New year!

Last year went off the rails, but I'm ready for a new school year!

Check out my latest blog post for the Association for Library Services to Children's School-Age Programs and Services Committee:

Sherry V. Neal writes: “As a school librarian member of the Association for Library Service to Children, I have a programming hiatus thanks to our summer break. I enjoy the break and time off to refresh and renew. As the new school year approaches, though, I am beginning to look ahead to programming for this year. I know that thinking about a year of programming can be daunting. So, for this blog, I thought I’d offer a few tips for my fellow librarians who are similarly in the planning stages for a year of programming.”... ALSC Blog, July 26

https://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2023/07/summers-over-now-what-tips-for-planning-for-a-year-of-library-programming/ 

Genre browsing & book speed dating

Over the past week-and-a-half, all of the sixth grade ELA teachers' classes and one of the seventh grade teachers' classes cycled through the library to find books for their book reports.  I love it when students visit for book reports, as it's a great opportunity to remind them that even assigned reading can be fun!

Sixth grade classes had super short visits, but I didn't want to miss an opportunity for a quick library lesson.  We started each visit with a quick review of our genre categories (and discussed how graphic novel is a format NOT a genre but still gets a special label in our space):

    

I recently got boxes upon boxes of new middle grades and YA fiction, so I laid out all of the new books by genre category.

Students spent 10 minutes browsing the new books (or the stacks, if they preferred).  After four days of four classes a day, many of our new titles were in students' hands!

When I confirmed our visits with the seventh grade teacher, he said "let's do a whole period!"  While I wanted to focus again on genre categories, the sixth grade activity wasn't suitable for a full period.  After browsing some lesson options, I settled on a book speed dating activity!  Check out this great free resource from TPT:  Speed Dating Score Sheet

When students arrived, I prepped them for the activity then assigned four students to each table.  When students arrived at the table, they found a score sheet and a book at each place, as well as a genre category sheet.  

Our ESOL teacher co-teaches this seventh grade class, and the majority of our ELL students speak Spanish, so each table also included a novel in Spanish as an option.  This book was in the middle of each table, and any student could review it while at the table.

I used a free classroom timer to manage the activity.  Students spent three minutes with the book at their seat, noting the title, author, and genre, giving the book a rating, and making any notes they wanted about the book.  After three minutes, each student passed their book to the person on their right.  After four rounds at a table, the students then shifted over a table for four more rounds.  

This activity allowed students to sample titles from most of our genres, as I made sure that each two tables included a sampling of at least eight of our nine categories.  At the conclusion of the speed dating rounds, students who had rated a book as one they wanted to read got to check out the book for their book projects.  Others hit the stacks to browse, hopefully with a better idea of an appealing genre.

Both activities were loads of fun, and I look forward to doing them with other classes in the future.

 

Manga Day

Middle School programming doesn't have to be high-tech to be fun!  Thanks to some great donors on DonorsChoose and our school Foundation, we amped up our manga collection this fall.  Students have been champing at the bit to read these high-demand titles while I was processing them and readying them for circulation.

So, it was time for MANGA DAY!

I invited students to visit the library during lunch to browse the new collection, learn about manga as an art style, taste Japanese and Korean snacks, and maybe try their hands at some origami.

Here's a sampling of the snacks students could try, thanks to our local H Mart and Kroger:

I got these adorable origami bookmark kits from Demco!  They were available in our makerspace throughout the event.  This activity was popular, so it will return as a stand-alone event in the future.

Students enjoyed watching Chie Kutsuwada share her manga drawing technique while eating their lunch in the library.

The real draw, though, was the manga collection!  To make sure that all students had an opportunity to review the books, students did not check out during the event but made lists of series/books that interested them.  After the event, I used the lists to make sure every student got at least one title to read.  

It was great to expand our collection and see the students' excitement about checking out manga.  I had to relocate manga to make room for the new books, and I have a full cart of books on hold awaiting student pick-up!

Check out my blog post for ALSC!

This year I am serving on the Association for Library Services to Children's School Aged Programs and Services Committee.  I'm excited to be a guest blogger for them and invite you to check out my post!

Roll the Dice

 

Supporting Libraries

Book challenges and bans are all over the news.  Are you looking for a way to support libraries and librarians?  Look no further!

The Get Ready. Stay Ready. toolkit is designed by librarians for the community!  Learn how you can stand up for intellectual freedom and the right to read.  Feel free to reach out if you have questions.

School's Back!

School has been back in session for a few weeks now - almost a month for students and five weeks for me!  It's been a time of adjusting to new:  new full-time schedule, new principal, new students!  As the year has started, I have been working on a few key projects that I thought I'd share here.

1. Student orientation - this is a perennial project, but this is the first year for me that students have returned to my current library space.  Last year, we were all returning from online learning due to COVID and kicking off operations in a brand new library building.  As a result, EVERYONE got full, welcome-to-our-library orientation.  This year's 7th and 8th graders, though, are ready for some differentiated learning!  As a result, while 6th grade orientation still focuses on the basics of our library, 7th and 8th graders will get a brief reminder of library basics and then jump into learning about smart, safe, legal use of images they download.

2. Mental health - the COVID pandemic ramped up the community's need for information on mental health resources.  Last year, my parent liaison and our school social worker and I got together to do a DonorsChoose grant for mental health books and student tools for managing anxiety.  This year, the books hit the shelf, and we're hoping to kick off a series of community meetings to discuss mental health issues.  I'm also working on an article on how librarians can support their community's mental health needs from the library, so stay tuned!  In the meantime, students are taking advantage of our new library section.

3. STEM collaboration - We have a new signature program this year, STEM.  I am excited about incorporating STEM into the library.  The STEM coordinator and I are working together to support our students as they begin work on their Science Fair projects, and I am thrilled to have an opportunity to really dig in to inquiry instruction with students.  We'll be using The Big 6 as our framework to talk about the inquiry process from start to finish.  We're also looking to get our makerspace fully up and running.

Stay tuned for more!  

Looking Back

I'm ba-ack!  This past semester has been a wild ride with completing my MLIS degree at the University of South Carolina, catching up on some travel with my family, and then dealing with a round of COVID infections in the family to cap off the school year.  I'm looking forward to a summer of travel and rest!

That said, I'm also thinking about how this school year as gone.  As I reflect back on the past school year, I think about what has worked, what hasn't worked, what I want to change or do better going forward.  I thought I'd share one of my favorite things that worked:  highlighting quick reads!

Like many libraries, my middle school library collection includes "hi-lo" books - books that are written on high interest topics for readers of a certain age but with lower reading comprehension requirements.  For my students, this means the books cover topics of interest to tweens and early teens in a pretty compact format with less complex vocabulary and syntax.  Not surprisingly, students aren't really drawn in by the "hi-lo" label, and I found that most of the hi-lo titles in my collection had circulated ... well ... never!

Which is a disservice because hi-lo does not equal low quality or boring.  My solution: rebranding!  Hi-lo books may not get any love, but "quick reads" definitely do.

Back in December when students were getting close to finals, I pulled all hi-lo books from the stacks and created a special display cart.  Fiction in our library is genre-labeled, so each genre got its own bin.  While it's not pictured here, I later added a bin for nonfiction quick read titles, as well.

I am looking forward to running the circulation numbers again when I complete inventory, but based on my observations of students in action, this display has been a huge success.  The cart attracts English language learners looking for a book that isn't "baby-ish" but also isn't too difficult to understand, developing readers who are working on fluency and vocabulary acquisition, and on-level or advanced readers just looking for something quick to read when they finish classwork.  

Just the other day, two students came in to work collaboratively on a book project that was due the next day.  One of the students had forgotten about the project and needed a book they could ready quickly to complete the project.  The other student - an avid library user - was along to offer support with finding a book.  When the students asked for a book that would allow quick completion of the project, I directed them to the quick reads cart as just the thing they were looking for.  The students selected an action & adventure title, sat down and read the book together, then brainstormed book project ideas that could be completed quickly.  I loved watching them in action!

Looking to grow your hi-low circulation?  Give this concept a try!