book and why? Drop a comment below and let's talk about how we can work to end censorship! The SPMS Media Center held our first annual PEEPle's Choice Awards contest, wherein participants made dioramas inspired by their favorite books, starring the popular PEEPS candy! Entries were accepted for 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and Faculty/Staff. We had some truly remarkable entries! Student voted for their favorites in each grade level - it's a PEEPle's Choice Award, after all! Our winners were: 6th Grade: Ready Player Peep! 7th Grade: Jurassic Peep 8th Grade: Peep Little Faculty/Staff: Winnie the Peep Each winner earned a $25 gift certificate to our Scholastic Book Fair! The entries were amazing - I am so proud of the students' creativity! Check out the rest of the entries below... they are so funny! We all like to receive love letters, right? I thought February was the perfect month to ask the students and staff what they love most about the library. Check out a few of their responses: (Names removed for privacy!) What can we takeaway from all this love?
The social committee of Springfield Middle School is hosting a holiday door decoration contest, much to my horror. I am not a crafty person (unless the idea comes from Pinterest - with step by step directions, I can create anything!). I had a brainstorm of inspiration one night though, while staring at some old equipment that needs to go to recycling.... wait for it... Very punny, right?? Whomp whomp whoommmppp... I'm sure I saw it on a commerical somewhere. I have very few original ideas, let's be honest. This idea of "Tech The Halls" was going to include a Christmas tree with some decorations that were old CDs and mice that I had laying around. When my enrichment coding class heard that I was going to "just" put some paper and CDs on my door, they took it upon themselves to build the most epic door ever. Behold: TECH THE HALLS! It's awesome, right? I know, it's a little overwhelming. Let me show you up close how fabulous this door really is... 1. QR CODES The Christmas balls that you see on the tree each contain a QR code. Each code leads the viewer to a YouTube video of a different holiday song. There are 16 total... LOOK! 2. UPCYCLED KEYBOARD KEYS The garland on the tree is made out of old keyboard keys that I let the kids rip up and hot glue to string - and they even decided to spell out holiday words! They included: Merry Christmas, Rudolph, Santa, Joy to the World, Giving, Presents, and more! 3. INTERACTIVITY My students, being the budding programmers that they are, decided that they HAD to make the door interactive. They grabbed our Makey Makey kits (click here for a previous blog post about them) and coded a program in Scratch that allows the user to touch the doorknob and the foil above it to make the door SING. That's right... the door actually SINGS! These very creative kids ran the wires behind the door so that the user completes the circuit by touching both the doorknob and the foil above it: Here is a picture of the magic that runs the show (and the magicians behind it!): You can see the wiring on the door attached to the Makey Makey. The kids set up the laptop to not go to sleep when the lid is shut, then wrote the program to play one of three random versions of Deck the Halls when the circuit is completed: Genius, I know! I take no credit for any of this work, it was totally designed and implemented by students. Bravo to these intrepid engineers!
Interested in getting some Makey Makeys for your classroom or library? Check out their website for all kinds of ideas on how to implement them into the curriculum! Comment below on how you could use these fun tools with your students! The library hosted our 2nd annual bookmark contest during the month of November. Students could enter their original artwork between 11/1 and 11/17. Voting opened on 11/18 and ran through 11/30. All bookmarks featured below will be printed in full-color and available for students to take. Congratulations to our winners - HERE THEY ARE! 6th Grade7th Grade8th GradeIt's October, and things are getting spooky around here in the SPM library! First, there's a bulletin board asking you if you're DYING for a good book: Special thanks to Maddie, who let me trace her with chalk for the outline, and to the custodial staff who provided the caution tape! We also have a quote by Stephen King, the master of horror, on our LED Sign: Not to mention a fun new contest. In the month of October, students can guess the number of pumpkins in the jar to win a prize - the pumpkins AND a pair of splitter headphones! Our featured author is Mary Downing Hahn, author of many CREEPY novels! Her books NEVER stay on the shelf for long! Finally, I pulled out a series of non-fiction books and created a display for "The Unexplained" ... including books about Bigfoot, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, Crop Circles, Aliens, Ghosts, Haunted Places, and more!
How are you engaging your patrons during the creepiest time of the year? Comment below to let me know, I would love to see your ideas! Banned Books Week is September 25th - October 1st, 2016. This annual event celebrates your right to read and your right to freely access information! To celebrate Banned Books Week, I created a bulletin board (found on Pinterest, not my original idea). Here it is: It includes some infographics about banned/challenged books, as well as a list of the top 100 most challenged books. The students are fascinated by the paper-chain lock... it's the little things, I suppose! Why promote banned books? It's important to draw attention to the idea of censorship - we cannot allow materials to be censored for our students. It is important that they read a wide variety of materials from a diverse spectrum of writers. I have a deeply held personal belief that materials in the library should be free choice. I absolutely understand the importance of putting a book that is "just right" into a child's hand, but I also know that it's vital for the kids to have choice. Just check out this article: How to Motivate Students By Letting Them Choose Books Many adults, while well-intentioned, destroy the love of reading in kids by limiting the selection of books that they can read. This comes in many forms - by telling a kid to put a book back that looks too hard for him/her, by limiting students to a certain book basket or a certain Lexile level, or by telling students they can only select books from a certain part of the library (eg Fiction, or Biographies). All of these are forms of censorship and must not be practiced in a public school library. Does this mean we should just let students pick whatever books they want with no input or thought? No. We certainly can encourage students to select books that are closer to their reading level, or guide them toward books with content that we know they will enjoy. We can allow them to take the book that is too difficult or too easy while also helping them find one that it just right. HOWEVER, the ultimate decision should be with the children... if we are to raise life-long readers, we MUST allow them to self-select their texts. *STEPS OFF SOAPBOX* So if you're still with me, let's work on promoting banned books! The ALA has an amazing collection of digital downloads all available for free! Just click the link above and check it out. I also have a contest running this month... I took the first two pages of a banned/challenged book, shredded it up one line at a time, and I put it in a jar so students can guess the title. The contest is open all month. The winner will win a free book of his/her choice and a lunch pass for themselves and a friend for the week. Here is the setup: Can you guess the banned book? It's one of my FAVORITES!
So in September, make sure you exercise your freedom to read what you want, when you want! Read a banned book! |
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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