Redefining school librarianship by day; playing outside in the afternoons and summers; singing, acting, and dancing at night. Proud lifelong Midwesterner. she/her linktr.ee/illinimccoy
Another inventory side benefit: as I physically touch every book we own, I’m getting so many new display inspirations for next year. My list is exploding!
Adventures in full school library inventory:
Today I scanned several books in the 000’s and 100’s that resulted in an error message saying “Based on the options selected, this item is outside of the current inventory”
But….it is a physical book in our nonfiction collection. 🤔 What gives?
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Today I weeded our Student Author section and sent the books home w/ their authors. Many Ss had asked for this and I love that we’ll be starting over next year.
We had 24 authors or author teams participate! I’m exploring a focus on storytelling next year to support this enthusiasm.
Bees: Week 2 with 1st grade!
We took notes on bee jobs while reading Honeybee by Fleming & Rohmann, then drew and labeled a bee doing its job in a hexagon (cut by our 5th grade helpers) to make a honeycomb display for the library windows.
Thanks again to @carolynvibbert.bsky.social !
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1st grade read Kaia and the Bees and talked a lot about our feelings regarding these fascinating insects. Then we used PebbleGo to learn some new facts and shared them on post-its. I especially loved one S’s ad in favor of bees! 😂
Thanks to @carolynvibbert.bsky.social for this idea!
Pondered and pondered how to label our new ER nonfiction books. I’m thinking our nonfiction section is eventually going to have a green theme, so I went with @kelseybogan ‘s great idea of using 1/2 circles to denote that these are a special collection within the NF section.
Aaaaaaaand we have our winners for the humor award! I read them off on our live morning announcements and heard the kids cheering from their classrooms. 💙
I’ve been doing some type of school-wide book award for 11 years and I’ve NEVER had such a variety of grade level winners!
With all votes now in, I’m tasking our 5th grade helpers with counting votes for our inaugural humor award. I printed a sheet like this for each title. Here goes nothing! 🤞🏻
2nd & 3rd graders are finishing sentences about the book they’re voting for in our school-wide humor award. This becomes their script for a voting video/poster on Seesaw.
YA’LL - the number of these recordings that start with “Hi, welcome to my channel…” 🤣🤣🤣
I’m strategically placing a few of our most popular sections in bins and tracking how this helps. My hope is to write a grant to purchase these for all of our nonfiction section. 🤞🏻
I am spending the morning excitedly prepping bins for our new early reader nonfiction collection!
I realized about halfway through that I should keep the labels lower to take full advantage of the clear bins.
Bins: www.amazon.com/dp/B08W75C9M...
I mentioned to Mr. McCoy that I couldn’t think of a good way to show the PTO what an impact the early chapter books they funded have had in our school library because they’re all checked out (a great problem to have).
He suggested pics of the empty bookshelves and they were a big hit!
We received our first box of titles from a grant written to create an early reader nonfiction section in our library. I am positively giddy with excitement as I prepare these for our readers! 🎉
Our Short Fiction section was moved from a tall skinny shelf in the far corner of the Everybody section. It is now the GATEWAY to our Fiction section (both literally and figuratively).
It’s also the subject of this week’s “Library Things to Know” video!
youtu.be/1m8ND3Cefxw?...
I’m moving our early chapter books closer to the fiction section. This is causing a domino effect where I’m shifting every single book in the fiction section. I told myself I would just do “a little weeding” as I completed this process. 🤣
I’m so proud of our 5th grade helpers and the way they have jumped into our “lower the nonfiction shelves” project! They clearly care about making our library accessible to our whole school community. 💜
Today’s work for our state org @ksschoollib , cross-referencing our map of KASL regions with the state map of school districts to create a list of districts included in our region. I’ll use this list to make sure EVERYONE knows about our upcoming regional workshop!
Our school-wide humor award kicked off this week! Ss expressed their excitement that we would “finally” focus on funny books. 😂
1: Our Books
2: 2/3 Scoresheet
3: 4/5 Scoresheet
The PTO asked me to brainstorm with them about ways to promote their upcoming Read-a-thon. They thought about taking and posting pics of staff members with books; I said “Let’s make it interactive and do a mystery reader display!” Oldie, but a goodie.
School libraries grow and change to serve their student population!
We are undertaking a big project - lowering our NF shelves so ALL Ss can reach their desired books.
Pic 1 - Unlowered vs. lowered
Pic 2 - This Kdg friend can’t reach the top shelf
Pic 3 - They can reach it all!
Our 5th grade job board is up and running! I wanted to give Ss a way to start tasks even if I am occupied when they come in. At the end of their time, I ask that they move their cards down to the Still Working or Completed spots so I can see the status of different tasks.
A librarian-in-training at our school started a staff book club! This is awesome for a few reasons:
1. This was not even close to the next plate I was going to try to spin; SO happy to have a future librarian willing to take it on.
2. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this book!
This year in kindergarten after reading/watching four titles starring the same Ezra Jack Keats character, we had a GREAT discussion as we decided how old Peter is in each book!
