Freedom to Read Stations

 The month of September I like to celebrate Banned Books Week. I feel like this year was more important that ever with the amount of book challenges we have seen in our state. Thankfully, we have a district that follows policy and has a committee decide instead of just pulling books. 

I wanted the students to understand what was going on with the book challenges. Most of the time, this encourages them to read. When they find out adults are trying to take books away, they want to read them. You would think adults would figure that out by now. 

Banned Books Week Stations 

I found stations on Twitter that @Mrs_Bongi had created. I took hers and changed them up to fit my students and time restraints. She had 6 stations, but since I only see the classes for 45 minutes, I knew I wouldn't be able to do all 6. 

Station 1

At station 1, students looked at the Pros and Cons of books being challenged. I explained that no matter the issue, and no matter our opinion, we should always have an open mind and hear the other side. You probably won't change your mind, but at least you looked at both sides. 

I copied an article from our Gale Opposing Viewpoints database in TexQuest. Students read the article, then formed their own opinions. 

Station 2 

For station 2 I created ten cards with book summaries. Eight of the books had been challenged, and two had not been challenged. The students' task was to decide which two had not been challenged. They were surprised to find out some of the books that had been challenged and the reasons. 

Station 3 

At station 3 students had a choice between two articles: Police protests two novels on summer reading list and Texas banned more books than any other state. 

After reading their choice of article, they were to write their reactions on post-it notes and stick to the poster. 

Banned Books Week Stations by Joni Harris

Our Banned Books Weeks display

FREADOM bulletin board outside the library. 

Back to School 2022

 How did this happen? I am starting my 24th year in education, 8th year as a librarian. I spent 16 years in an elementary classroom, then 4 years as an elementary librarian, and now I'm in my 4th year as a middle school librarian. I still think I have the BEST JOB in the world! 

First day of school 

August 8th we welcomed our students back on campus. The first day of school I usually only see the kids in the hallways. I spend passing periods helping the 6th graders and new students find their way in this new building that is twice the size, or more, of their elementary school. Most of the students are looking for a smiling face. 

Teachers are setting the procedures in the classroom, so students don't get to come check out the first day, which is fine. There is usually still lots to do to get ready. I spent the day finishing up the new library passes and creating book lists for students. 

I got the idea for the book lists and this display from Melissa Corey and LibrarianBookEnds on Twitter. If you don't follow them yet, you should! They have tons of ideas for school libraries. 

Check out the books 

On the second day of school, students were starting to come visit since the teachers now had their library passes. My goal the first week of school is to get books into the hands of as many students as possible. In order to do this, I make a video with library procedures and send to the classroom teachers. The teachers show the video in class, then come for a 20 minute check out. This allows me to book more than one class in a period. This week, I had over 500 students visit to check out books. This is a little over half of our student body, so I call this a SUCCESS! 

Another goal my first week with students is to train my student aides. In our middle schools, we do not have paraprofessionals to help us in our libraries, so we have student aides. These student aides help me check in the book, shelf the books, and make book displays. I have a great group this year, and I cannot wait to see what they come up with for book displays. 

Bulletin boards 

I have 2 bulletin boards outside the library in the main hallways. This year I got an idea from pinterest and took an idea from a recent TikTok trend. 

My Pinterest find was a cute welcome board that I think I will keep up all year. It has a word cloud of all the things you can find and do in the library. 

The second bulletin board was an idea from the recent TikTok trend "He's a 10 but... " I wasn't really keen on the idea of our students rating each other, so I changed it to be "They are a good friend but...". So far it has been a hit and students have even requested some of the books. 

How is your first week going? What success did you have this week?

School is Back in Session

This is a late post, as we have been in school for 3 weeks already. I recently was thrown a curveball, and found out that I will be moving up to the middle school that my elementary school feeds into. This was an unexpected opportunity, but an opportunity that I could not turn down. I will be here at the elementary school for 2 more weeks, then I move over to Austin Academy. I am very excited about this new journey.

Back to School Bulletin Boards

I love looking at ideas on Pinterest for bulletin boards at the beginning of the year! The kids love looking at the bulletin boards through the year as well. 

I really like this last year's favorite bulletin board. I found the idea on pinterest over the summer. I looked up the books with the most checkouts and holds from last year, and put them on the bulletin board. The bookmojis are from Buncee. 

The school theme for this year is "Super Learners are Super Leaders", so we did a superhero theme on our other bulletin board. I took grade level team pictures, then asked teachers their favorite books. Do you spot my Tieks? That was my aide's idea, she is brilliant! 

Library Orientation 

The first couple weeks, we focused on library procedures and taking care of our books. The older grade levels played a Kahoot game to review the procedures. They had a ton of fun with this game! 

The younger grades went over taking care of our library books and being responsible. After reading MR. WIGGLES BOOK by Paula M. Craig, the students drew pictures of themselves taking care of their library book. 

Happy Valentine's Day

What a fun week in the library! Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays. The library is very festive, with shiny hearts hanging from every corner. The students have had fun this week being a part of the decorating. The fifth graders were given the chance to write their favorite books or book series on my "We <3 Books" bulletin board. It has been interesting reading everyone's favorite. I was surprised that I didn't have many duplicates of books. I love that the students at my school are individuals and they know what they like to read.

I forgot to take a picture, but outside the library I have a large tree. I call it my tree of kindness, and the first graders have been adding their acts of kindness to the tree. We read BEAR GETS SICK by Karma Wilson. We made text-to-self connections and compared how the animals helped Bear to how people have helped us. They also learned the meaning of the word 'compassion'. 

These books about BEAR are some of my favorite picture books. 

My second graders listened to the story THE VALENTINES BEARS by Eve Bunting. They made text-to-text connections and noticed that the illustrator of this story, Jan Brett, is also an author of a book they had read in the past. This was actually not the lesson that I had intended, but I went with it when the students noticed and recognized her name. So, we talked about the illustrations and how they were similar to her illustrations in THE MITTEN. I love it when the students guide the lesson. 

Fourth grade and fifth grade are both learning steps to research and how to correctly cite their sources. I am over the top excited that next week I will be collaborating with the fourth grade ELA teacher! Fourth grade will be coming to the library next week to do research over Texas Battles, and together with the ELA teacher, I will be helping the students conduct their research. I hope that by doing this, more teachers will jump on board and allow me to collaborate with them more often. Stay tuned for my post next week to see how it goes!