Poetry Breakout Time

One of the activities in which literacy studies students participated during National Poetry Month was a poetry-themed breakout. Our breakout was a combination of materials from Second Nature Teaching from Teachers Pay Teachers, and items created specifically for DCG students.

Like our library orientation breakout (click the link to read about students' first literacy studies breakout), groups began with an introduction letter. This time, though, the letter was actually a group of limericks, in staying with the poetry theme! The first two limericks appear below:

Students had to locate poetry books on shelves, solve particular items in a poetry-themed crossword puzzle, use their grammar skills to earn codes, and evaluate the limericks for answers all to determine combinations to locks. A digital component accompanied the breakout as students had to scan QR codes and enter information in Google Forms.

Like other breakouts students have completed throughout the year, they often had to struggle, fail, and rethink their work to determine combinations. Collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity all played a part in students' efforts!

Trying Out Destiny Collections

Students in Literacy Studies recently had the opportunity to try out Destiny Collections, a relatively new feature in our library management system. You can read about Collections from their website:

Each grade level was working on projects that lended themselves easily to Collections work: sixth graders are preparing their Biographies in Action projects while seventh graders are collaborating with one another on their World Peace Day projects.

Students created Collections and added resources, edited their Collections, and shared them with their partners and teachers.

MySimpleShow Book Trailers

We're always looking for ways to promote reading and books, and a popular choice among students and teachers is book trailers. Late in the third quarter, both sixth and seventh graders created book trailers using a "new to us" platform--MySimpleShow.

We found several things very helpful about introducing students to MySimpleShow: 1) students could log in using their Google accounts; 2) students were directed on the site to write their "scripts" before concerning themselves with images; 3) a number of templates were available, including a template designed to talk about books; and 4) students could easily access a shareable link so their reading teachers could also view their trailers.

We began our work with viewing sample book trailers and thinking about how we might write about one of our favorite books. The template we used included slides featuring information about the characters, setting, and plot of a book, and students also had the option to include additional information should they like to do so.

Once students were finished, we made use of a digital gallery walk to share their work. (You can read about a  digital gallery walk from Matt Miller and Ditch That Textbook on this blog post.) Students' trailers were open and ready to play, and classmates viewed different examples, using sentence starters as response prompts, such as "I wanted to hear more about..." and "This book reminds me of..." and "I was interested in the plot when..." During class, students were able to look at 2-3 trailers and respond to the trailer creators.

Here are a couple examples of students' work:

Since You've Been Gone trailer

Cinder trailer

Announcing Our State Award Winners

It's always exciting to return from spring break knowing that we'll be voting for our Iowa state award winning books! To help more students be eligible for voting, read alouds were part of both sixth and seventh grade literacy studies classes this fall; students listened to either Save Me a Seat from the Iowa Children's Choice Award list or Projekt 1065 from the Iowa Teen Award list.

So...how did the two read alouds fare in the voting? Quite well, it turns out! In fact, eligible sixth grade voters selected Save Me a Seat as the winner in our building. You can see voting results below.

And what about Projekt 1065? In what must be some of the closest voting *ever* in our building, it lost by the narrowest of margins--just ONE vote! Our building winner was Making Bombs for Hitler.

Even with our building voting complete, we're eagerly awaiting the announcement of the state-winners early in April. We shall see if students across the state felt as we did about this year's titles.

It's Spring Book Fair Time!

Springtime conferences means it's time for our DCG Middle School Book Fair. Again this time, we're using Follett Book Fairs.

Students will have the opportunity to browse the book fair from their Literacy Studies class, and of course, we'd love to have students and their families stop during conferences on Tues. Mar. 12 and Thurs. Mar. 14, 3:00 - 8:00.

Like our Fall Book Fair, we will have a variety of selections related to books students themselves chose, including sports nonfiction, value books, Grades 7 - 9 award winners, and middle grade paperback award winners. 

If you'd like to shop but aren't sure you're able to stop by during the fair, please consider purchasing an online Follett Book Fair gift card you can print from home or access via email. 

The recipient can use the card use during the fair, and with an unused balance, the recipient can shop online. You can access the online gift cards CLICKING HERE.

Hope to see you at our Follett Book Fair!

Biographies & Databases Tic-Tac-Toe

With the newly genrified biography section (see earlier blog post), it was time to get students into the shelves. . . but for what purpose? Knowing that research and database work was part of the Literacy Studies class, why not combine the two? Thus, Biography/Database Tic-Tac-Toe was born!

Before students actually began work on their tic-tac-toe page, we spent class time talking about how biographies are shelved and how we've modified that with our biography categories. One class period was arranged around a sorting activity where students identified into what category a book should be placed and why.

Intentionally, I chose books about people who could easily fit into more than one of our new biography categories. Does Anne Frank belong in World War II/Holocaust? Authors? Perseverance? Famous Women? What about Sally Ride? Astronaut or American History? The most surprising revelation to come out of the activity was related to a biography of Louis Braille. Only 3 of the 18 student groups placed him in the Perseverance category where the book was shelved. Instead, groups overwhelmingly put him in the Scientists/Inventors groups. Since the point of genrifying the biographies was to make them more accessible to students, I made the switch. If students believe Braille is more recognized as an inventor, then the biography should be relocated.

Next, it was time to introduce the actual assignment. Students first took a look at what was expected of them:

As a check for understanding, students completed a 3-2-1 think-pair-share activity. After reading through the handout, they wrote 3 things: 

• 3 main ideas about the tic-tac-toe assignment,
• 2 kinds of things they’ll need to find about the person they’ll be using for this project,
• 1 question they have.

Next, it was time to explore the biography bookshelves and the databases themselves. This gave students some time to browse the new arrangement of the biography collection, in addition to some time in databases they may not have used previously. Classes broke into two groups, and students had directions to follow as they worked in both groups. 

Finally, it was time to work. Students recorded their work on a handout in Google Classroom, and over the course of several days visited a variety of databases, becoming familiar with its search results and how to find and use provided citations help.

As students finish their work later this month, we'll have a day where they share their learning with a classmate and reflect on their database work. More learning to come!

Celebrating Black History Month

February is Black History Month, so in an attempt to "up" the passive programming in the library, we're using QR codes in our new display. Many thanks to librarian Erin Londregan-Berens who posted an image of her own library display that inspired this one.

Each image features a different person along with the QR code that students and staff can scan to learn more about that person. Want to know more about Katherine Jackson? The QR code links to her biography on NASA's website. How about Kehinde Wiley? The code links directly to his website where you can learn more about his art and life.

Stop by and feel free to scan the QR codes--and maybe while you're in the library you'll want to check out a book about a famous African American!