I love the start of a new school year.....I love getting books back into the hands of kids....and I love getting to share new tools and gadgets with students. The first few weeks of this school year have been filled with welcoming students back into the library.
For our younger students we have had so MUCH fun enjoying two separate books - "Miss Brooks Loves Books and I Don't!" by Barbara Bottner and "Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth" by Diane DeGroat. The first title mentioned is a humorous story that details how a school librarian loves books to a degree that the young girl in the story simply cannot understand. In fact, when Miss Brooks gets excited about National Book Week, the young girl cannot imagine being as excited about books as her hip librarian. All the books her classmates share during book week seem too silly, too kissy, or too pink! However, in an amusing twist, the young girl finds just the book for her and goes on to share it with her whole class. This book ends when the young girl realizes that everybody can find something funny, fantastic, or appalling in their library. The students were able to make lots of wonderful connections with the story as they practiced how to "turn and talk" to their neighbor just as they do during reader's workshop. We then followed this with a reading of Dogs Don't Brush Their Teeth in which students saw pictures of things dogs do in real life and things they don't do...the pictures were super silly and the students laughed at every page turn. Using both titles to get students to think about how we make connections when we read, we asked them to use this second reading to think about things students at FPG do and don't do in our library. It was quite amusing hearing feedback from the students and listening to their creative juices flow all while getting them to voice what they remember about the expectations of the library.
With the 3rd-5th grade classes, we have been busy introducing them and their classroom teachers to the new Destiny Quest online tool. While this online tool serves as the library catalog in which students can search for books, it is also a social network for kids to share and review books. The students are very excited about this new tool and they each have their own account which includes virtual book shelves, personal list functions, and the ability to check their library account online. Located on the library webpage, this tool can be used from anywhere there is internet access including at home! Users can view the top ten most popular books in the FPG library at any given time, view book lists published by the library staff, and check out the latest arrivals. Students are well on their way to adding books to their virtual shelves and submitting online book reviews that are displayed in our catalog! The follow-up lesson taking place over the next two weeks will be a collaborative lesson between the classroom teacher, the school counselor and myself in which we discuss how to utilize the "Friend" feature on this tool to share book recommendations and comment on another's post. This lesson will include a digital citizen component in which proper digital etiquette or "netiquette" will be explored.
All in all, the year has gotten off to a great start and it has been wonderful seeing and working with our FPG students and staff once again. I look forward to a great year of learning ahead!
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