Today, the Book Fair arrived from Scholastic. While Cindy taught classes in the reading center, Toni and I prepared the rest of the library for the incoming cases of shelved books. Typically, the library has many volunteers that come especially for this day to un-box and set up the displays, books, and other fun. This year, for varied reasons (mostly sickness), only two volunteers were available and in attendance. Thankfully, the janitors of the school and a few teachers on planning offered their help, even if it could only be 20 minutes or so. There is no incentive for volunteers at this point for Ravenel's LMC, but Cindy said most parents just enjoy doing this event. Several years ago, Scholastic allowed librarians to assign some discount percentages for volunteers/teachers, but Cindy said that any "discounts" would now come out of profits.
Thankfully, the delivery men from Scholastic and the janitors wheeled in the giant cart/shelves into the library. Each cart was also laden with boxes filled with more materials to be set in the Book Fair shop. Once the shelves were in about the right place, the Scholastic employees required a signature and were off, leaving us to move the sometimes heavy boxes off of the highly stacked carts. Again, we were so grateful to the custodians as they lifted the heaviest boxes and set them on the floor.
The unloading was a bit chaotic. Each box has a title of content based on pseudo-genres and grade-level appropriateness. At first, we were piling boxes just by those content, but we were also trying to place them under or near the tables they would be displayed on. This worked for the most part, until people started pulling the materials out of boxes. Then, it was like Christmas morning in a family of twelve! Books and materials starting cropping up everywhere! As we were all placing books on display, we also realized that the size of tables wasn't always appropriate for the amount of resources in the boxes. This led to shuffling of books that were already set up in display! About halfway through the process, we saw that some areas were densely crowded, while other spaces had large gaps. This then led to trouble keeping the pseudo-genres together. In addition, the Scholastic genres were not necessarily genres I would understand or categorize based on. This made collecting and redistributing texts onto the displays an extra challenge. Too, Cindy had pulled a few books off of the shelves to rearrange, which made some holes on the shelves themselves. Phew! I honestly was a little panicked at the state of the fair, but just reminded myself that I wouldn't be present for the full fair and that it needed to suit Cindy and Toni as the true leaders of the fair.
First what I noticed about content, then what I would do for my Book Fair.
Holy bobble pens and kooky highlighters, Batman! It felt like more than half of the fair's goods were cheap novelties like funky erasers, giant pens, and character-topped highlighters. Cindy and Toni cover this table up when the students come for a wish list walk-through to focus on the books available to them. Secondly, almost all of the novels were paperback: I'm sure to make the texts affordable to the general child shopper. There was a fair range of texts and topics, though empires like Marvel, Lego, and Disney dominated many tables and shelves. I am sure this ties back to Scholastic's corporate deals and maybe even ownership. Despite this, there were many books that were excellent choices that I had both heard of and seen good reviews for. All of the books were new or recently new titles with the exception of Harry Potter. Even still, the Harry Potter texts were the new artistic covers and were matched with movie books and Fantastic Beasts materials, a recent film. The picture books were a little more diverse, with a specific requested selection of SCASL Children's Book Award nominees present for sale. My last big notice were some larger, higher level texts available for sale, but not in the "adult" section of cooking books and biographies. These books were mostly about presidential history, science industries, and compendiums of sports facts. Not only did these books seem not appealing, they also were greater than $40. I was a little confused as to why they are present at a elementary book fair, but imagine Scholastic is both trying to make money and potentially appeal to parents who come through the shop.
One great thing Scholastic did this year is create a box for students who had no money at the book fair. Cindy said that she had always gathered some books that they purchased through donations (donation can included in the setup kit) to give to students without money or with little money. There was also an overflowing table of "discount" books as the spring book fairs are headed towards selling off all inventory to buy new inventory for the following year. Both of these options made the book fair more accessible to all students, which I thought showed some recognition of reality from even a business like Scholastic.
Content-wise, I am sure that I would not have made all of the novelties available to the students. There were so many character iterations on the tops of pens that my own head was spinning! I know as a child, these attracted me, too. And why wouldn't they? Colorful, characters, useful! But as an adult, I can see that the prices are rather excessive for something you could get for a quarter or may never use at all. I would want to both protect my students from those buys and encourage them to buy texts or project kits that would develop learning and experiences from the book fair. Additionally, I think I might have to take the first delivery day by myself or just have volunteers move the boxes down. At least for my first year, I think I will want to know what is going where to keep my own head straight during the sales process. Perhaps the Scholastic genres will be sufficient; I just want to understand them first!
I am so grateful to have been present at the setup of the Book Fair. This is one of the things that I think may be most practical to help me, especially if I end up as a middle or elementary LMS. As one of the biggest events within the library and one of the most complex (especially financially), this day has been extremely helpful in my LMS formation.
Showing posts with label Book Fair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Fair. Show all posts
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Day 11: Experimenting with Lessons and Discipline
Today ran so smoothly! I was really impressed with some of the students that had to come today for library due to the shortened schedule for tomorrow to set up the Book Fair. This is out of their routine, which I have learned is a BIG part of elementary school, especially in the younger grades. During the first week, I did not do much behavioral correcting as I was still observing and getting a "feel" for how the students acted at each age. Now, I have seen teachers, Mrs. Edgerton, and even the principal chastise students for certain behaviors like not sitting quietly, running to line up or complete tasks, or talking out of turn. I have a little bit of a challenge balancing my eagerness to support their excitement for learning and exploring with the understanding of the need for rules, expectations, and protocol. Especially at this younger age, the students are prone to blurt out irrelevant stories, continue talking through instructions, or other disruptive behaviors they just have not had to learn yet. I have been starting to ask students to sit on their bottoms and face the front and other sort of respectful behaviors during the instructional reading time; yet, they also need some reminders about how not to play with materials (books, shelf markers, alternative seating, etc.) when they are in the library. I told Mrs. Owens I was already tired of a few reminders: "Walk, not run!", "Sit on your bottom", "Scan the Ravenel barcode, not the store's", just to name a few.
4K was fun to teach both classes back-to-back. The students really like to incorporate more knowledge than just reading the stories themselves. Love is a Handful of Honey has three little mice on each spread of pages. Once I noticed this trend, I decided to have them look at the pages for the occurrence of mice. This also got the students to speak with clearer descriptions of locations on the page: at first, the students would answer, "Right there!" I would point to a random spot on the page and say, "Right here!" a few times until they realized they needed a more specific answer. Finally, students would start using identifying markers on the pages: "In the log!", "Next to the bear!", "On top of the tree!" A week ago, this would have felt much too easy to even discuss with the students. Now I know that this is exactly the kind of interaction to give to the youngest grades during story time.
I also experimented with Love is a Handful of Honey to one of the first grade classes, to use this opportunity to gauge if books that appeal to the youngest audience could also be used with slightly older students. At first, one of the students said she saw me reading this to kindergarten, but I reminded her that books can be enjoyed on many different levels if we looked at different things. She seemed to accept that answer. Instead of just witnessing the book and being focused on the characters of the story like the K4s, the first graders also started predicting what would happen on the next page or in the next scene. They, too, liked finding the mice on each page (which I suppose we really are never too old for a treasure hunt), but were also more interested in how the characters on the page were interacting in accordance with the story. The experiment seemed fruitful! I do think that the predicting and following the story was too basic for a few of the students, as they were trying to talk or play or roll their eyes during parts of the story; however, these same students had to be chastised when in the reading center for playing or using the furniture inappropriately. I do not think I would always choose a book like this that appeals to the younger crowd, but I also think that the lesson was well spent simply enjoying the book and enjoying the characters and illustrations.
Between classes, we began some furniture rearranging for the Book Fair delivery that comes tomorrow. There will still be children participating in regular circulation, but our main goals are to set up and decorate for Book Fair. Mrs. Edgerton and I also updated patron cards, printed Accelerated Reader reports, discussed the mid-term evaluation, and completed other "odd jobs" around the library. It is clear that a rhythm (if a chaotic, ever-changing rhythm) does exist with more comfort and time within the library. I'm looking forward to the set up and experience of the Scholastic Book Fair tomorrow!
4K was fun to teach both classes back-to-back. The students really like to incorporate more knowledge than just reading the stories themselves. Love is a Handful of Honey has three little mice on each spread of pages. Once I noticed this trend, I decided to have them look at the pages for the occurrence of mice. This also got the students to speak with clearer descriptions of locations on the page: at first, the students would answer, "Right there!" I would point to a random spot on the page and say, "Right here!" a few times until they realized they needed a more specific answer. Finally, students would start using identifying markers on the pages: "In the log!", "Next to the bear!", "On top of the tree!" A week ago, this would have felt much too easy to even discuss with the students. Now I know that this is exactly the kind of interaction to give to the youngest grades during story time.
I also experimented with Love is a Handful of Honey to one of the first grade classes, to use this opportunity to gauge if books that appeal to the youngest audience could also be used with slightly older students. At first, one of the students said she saw me reading this to kindergarten, but I reminded her that books can be enjoyed on many different levels if we looked at different things. She seemed to accept that answer. Instead of just witnessing the book and being focused on the characters of the story like the K4s, the first graders also started predicting what would happen on the next page or in the next scene. They, too, liked finding the mice on each page (which I suppose we really are never too old for a treasure hunt), but were also more interested in how the characters on the page were interacting in accordance with the story. The experiment seemed fruitful! I do think that the predicting and following the story was too basic for a few of the students, as they were trying to talk or play or roll their eyes during parts of the story; however, these same students had to be chastised when in the reading center for playing or using the furniture inappropriately. I do not think I would always choose a book like this that appeals to the younger crowd, but I also think that the lesson was well spent simply enjoying the book and enjoying the characters and illustrations.
Between classes, we began some furniture rearranging for the Book Fair delivery that comes tomorrow. There will still be children participating in regular circulation, but our main goals are to set up and decorate for Book Fair. Mrs. Edgerton and I also updated patron cards, printed Accelerated Reader reports, discussed the mid-term evaluation, and completed other "odd jobs" around the library. It is clear that a rhythm (if a chaotic, ever-changing rhythm) does exist with more comfort and time within the library. I'm looking forward to the set up and experience of the Scholastic Book Fair tomorrow!
Friday, February 10, 2017
Day 8: Prepping for the Week(end) Ahead
Today, in addition to teaching more of the kindergarten classes, I also finished planning for the week ahead. I laughed when I realized that my initial plan (from Day 4) was definitely more like a classroom plan rather than a story time in the library. I was still thinking in terms of a "unit" rather than an individual "visit." So, I had to rethink my game plan!
New goals: (1) engaging pages and story for the students to interact with; (2) brief stories with less words on the pages; (3) less "serious" subject matter that would need more "unpacking."
As Valentine's is next week, I tried to choose books on themes of love, different ways to show love, acceptance of others, and friendship. At first, I wanted to avoid this topic, as I figured the classes themselves would be talking about this holiday and I'm not a huge proponent of "romantic" love between elementary schoolers. However, I saw that especially the younger students that come for reading time still experience this holiday as a new, novel experience. Of course! They are only four to six years old! So the books I decided to choose were based on love as a concept or love between non-amorous relationships.
Additionally, the following week is the Book Fair! As this is the last time we will see the students before the Book Fair, I will also be using material provided by Scholastic that uses the authors themselves to advertise a few books available for purchase. The particular titles were chosen based on apparent appeal and creativity of presentation to value thirty-second to two minute clips rather than traditional booktalks.
Here is the list I ended up with today:
* indicates first priority book, then listed in order of alternate titles for more time.
K4 (30m without checkout)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Pig the Pug
*Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreas
*No Matter What by Debi Gliori
I Love You Always And Forever by Jonathan Emmett
The I Love You Book by Todd Parr
I Love You, Mister Bear by Sylvie Wickstrom
K (30m with single table checkout: 1 book)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Kwame Alexander in Surf’s Up
Bookfair Booktalk Pink is for Blobfish--in lib
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon
No Matter What by Debi Gliori
In Daddy’s Arms, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe
Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae
1st (15m with checkout: 2 books)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Hats Off to You!
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Press Start!: Game Over, Super Rabbit Boy!
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon
*Two Friends by Dean Robbins
Froggy’s First Kiss by Jonathan London
EBD (30m with checkout: 1 or 2 books, dependent on student)
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon (AR 3.2, P 0.5)
*Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae
No Matter What by Debi Gliori
After school, Cindy and I traveled to Blue Ridge Elementary, where the Battle of the Books is to be held tomorrow. I will blog more about what the program is, but it was a great experience to see another elementary library within the same school district. This school was built in 2009 and has an expansive space. I would live there, it is so spacious and beautiful! The Blue Ridge library has sections for "popular" series in the high traffic areas like Ravenel, but also has begun "Maker Spaces" with art supplies, large tables, and diverse work configurations. The whole school has also adopted the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as a sort of theme and infrastructure for their discipline and character program. The library has set collections of books focusing on each habit to carry and support that school-wide initiative. It was definitely a cool opportunity to see some of the same programs or library organization implemented in different ways or with different tools to achieve the same goals. I'm looking forward to the program tomorrow!
New goals: (1) engaging pages and story for the students to interact with; (2) brief stories with less words on the pages; (3) less "serious" subject matter that would need more "unpacking."
As Valentine's is next week, I tried to choose books on themes of love, different ways to show love, acceptance of others, and friendship. At first, I wanted to avoid this topic, as I figured the classes themselves would be talking about this holiday and I'm not a huge proponent of "romantic" love between elementary schoolers. However, I saw that especially the younger students that come for reading time still experience this holiday as a new, novel experience. Of course! They are only four to six years old! So the books I decided to choose were based on love as a concept or love between non-amorous relationships.
Additionally, the following week is the Book Fair! As this is the last time we will see the students before the Book Fair, I will also be using material provided by Scholastic that uses the authors themselves to advertise a few books available for purchase. The particular titles were chosen based on apparent appeal and creativity of presentation to value thirty-second to two minute clips rather than traditional booktalks.
Here is the list I ended up with today:
* indicates first priority book, then listed in order of alternate titles for more time.
K4 (30m without checkout)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Pig the Pug
*Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreas
*No Matter What by Debi Gliori
I Love You Always And Forever by Jonathan Emmett
The I Love You Book by Todd Parr
I Love You, Mister Bear by Sylvie Wickstrom
K (30m with single table checkout: 1 book)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Kwame Alexander in Surf’s Up
Bookfair Booktalk Pink is for Blobfish--in lib
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon
No Matter What by Debi Gliori
In Daddy’s Arms, illustrated by Javaka Steptoe
Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae
1st (15m with checkout: 2 books)
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Hats Off to You!
Bookfair Booktalk WATCH Press Start!: Game Over, Super Rabbit Boy!
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon
*Two Friends by Dean Robbins
Froggy’s First Kiss by Jonathan London
EBD (30m with checkout: 1 or 2 books, dependent on student)
*If Kids Ran the World by Leo and Diane Dillon (AR 3.2, P 0.5)
*Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae
No Matter What by Debi Gliori
After school, Cindy and I traveled to Blue Ridge Elementary, where the Battle of the Books is to be held tomorrow. I will blog more about what the program is, but it was a great experience to see another elementary library within the same school district. This school was built in 2009 and has an expansive space. I would live there, it is so spacious and beautiful! The Blue Ridge library has sections for "popular" series in the high traffic areas like Ravenel, but also has begun "Maker Spaces" with art supplies, large tables, and diverse work configurations. The whole school has also adopted the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People as a sort of theme and infrastructure for their discipline and character program. The library has set collections of books focusing on each habit to carry and support that school-wide initiative. It was definitely a cool opportunity to see some of the same programs or library organization implemented in different ways or with different tools to achieve the same goals. I'm looking forward to the program tomorrow!
Thursday, February 9, 2017
Day 7: Book Talks LIVE!
The Ravenel Library is set up with a section for popular series, to make frequently circulated books easy to locate and shelve. Many of the students go first to this section which contains series titles such as:
Using Amazon’s Editorial Reviews sections, Goodreads reviews, the book jackets themselves, and the upcoming Book Fair previews, I combined some information to present to the students live in Mr. Dent’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade "gifted literature" classes. I tried to vary the books I presented within the list that Cindy suggested of less-circulated books, appealing to both boys and girls, offering shorter and longer stories, and ranging story contents. I decided to pick four titles per grade level, using one title to mention the Book Fair availability.
I first generated mini "speeches" that I would give during the book talks and then created handouts to go along with each presentation. My original intent was to create bookmarks with these titles on them; however, my computer and copy skills did not quite follow along! You can see that my handouts became more like my original vision as the grade level (the day's schedule) increases. Despite my tech-flubs, the students did not seem to notice one way or another the way the pages were written.
Booktalk Handouts 3rd
Booktalk Handouts 4th
Booktalk Handouts 5th
Once I was in the rooms to present, I found that the script I had created was too rigid to "perform" live. I still plan to record these book talks, so the scripts can still be useful; however, the reactions/interaction with the students required more flexibility. In this situation, I found the students both engaged and potentially excited in response to the titles. In the moment, I realized that the students needed some interactive piece to these book talks: STARS! I directed the students to draw one to five stars based on their interest for the title. This spur-of-the-moment thought worked exceptionally better than I expected, as the students enjoyed trying to draw stars, added twenty-two stars for some they were VERY excited about, and talked with their table-peers about which book interested them the most. Both the students and the teacher seemed excited about at least some of the titles which had them talking even as I was leaving the room!
I knew that the book talks were at least some success when several students came to the library to either check out or reserve the titles I had suggested. One student even came in with the handout to remind him of which one he wanted! Though a little intimidating and requiring a good bit of energy to hype the books up, this seems like a practice worthwhile for a few times over the year in my own library career.
- Big Nate
- Spirit Animals
- Magic Tree House
- Geronimo Stilton
- Series of Unfortunate Events
- Junie B. Jones
- I Survived
- Bad Kitty
- etc.
Using Amazon’s Editorial Reviews sections, Goodreads reviews, the book jackets themselves, and the upcoming Book Fair previews, I combined some information to present to the students live in Mr. Dent’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade "gifted literature" classes. I tried to vary the books I presented within the list that Cindy suggested of less-circulated books, appealing to both boys and girls, offering shorter and longer stories, and ranging story contents. I decided to pick four titles per grade level, using one title to mention the Book Fair availability.
I first generated mini "speeches" that I would give during the book talks and then created handouts to go along with each presentation. My original intent was to create bookmarks with these titles on them; however, my computer and copy skills did not quite follow along! You can see that my handouts became more like my original vision as the grade level (the day's schedule) increases. Despite my tech-flubs, the students did not seem to notice one way or another the way the pages were written.
Booktalk Handouts 3rd
Booktalk Handouts 4th
Booktalk Handouts 5th
Once I was in the rooms to present, I found that the script I had created was too rigid to "perform" live. I still plan to record these book talks, so the scripts can still be useful; however, the reactions/interaction with the students required more flexibility. In this situation, I found the students both engaged and potentially excited in response to the titles. In the moment, I realized that the students needed some interactive piece to these book talks: STARS! I directed the students to draw one to five stars based on their interest for the title. This spur-of-the-moment thought worked exceptionally better than I expected, as the students enjoyed trying to draw stars, added twenty-two stars for some they were VERY excited about, and talked with their table-peers about which book interested them the most. Both the students and the teacher seemed excited about at least some of the titles which had them talking even as I was leaving the room!
I knew that the book talks were at least some success when several students came to the library to either check out or reserve the titles I had suggested. One student even came in with the handout to remind him of which one he wanted! Though a little intimidating and requiring a good bit of energy to hype the books up, this seems like a practice worthwhile for a few times over the year in my own library career.
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