It's Almost Book Fair Time!

After not having in-person book fairs last fall, we elementary and middle school librarians have gained permission to hold fairs in our buildings this month around conferences time. Students and adults already in the buildings will be able to browse--and purchase, if they'd like--books and other goodies from our Scholastic fairs.

Middle school students recently received a fair flyer in Literacy Studies class, and you can access an online version HERE.

Students will be able to shop the book fair during Literacy Studies classes, as well as before and after school. We can accept cash or debit/credit cards, and new this year, we are encouraging families to use Scholastic's eWallet accounts. Families can create eWallet accounts from the MS book fair webpage, and students can then shop the fair using electronically deposited funds. Any money remaining in eWallet accounts at the fair's end will not be refunded. Students received eWallet information along with their book fair fliers.

Like our fall fair, this one is also accessible online, where students and families can access thousands of books and other items. With just a $25 book purchase, items will ship free to your home. You can access the online book fair HERE.

Looking for some quick information and details about the book fair? Families received emails from our main office with an attached letter, and you can also access it HERE.

We're very excited to be able to bring an in-person book fair to students this spring! If you have any questions, please reach out to the school main office to be put in touch, or families are welcome to email me; please see the letter above for contact information. Happy reading!

7th Grade Podcast Work

With one year of podcast work under their belts (see previous podcast posts), seventh graders were ready to move ahead with some different podcast activities.

Photo by Jonathan Velasquez on Unsplash

At the end of their podcast work as sixth graders, students completed a reflection that provided some important information to consider moving forward with podcast work. Overwhelmingly, 84% of all students said they "liked" or "really liked" the podcast unit, and 93% wanted to do more with podcasts in school. The two areas that students said needed improvement were time and choice; in their written responses, students said they wanted to have more time to listen to podcasts in class, and they wanted to be able to choose the podcasts to listen to.

So, in planning and revising and creating a new seventh grade podcast unit, students got what they asked for: time and choice.

The updated lesson for seventh graders became a digital notebook activity with background graphic organizer work to help shape their review writing. Even before that work began, students used Jamboard to include notes about things they recalled about our podcast work from the previous year. Many, many thanks to our school AEA technology consultant Cathy Hines who developed the digital notebook and graphic organizer! 

Before setting to work individually, we took two class days to listen to a podcast together and work through a graphic organizer example. Students listened to the first episode of "Six Minutes," then as a group filled in the graphic organizer. 

“Six Minutes.” Gen-Z Media, 5 Feb. 2021, gzmshows.com/shows/listing/six-minutes/.

The items included relate directly to the Iowa speaking and listening standards, as well as the AASL Learner standards.

The students' graphic organizer work will transfer directly to their digital notebooks that include a cover or title page for their podcasts and a review page.

Addressing students' request for more time to listen to podcasts was only a matter of structuring the lessons over plenty of calendar days. The request for more choice, however, was a little more tricky. After many conversations with Cathy and with the students, they were able to refer to a recommendations list as well as use Google Podcasts.

Screenshot of some of the podcast recommendations for students

Over the course of several class days, then, students had the opportunity to choose a podcast based on their interests, listen to it, and complete the Slides work. While many chose to continue to listen to more episodes of "Six Minutes," others returned to "The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel," which reflected their interest in last year's podcast work. With access to the Google Podcast search engine, students were also able to listen to podcasts about hunting and fishing, football and hockey, and dogs and cheerleading!

Students' work isn't quite finished; they'll be sharing out their work and reflecting again on the revising of the podcast unit. Stay tuned for a future follow-up post!

Celebrating Black History Month

 February is Black History Month, and one of our library displays reflects several important events and people associated with that. 

Mike Rawls's website thebookwrangler.com has a fantastic resource for February's celebration of Black History Month, and I tailored it to reflect our own library collection here at the Middle School. Each day of the month highlights an event or person, and it also includes a related book for students to learn more or explore an interest. While many of the featured books are biographies and collected biographies, some stand-alone nonfiction titles are also part of the recommendations. See below for just a few of the people and events recognized:

And you can see the full month here:

Take a look if you're in the library, or stop by each day to see that day's specific person or event. Happy reading!

Book Share/Talk HyperDoc

 Literacy Studies students recently completed their work in a HyperDoc taken from cubeforteachers.com.

This book share/talk document encourages students to think beyond plot and summary and instead consider their own thinking as they read and connect their reading to broader topics. (You can grab the template HERE.) Students also create a hyperlink for the image associated with their book of choice. While they used the Unsplash add-on to insert copyright-free images in a recent Slides project, students this time used Pixabay Free Images add-on in the HyperDoc.

To encourage collaboration in the HyperDoc, all grade-level students on a given class day shared their work in a single document. Before we even began inserting book cover and Pixabay images, classes engaged in discussions about good digital citizenship when multiple users share a document. We even had the chance to see how seemingly innocent clicking around in a Google Doc can have an impact; once, all of the directions were inadvertently deleted, and in another class, a student accidentally deleted an entire column in the table. :) Everything a teachable moment and retrievable and fixable! :)

Students' work occurred over 3 days' time: one day to introduce the HyperDoc, install the Pixabay add-on, and begin filling in individual rows of boxes; one day to complete your individual row, including inserting the hyperlink and commenting on others' work; and, a final day to wrap-up anything not yet completed.

The students' choices of websites to hyperlink to their images was pleasantly surprising! While some chose to include links to official authors' websites and book trailers, other students searched for topics and themes related to their books. On students' final work day, many took advantage of the time to scroll the document and browse the related content. Below are screenshots taken from some of the HyperDocs:

Top 20 in 2020

Here in the first week of January 2021, it seemed like a good idea to look back on the most checked-out titles from 2020. The titles represent some of our most popular authors in the library, as well as many current and former state award nominees. You can see the full set of 20 books when you click on the link below:

CLICK HERE to access the presentation

Many popular authors--Alan Gratz and April Henry anyone?--and several Iowa state award nominees are on this year's list, alongside some older favorites like Big Nate and Mike Lupica. You might also have noticed that graphic novels made the list; they continue to be a popular choice for many readers! See any here that you've read yourself? Or maybe you want to try? You're welcome to stop by and check out a title or two--happy reading!

Resilience Literature

 Years ago author Laurie Halse Anderson spoke about MG/YA literature she called "resilience literature," and this seemed like a good time to share the idea with students. If there was ever a time for resiliency, now is the time! Seventh graders had class discussions about resilience lit based on a short Slides presentation we walked through together in class.

CLICK HERE to access the full presentation

While our conversations focused primarily on realistic fiction titles, students soon began offering titles that covered a wide range of genres. In a Google Form ticket-out quick assessment, students provided dozens of titles that we later looked at in a Google Sheet:

This collective knowledge then became a stepping-off point for students as they worked on a resilience literature triangle to show their understanding of the topic. Students worked on a Google Slide that included a book with examples of the bad things characters overcame to be resilient. Because students were including images with their explanations, this was a good time to remind them about Unsplash.com images (and its add-on) and clipart.com, both places where students can access copyright-free images.

With Covid-19 protocols in place, sharing our work with one another took on a slightly different look. Students revised their sharing settings, then provided the URL for their work in a Google Form. The spreadsheet of Form responses was something they could access from a link emailed to them, and from there, students could see one another's work. After some time, students participated in a 3-2-1 response activity based on what they'd seen from their classmates:

You can see examples of students' work below:

Genre Work

 Recently sixth graders have been talking about genre in their reading classes, so we picked up the mantle in Literacy Studies for a little "show what you know" activity in Google Slides.

After a class discussion about genre and books in those genres--along with examples of elements from the stories to support the genre--students began their work:

Because this was our first project of the year, we took class time to talk about copyrighted images and places where we can go to get copyright-free images, like Unsplash.com. We're able to use the Unsplash add-on in Slides, so this becomes an even easier way for us to include images in our work.

Students had class time to work on their Slides before sharing their work.

With Covid-19 protocols in place, sharing our work with one another took on a slightly different look. Students revised their sharing settings, then provided the URL for their work in a Google Form. The spreadsheet of Form responses was something they could access from a link emailed to them, and from there, students could see one another's work. After some time, students participated in a 3-2-1 response activity based on what they'd seen from their classmates:

You can also see some examples of students' work below: