I'll do almost anything to "sell" a book to a reader. It doesn't matter if it's a student or adult, old friend or stranger in the grocery store - I'll try my best to be a #bookdealer and find that one perfect book for a reader. Thanks to Pinterest, I took every student at SPMS on a date with a book - several books - in February! BAHAHA! It was epic and amazing and FUN! I started with an overview of what speed dating was and how it worked... the kids were horrified at the amount of social interaction dating required:
Ahh, youth. Next, I went over the "Mrs. Hurley's 6 Rules for Dating" which (mostly) apply to both humans and books!
Then we moved into the speed dating area: Complete with red tableclothes, LED candles, heart decorations on the tables, vases with fake roses (shout out to the Dollar Tree for all the decorations!)... I even turned down the lights to "set the mood"! But by far the worst was the music. I streamed some of the worst covers of the world's cheesiest love songs. Some of my favorites were:
To be clear, I enjoy some of these songs... but the covers were AWFUL. And I blasted them as loud as my speakers would go! The students had 3 minutes with each "date". At the end, they had to rate their dates and write some notes about the date and why they gave it the rating that they assigned it. Click HERE for my rating sheet sample - this one was for 8th grade. Feel free to copy and remake as needed. Below are pictures of some of my kids mid-date. It was SO MUCH FUN! Hands down probably one of the most loved activities I've put together for my students! The best part was setting up those "second dates"... here is just one sample email I had from students immediately after classes. I received over 100 hold requests for books that were "dated" during this activity! One book had so many holds that I ordered 3 "emergency" copies (in addition to the two I already had) sent from Amazon and processed them the next day to put them in the collection... there were more than 15 requests just for that book!
It's important to note that not all of the books I put out were brand new. Many of these were great titles that I noticed weren't circulating. I am happy to say that all of those books are really feeling the love now! I even "sold" some of these books to staff members - some of whom weren't ELA teachers! They fell in love just by walking through and wondering what in the world was happening in the library... and they left with a hold on a book they couldn't imagine life without. YES. What books would you put out for your students? Comment below and let me know!!
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It'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! Webster's Dictionary defines tinkering as "to repair, adjust, or work with something in an unskilled or experimental manner". I love to tinker! Even as a kid I used to tear things apart just to see the insides, and sometimes to put them back together. The idea behind a Makerspace is to allow kids to make and explore... I had found some ideas on Pinterest about putting in a TinkerSpace in the Makerspace. The idea is to take old electronics that are headed for recycling and let the students explore them. But where would I get old equipment? Turns out one of our awesome 8th grade teachers was planning on recycling her personal computer from her house. She asked me to take the hard drive out of it, and where she could recycle it. I asked her if I could keep it for the students, and she said YES! Woohoo! The Tinkerspace was born! I set it out on the table with a box of tools (screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers) - it wasn't long before a couple of students asked me what the computer was for. When I told them, they dove right in! Within minutes they had the box opened up and were removing pieces. The best part is that they also grabbed another working laptop and were researching what the parts were called and what their functions were. It was a completely student-directed learning experience. YES. Now that the Tinkerspace is up and running, I am full of other ideas... how about old radios? Flashlights? Speakers? YES! Let's tinker!
What would YOU pull apart if you had the chance? Comment below! April is School Library month, as I am sure you know! In preparation, I decided to hold a bookmark contest (thanks Pinterest!) for my students. I created a template (download the Word Doc below to make your own) and accepted entries through March 18th. Some of the artwork I got was just incredible... look! As you can see, there were quotes about animals, movies and reading; there were pop-culture references, artwork about books, and famous sayings from famous authors! The winners will be sent to printing to be printed in color on cardstock and distributed to the school! So exciting! Check back in April to see who won! Now you want to do your own bookmark contest, don't you? Download the Word Doc below to make your own template!
February is the month of romance, right? So what better place to show the love than the library? I made an quick bulletin board asking students to write what they loved about the library (thanks, Pinterest!!). All participants were entered to win a box of Valentine's Day chocolate... the responses were overwhelmingly positive! Just look at all the positive things written by students and staff about our library! Here are some close-ups below! The lucky winner was drawn on February 29th... congrats to the student and staff member who won!! If you are thinking that you wish you'd known about this post sooner, it's not late to ask your patrons what they love about the library just because February is over... you could do a similar board for School Library Month!
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! Kids today have access to many different forms of social media, and regardless of how adults feel about it, it's here to stay. Check out this article on a 13 Year Old's View of Social Media. It's eye-opening, to say the least, especially Part 2, entitled Do 13-Year-Old's Even Know What Facebook, Google+, Snapchat, Vine, and Twitch Are? The standout quote for me in that article was this one about Facebook: Facebook is seen as a way for old people to connect with other old people that they haven’t seen for decades. To be completely honest there is no use case for teens my age. The only time anyone used Facebook was when FarmVille and Zynga were still a thing. Old people...? OLD PEOPLE? I'm 35 - not exactly one foot in the grave - and I LOVE Facebook! Of course, by 13 year old standards, I'm practically ancient, so I guess it really is for "old people." So what are we to do about this rabid use of social media by our students? ENGAGE!! Engage the students in using social media for classroom discussions! Have them tweet during a field trip or find an expert in a field to discuss a science topic. Use Instagram to post pictures of their work! Make a Facebook page and maintain it for parents (and students, even if it is for "old people"!) Instagram is big for the middle school set. I'm trying to engage my readers by asking them to take "shelfies" - a selfie with a book that they are reading. I also post monthly challenges. September is "Banned Books" since the ALA Banned Books week is at the end of the month. Check out my display! Before you think I'm too creative, again, Pinterest is my friend. Students can take a picture of themselves with a banned book (or any book) and tag it #SPMSshelfie so I can see. Here are some of my kids' pictures! Even the teachers are getting involved!
So here's YOUR challenge... how can you use social media to engage your patrons? Let's get it! |
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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