Quick Friday Notes

First off, thank you for all the feedback from you Christmas movie "experts" out there. It's great to get a dialogue going. 

Maggie has been rehearsing for the "Home for the Holidays" show at Columbia College for the last several weeks. Shows started last night and we have five more through Sunday. It's fun and all, but really cutting into my movie time.

Couple of notes...

Listening devices
We have ordered a set of headphones to go with a laptop lab. Thank you, Angie! When those are in, I'll get them prepped and organized so using them will be as easy as possible. Also, I do have earbuds in the media center. I would prefer to give them out to 1:1 classrooms so they can be used for as long a period of time as possible. But if you are in a pinch, let me know. 

Bookroom materials
I got a huge influx of new book sets over my book fair holiday. I'm starting to get those catalogued and into circulation. 

AIMS Web on iPads
I have received word that students can do AIMS Web on the iPads. It was supposed to have been pushed automatically to all students but if it's not on there now, it can be downloaded from Self Service. They said it can be done on all large iPads. 

Have a great weekend! 

Early Holiday Special

I'm keeping this short and totally unrelated to school. Because you've earned it! In case you didn't know, I'm a fairly big fan of Christmas movies. And if you didn't know, you have to start watching early to get them all in before New Year's Day. So I'm sharing my two most important documents with you today...

Matt's Fairly Comprehensive List of Christmas Movies - a spreadsheet of movies with descriptions and a cocoa rating (1 cocoa = awful, 5 cocoas = spectacular). I'm still adding 2018 movies. Please tweet at me with your own assessments, but be prepared to be served with a "Matt was right, and I was wrong" button if your take is flawed or misguided. 

Matt's Christmas Bingo 2.0 - 8 unique cards to play with your family and friends. New improved from the 2016 version. 

Have an awesome Thanksgiving break!!

Book Fair Special!

I can't believe it's this time of year already! After a series of phone calls and emails, I spent this week trying to get caught up on my first book fair. So I wanted to make sure everyone is in the loop. Here are the known details in an exciting calendar format...

November 7-9 classes - Students will be viewing the riveting promo video and then checking out like normal. 

November 9th - Book fair arrives. I'll keep it closed up and "out of the way" until after school. No changes to the regular library routine. 

November 12th - Set up the book fair in the library. I'll have some helpers here to get everything in place during the day. No changes to regular library time.

November 12th after school - Come to the Teacher Preview Extravaganza! Look around and pick out books you would like for your Teacher Buckets! Woo hoo!

November 12-15 classes - Students will be filling out wishlists. We'll be keeping these wishlists organized and at school to help parents and grandparents shop for their kids. I realize there will be conferences before some kids have the opportunity to make a wishlist, but that's just how life goes sometimes.

November 13 - Book Fair open from 3:30 to 7:00

November 14 - Book Fair open from 3:30 to 5:00

November 15 - Book Fair open from 3:30 to 8:00

November 19 - I am looking at this day for any straggling students to come in and make purchases. I figure they've had a week for their parents to come to conferences and make purchases, so there shouldn't be a high demand. I'll give you details on how I want kids sent to the media center when I figure it out! 

November 20 - Grandparent's Day Sale. This should be fun. The book fair will be open starting at 12:30 for grandparents. I believe the programming starts at 1:40 so they'll have some time to shop. They can also come back in after the program. We'll have all wishlists here so they can grab the list and spend lots of money that otherwise would have been spend on Bingo. We'll stay open until 4:00.

In other news:

• The wonderful Kendra should be sending out a volunteer form via Parentlink tonight calling for help. 
• Because we're so awesome, everyone will be getting a $5 gift card to use.
• I'm doing the math now so I don't have specifics, but you will be getting some amount of credit to spend. If you were used to getting a huge payout at the old school, you might be disappointed. More mouths to feed this year!

I hope that's about as clear as can be. If you have awesome ideas to share, I'd be glad to hear them. But I can't promise that I'll use them this time around! 

Have a great weekend!

Spooktacular Updates

What a week! I know many of you were disappointed that there wasn't a post last week. But don't worry because I'm back and at nearly 95%! Here are your updates:

Halloween buttons and Writing contest
I think I've gotten to nearly every class this month to make Halloween buttons. First grade was holding out on me, but we'll take care of them on Monday! Don't worry, I just purchased another 1000 buttons. So we're good for awhile. You may have seen some student writing displayed in the library. These are submissions for the "Harris Burdick" writing contest for grades 3-5. Winners get a free book from Amazon! We'll do something similar for K-2 next month. 

3D printing bonanza
I got our new 3D printer fired up and working overtime to make some cool samples. This machine is available for anyone to use. We can make nearly anything using some design software. Letters, numbers, words, shapes, etc. A small print does take around 30-45 minutes, so it's not a good setup for each kid in a class printing something. But if you are interested, let me know so we can work something out. In the meantime, stop by to see some of our creations. 

DBRL Connections
There are several programs that are free from Daniel Boone Libraries that we can take advantage of. If you are interested in either or both, let me know.

• Library card drive - DBRL will come out to help sign up students for library cards. Cards are mailed to their homes
• Library field trips - these are free and open to any grade level. 

MACH Menu

A little later than advertised, but check out the link below for a list of really cool equipment we have available to use. How might we use these, you ask? Lots of ways! I have met with kindergarten to come up with a monthly plan for maker activities. I'd be happy to meet with you as well. There's always a way to integrate new ideas into your existing curriculum or we could do stand alone projects. I'm also weighing a few larger challenges to launch in the coming weeks. Here's the list of really great stuff we have to use.

Pineapple drought?

Although I know a lot of cool stuff is happening in your classrooms, it seems that most of you are too shy to add it to the board. Well, enough of that! It's the easiest way for teachers to learn from what you are doing. I will be pulling a pineapple card on Tuesday next week and the teacher who gets pulled will get a book from Amazon!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Finding Joy

I apologize in advance for this Dr. Phil moment...

I had a media specialist meeting (no, they don't call them library teacher guy meetings yet) on Tuesday. My coordinator mentioned that people seem more stressed than usual this early in the year. She pointed us to an article about finding moments of joy in your day. So I've been thinking of that point this week and have found it's not hard at all to find joyous moments throughout the day. There are so many awesome kids here, but it's hard not to let moments of stress and frustration dominate the "how was your day" answer. Here are some of my moments from this week. 

Kindergarten bookmarks

4th Grade Halloween buttons

He was so proud to write his name!

3rd Grade Halloween buttons

Reading club with Mrs. Kunkel's class

3rd Grade Halloween button

On your checkout day....
Please, please, please send your books down in the morning to be checked in. This serves two purposes for us. First, it makes checkout time much less hectic. Second, it ensures we get all the books checked in so we can cut down on the "Oh, I gave that to you earlier" debate that's so much fun to have. Students may bring books to renew at their checkout time, but only for renewal. Thank you!

MACH Integration Ideas
By next Friday, I will have created and shared a list of activities and materials that we have available to use with students. I'd love to talk with your teams about how to get things rolling with your class. Here's a look at some of the new equipment we have available to us. I recently purchased another 3D printer, 3Doodler pens, LEGO WeDo Robotics kits (for primary, yea!), Little Bits circuits, and two Little Bits R2D2 sets. 

Another call for books!
Boy, you'd think if you asked a bunch of teachers what books they would like purchased you'd get over run with responses. All I heard were crickets last week. So I'll try again. Email me titles that are popular with your students, ones you want to use for instruction, or sets of chapter books for book groups. I have my next list about ready to submit and my voucher money won't last forever! 

New Books!
Ray just arrived with boxes of books! Looking forward to digging through the boxes and sharing them with you and the students.

Have a great weekend!

Flowchart and Button Madness

Happy October! What a fun time of year. The classes seemed to enjoy The Widow's Broom in the library this week and we have more good ones to follow. The Halloween books are flying off the shelves! 

Book Requests
Send me any titles that you would like to see in the library. I always have a shopping list up on my computer to add requests from students. I'll probably submit this month's order in a couple of weeks. Now's not the time to be shy because I have money to spend! 

Bookroom Reminder
As more of you are accessing bookroom resources, I wanted to remind you about that process. Feel free to take any set from either room 343 (old) or 312 (new). Items in 312 with a green dot are in circulation so bring them to the media center for checkout. If you take a set from 343, please take all the copies and put them in a plastic bag (on the black cart). When finished, bring the bags to me in the media center so I can enter them into Destiny for circulation. Here's another copy of the wonderful flowchart if you happened to leave your last one on your fridge. 

Green Screen
The MACH now features a green screen (wall really) that can be used for student projects. We have access to an app that can be scoped to teacher or student devices. I'd be happy to assist with ideas on how you can use it or with the implementation. It's something that can be done Kindergarten through Fifth grade. Check out my cheezy example below:

Button Craze!
You may have seen some buttons floating around the school this week. I purchased a button maker to create awesome buttons for all kinds of things. We're using it as swag for 4th and 5th graders who read Mark Twain Award nominee books. I've been passing out "Hello, I'm Awesome" and "Hall Superstar" buttons to students I catch being great. I'd like to extend the button-making fun to your classrooms. Let's schedule a time to make their own creations! The button maker travels on the Purple Cart of Fun, so we can have students draw their own button and we can stamp them out in your room. I have templates made up so it's easy for students to create their designs. Contact me to schedule a time! 

Library Assistant Program
We launched our newest program this week. We have 70 (no, that's not a mistake) students in the program from 4th and 5th grade. Class captains create a schedule and we have 6 students come in each day from 3:00 to 3:15 to help straighten and shelve books. Maybe you've notice how empty our carts have been? All them! They've done a great job especially after news got out about a shelving test at the end of the month. 

Have a great weekend!

Dip Day Extravaganza

Dip day was a great way to end the week! Thanks to Kendra and Julie for putting that together. I hope everyone had a chance to sample both Kendra's buffalo chicken dip and the "Better than Kendra's buffalo chicken dip". We should do that more often. Here are some updates from the media center...

Team Planning
The data team meetings have completely thrown off my schedule after I was doing so well with getting to your meetings. I'd like to get back on track next week. You don't need to change anything you are doing when I'm there because sometimes it's just best for me to listen. I'd like to get more focused with our checkout read alouds and have books available to support your units of study. And I'm always up for sharing something new. Please let me know if your meeting times have changed from the beginning of the year. Thanks!

MACH
I am bummed that nobody took me up on the offer to make bookmarks with your class. And then Stephanie caved and made more copies. But I don't give up that easy! I have Abbey's class on Tuesday and would be happy to host anyone else if it fits your schedule. Let me know! I will be working on a menu of maker activities that I can do with your students. Look for that next week.

Library Assistants

Next week we're starting the new Library Assistant Program. These boys and girls applied for the position a few weeks ago and are ready to assist with shelving books, making displays, pulling books, helping our kindergarten friends, and straightening shelves. Here's a look at our classroom captains who are responsible for setting their class schedule and communicating shift assignments. Should be a good time!

Early Bird
We are moving on to fourth grade next week. I'm still weighing what this opportunity will look like for the lower grades. I'm leaning towards an incentive program. If you have suggestions, please let me know. Here's the upcoming Early Bird schedule:

• Geha - next week
• Kunkel - week of 10-8
• Wall - week of 10-15

Finally, if you happen to have an IEP or other meeting in the library conference room, please don't let attending students hang out unsupervised in the media center. I try to keep it locked up because of the iPads, equipment, and books (of course) that we use each day. Thanks!

Have a great weekend!