Time flies (when you're trying to get all your library books back)!

One of the 11 tables full of books for the swap!

Well, we are winding down another year here at OCPS and all of a sudden time is flying by way too quickly!  I'm down to 32 missing books, which isn't too bad for over 400 K-2 students (although I am hoping that number will go down even more before the last day)! Other than working on getting all the books back, I'm also getting ready for our 2nd Annual Recycle Your Reading Book Swap! We did this for the first time last year and the students loved it! Students have been donating their "gently used" books, and on Friday every student will get to come to the library to pick a book to take home! It's always funny when they look at me and ask if they really get to keep it -- forever? :)  I guess they're so used to me reminding them to bring books back that it is strange when they get to take one from the library and keep it!

Something else that's been going on is that I decided to rearrange the entire fiction and biography sections! As graphic novels and popular series become the most sought after books, I thought I needed a way to make them easier for the students to find. (Also my 741 shelf was overflowing!) So, without ditching Dewey (completely) I arranged the books in more of "bookstore" fashion.  Even though checkout has ended for the year, I've already had some students make positive comments about this new arrangement! Yay! Can't wait to see if it works as well as I hope it will next year! Here are some pics of several of these shelves - better look now because they'll never be this full again! :)

  

Yesterday Miss Jessie from the Oconee Library visited our school and talked to each grade level about the great summer reading program at the library! They have some awesome activities scheduled! Visit their website for schedules and more info!

Ms.Jessie talking to a group of 1st graders

I just realized I never really posted any pictures of the students working with the poetry centers and activities. I'll include some below!

A student adding a poem to our "Poet-Tree"

One of the original poems from our "Poet-Tree"

Another original  :)

Kindergartners working on their "terse verse"

Some of the completed 1st grade "Bio-Poems"

A 2nd grader working on her "Best Part of Me" poem

Students using fun pens to write poems (notice the light-up eyeball pen - it's my personal favorite!)

Students creating magnetic poetry

I was right about this "Top-Secret Poetry" center being a favorite! The students especially loved looking for the poem that I wrote... "Roses are red, violets are blue, books are sweet and Ms.DeVine is too"! :)

Thanks for reading! ~D

State Winner Announced

OK, so we didn't pick the winner, but it was in our top 3!  When A Dragon Moves In by Jodi Moore, illustrated by Howard McWilliam, was announced this morning as the winner of the Georgia Picture Storybook Award  for 2013. The students at our school did enjoy this book very much, and I'm not surprised to see it win for the state, but I think our kids also picked a great one to win at our school! Unless they read this blog, our kiddos will have to wait until tomorrow to find out that "Dragon" won - we'll announce it on our morning news show.  Speaking of morning news show, we now post our morning announcements on School Tube each day. If you choose to take a gander, please keep in mind that our news team is made up of 2nd graders, and we have only very recently started using the equipment - in other words, be gentle with your critique! We're a work in progress! Thanks for reading! ~D

"Chicken Big" comes out on top!

The votes are counted and our students have picked a favorite... Chicken Big by Keith Graves was our winner at OCPS for the Georgia Children's Picture Storybook Award! 

1st Place - Chicken Big by Keith Graves

2nd Place - Art & Max by David Wiesner

3rd Place - When a Dragon Moves In by Jodi Moore

The state winner will be announced soon! 

Last week we had lots of fun playing our review game, which is structured like a "Battle of the Books" - teams answered questions about all the books we have read and did a great job remembering details from even the very first books we read back in September and October!

After the game, we voted by dropping beans into bags that had pictures of all the nominees on them. 

In line for the "voting booth" :)

Everyone gets one bean for one vote!

After voting, everyone got an "I Voted" bookmark to decorate (thanks to James Campbell at Lee Street Elementary).

Decorating bookmarks

Now all we have to do is wait for the University of Georgia to add up the votes from all over the state to see which book will be the state winner!

If you have not heard Chicken Big, you can view the story on School Tube (click here), or better yet, check it out at your nearest library! :)

Thanks for reading! ~D

Book Award Voting and Poetry fun begins

This week was a Georgia Book Award reading marathon as I got all the classes finished up with the books and got ready for voting next week. I'm going to use the same system that I used last year for voting - each student will vote by dropping a bean into a bag labeled with a picture of the book. I did this for the first time last year and really liked it, since it seemed to cut down on the number of students who would just vote for a book because their friend did - we do it sort of like a "secret ballot" - they go over one at a time and make their decision.

Here are the voting bags all ready to go

After they vote, they get an "I Voted" bookmark that they can decorate while other students finish voting.(Thanks again to James Campbell from Lee Street Elementary for the template! If you would like the template it is still on his website from last year. You'll have to print it out and either get rid of, or change, the year, however).

I am looking forward to seeing how the voting goes! Some years I have an idea of which book will be our winner, but this year I really have no clue! Exciting! I'll be sure to post our results!

Along with book award voting, I am putting out our Poetry centers next week. Most of these are the same as last year's centers since they were very well received by the kiddos! There will be...

Magnetic Poetry

Writing poems for our "Poet-Tree"

New center! Top Secret Poetry
Students use a UV light to read poems that are only visible when using the UV pens (the ones from the Scholastic book fair)

Inside the "top secret" box are envelopes with cards inside that each have a poem written with the UV pen. Students will only be able to see the poems when they shine the light on the card. I hope they have as much fun with this as I think they will!

We'll also have some rhyming puzzle pairs and a few free poetry iPad apps I found. (Stick Poetry, Verses Poetry, Word Magnets, Poetry Magnets, Word Mover, & ShelMovies)

Amid all of this, Poem In Your Pocket Day will also occur on Thursday, April 18!! I won't actually be at school that day, but I have made envelopes for each classroom to have that are full of little poems that the students can carry in their pockets! I really hate to miss it! Maybe I can enlist a fellow teacher to catch some poem sharing for me that day on her camera so that I can share some pictures on the blog!?

Thanks for reading! ~D

February....March....& SPRING BREAK!

Somehow the February Wrap-Up slipped between the cracks! Oops! Well, here it is.... along with March's wrap-up....


February:
Circulations: 2,670
Whole class visits: 69
Open checkout everyday
Assisted students/staff with material selection
Attended faculty, committee, and grade level meetings
Maintained and updated school and library websites, library blog and Facebook page
Attended Common Core Workshop for Northeast GA Media Specialists
Assisted with and judged Battle of the Books district competition
Began using new studio equipment for WOCPS morning news show
Continued Ga.Book Award Lessons
Began planning for upcoming Seuss Week & spring book fair

March:
Circulations: 1,195
Whole class visits: 52
Open checkout everyday
Assisted students/staff with material selection
Attended faculty, committee, and grade level meetings
Maintained and updated school and library websites, library blog and Facebook page
Attended Text Complexity workshop for county media specialists
Attended Ga Children's Literature Conference
Continued Ga Book Award lessons
Set up SchoolTube account for morning news show
Facilitated Seuss Week for the school & World Read Aloud Day
Spring Book Fair!

Upcoming:
Spring Break!
Ga Book Award Voting
Poetry lessons

Top 10 for February/March

(sorry it's so small...I'm having some technical difficulties with this post today - must be Spring Fever!)

These last couple of months have been BUSY! Whew! I could really use a break! Oh, yeah - IT"S SPRING BREAK!!!!! Hope everyone has a Happy Easter and safe travels! As for me, I'll be chillin' at home with my family, my furry friends, and some good books! Paradise! :)

Thanks for reading! ~D

Random pics from this afternoon...

Sweet students waiting for the bus

 And there they go..... have a great week everyone!

Spring Book Fair...check

Spring Book Fair 2013 is in the books! We had a great book fair, and I'm amazed at how quickly it seemed to fly by! I want to thank all of my awesome volunteers for helping make this another successful fundraiser for our library! Below are some pics of the 3 great moms that helped pull everything together - they even volunteered to don a lab coat and crazy goggles in our car rider line to advertise our "Story Laboratory" theme! Also pictured are the classes who won our "All for Books" class competition. The winners at each grade level were treated to doughnuts - you can see from the pics that they were a little bit excited about this! The class with the most links on their class chain for the entire school had doughnuts, and also won all the display posters! Now that book fair is over, we'll finish up with our Georgia Book Award lessons and voting, and then move on to our poetry celebration in April. Still lots to do before we wrap up this year! Stay tuned! :)

I love these ladies!

Reactions to finding out they won the doughnuts! :)

Kindergarten Doughnut Winners

1st Grade Doughnut Winners

2nd Grade Doughnut Winners

These students had a big hand in helping their class win!

School winners choosing their posters

Packed up and ready to go!

Spring Book Fair begins!

Last week our spring book fair was delivered and after much unpacking and organizing, it is set up and ready to go!

Our book fair came in a plain truck this time!  A  little disappointed! I love it when the Clifford truck pulls up to our school!

The delivered boxes taunting me from the hallway! So much work to do!

The beginning.... after some great dads came in and moved furniture, the moms swooped in to help set up and decorate

And here is a shot of it all set up! 

I originally thought I was going to make a board to display all the pencils, erasers, toys, etc. and then number them so the kids would just tell the cashier what number item they wanted - this proved to be just too much since we would have had to display close to 30 items on boards. Instead we arranged all of those items by price and displayed them on the shelves I usually have library center tubs on. 

  

We had our student preview today and everyone is excited for our shopping days the remainder of this week! Here are some random pictures of students enjoying the preview and making wish lists...

Class shopping begins tomorrow and we have a family event Thursday night! I'll post more pics later! Wish us luck! :)