You MUST read this post

When it comes to important stuff, this is right up there with a home robot vacuum. I'm going to skip right to it.

Columbia Fund for Academic Excellence
It's time for us to nominate Cardinal teachers for this great recognition. You should find a nomination form in your mailbox. Fill out the nomination form and return it to the ultra secret ballot box in the library behind the circulation desk. The deadline is Monday at 3:30. It's a short turnaround, I know, but we need time to gather recommendation letters to support our people. Once we have our nominations, I'll follow up with an email about the next steps. Let's represent!! 

Bookroom closeout sale!
All books in the old bookroom must be gone by spring break. What's that mean for you? Well, a couple of things. First, we need to get anything we want to move to the permanent bookroom in my hands. Many of you are following directions and bagging up "old" books you are using and bringing them to me for cataloging. Yeah! Keep it up! I'll get in there early next week and grab good-looking books as well. You can also take any books you want to your room. If you go that route, I don't want to see them again. Ever! They are officially your problem. Whichever you choose, have it done before you hit the beaches for spring break.

You may have noticed I've rearranged the books in the bookroom. Now that I'm closer to having everything cataloged, I think we can spread out to make it easier to find resources. The new arrangement should help those of you who are shorter than me. 

100 Cup Challenge
Thanks for your flexibility with the crazy week. I'm sorry I missed the first day of building but really enjoyed watching your students problem-solve to build their towers once I got back. Look for a February challenge soon. 

Teacher 100 Cup Challenge Monday! 
Get a team together and come compete in the 100 Cup Challenge on Monday. No more than 4 staff members per team. The winning team members will be able to pick out a free book from the book fair. And have bragging rights until the next challenge. 

Have a great weekend!

A Robot for your Classroom?

Take a second to check out the new bulletin board outside the media center. It only took me a few months to get to it. I just wanted to put up a reminder to students about all the great reads we have available through OverDrive. And so you teachers remember that there are books for big people too! Chad, I'm sure there are some great off-season fantasy football reads out there as well...


Teachers needed!
We are looking for some teachers to participate in a pilot experience that will be totally awesome. The goal is to structure a process where you can record lessons in your classroom to reflect on your teaching. So who is making the recording, you ask? A robot of course! After recording, you'll be able to upload your video to shared space where others can learn from you. Sounds great, eh? Let me know if you are interested.

Resources Reminder
We have lots of great stuff here. I've enjoyed watching the students (and teachers) partake in the "maker-infused checkout" recently. All of those materials and more are available to use with your classes. Here is a list of really great resources we have here at the Ridge. Let me know if you want to try something out or you don't know where to start. I'm pretty good at coming up with ideas. And if you aren't named "Mantle", you only have to ask me once! 

Up-cycling opportunity
I was cutting out some pictures the other day and realized I was about to throw out some perfectly good bookmark-sized scraps. If you find yourself in the same situation, send them to the media center. I'll have a container on the counter to house them.

#CREreads
I need help with our "Book a Day" board! A few of you email me your books which is awesome. Take a second to tweet out your read alouds to #CREreads so I can add them to the board. We get to tell our story, so let's get the word out there! 

Have a great weekend!
PS
To answer your question, yes, I spend as much time picking out memes as I do writing the entire body of my post. It's purposeful. This week I just want to see if Josh or Chad read it. 

Happy New Year!

I could get used to this 13 days off, 2 days on gig! Check out the notification I got late on Christmas Eve. It's nice to know that Santa keeps up with the latest technology. Maggie was impressed that he was able to get out in under a minute after leaving presents, eating cookies, drinking milk, and gathering the carrots she left for the reindeer. Impressive indeed! 

Here's a long list of short updates and announcements. Enjoy your well-deserved weekend off! 

Maker Try It Out Day
Next Friday the 11th will be the first annual "Maker Try It Out Day" in the media center. Come down any time you have a spare minute to play!  I will have a ton of really cool activities set out for you to try. Bring your iPad with you so you can record things you want to do with your students. Special thanks to Mrs. Villasana who spent no fewer than 6 hours over break "testing" OSMO pizza. SMH. 

Maker time during checkout
I'm going to be piloting some new activities next week during your checkout time. Students who have no overdue books or fines will be given the opportunity to make/code/experiment after they have checked out new books. Students who can't check out will stay at the tables and can still read borrowed books. It's a pilot, so I'd welcome any feedback or suggestions. 

eLearning Courses open
If you are someone who doesn't automatically delete my emails, you would have seen that there are free eLearning courses available through PD Express. The courses are all online through Schoology. It's a great way to get some new learning and to earn 32 hours of inservice credit. Let me know if you'd like suggestions on what courses might be right for you. 

Curiosity Fair
The Curiosity Fair is set up in room 304. I sent out the signup yesterday. Here's a link to the schedule in case you forgot what you signed up for: Curiosity Fair Schedule

Shoutout to 4th and 5th
I tallied up our current number of Mark Twain Award buttons earned and we are at 113. That means that not only have our 4th and 5th grade students read that many award books, 113 have passed a quiz about their reading through Schoology. That's a huge increase over last year! 

Have a great weekend!

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!