Breakthrough

I think (I'm hoping) that I had a breakthrough with this oppositional defiant kid who has been given everyone so much trouble -- I just found out yesterday that he is very passionate about....SWIMMING! We talked for a while about it and his homeroom teacher said he was really excited. Yay. Now I'm hoping this will transfer to enough respect for me that he will actually respond every now and then in library. Plus, the kid doesn't seem to have any good connections with adults, so maybe this is a start. Then again, I probably shouldn't get my hopes up!

I have my first pre-planned observation with my principal on the day we get back from break. It was supposed to already happen, but then snow days threw everything off, so now I've had way more time than is necessary to get nervous about it, even though I know it will be fine! I'm having her observe kindergarten because they are the grade I most often just stare at in confusion...what do you do with kids who are that wiggly? Sometimes it baffles me. Anyway, we are starting an author study on Kevin Henkes. Any need-to-know ideas about K or about Kevin Henkes?

Dewey Intro with Third Graders

While trying to introduce the Dewey System to third grade, I tried a new analogy on a whim and it was a big success. All of it sudden it clicked for them and they got really excited. This was the first day we'd talked about it so we began by noticing that the books were in number order and a brief reminder about decimals.

Then I told them that we were going to pretend PHA was a dewey category. We said PHA was 100. If we wanted to find information on 3rd grade, we would look in 130 (because 3rd grade = 3). If we wanted to find Ms. Curran's class (3B), we would look for 132 (because C is the third letter of the alphabet). If we wanted to find information on Ossy, we would look for 132.15 because she is the fifteenth student in the class. It helped that all the students know "their numbers" (it's actually really a great system, they line up by number, number their papers which makes grading easy, etc.). Anyway, they got really excited and all wanted to figure out what their Dewey number would be or what their brother or sister's would be.

I tried it a second time today and had the same success. We ended by reading The Shelf Elf Helps Out and taking turns pointing out the sections.

Cutest Thing Ever

...and a very impressive performance! Kindergarten students performing Today Is Monday by Eric Carle.

Respect

I'm having some respect issues with the third and fourth graders - worse than last year. Yesterday, I found myself getting overly frustrated and losing my calm with them. I'm so sick of the back talk and the attitudes when I call them on something.

I know humour can help, but it's hard to let it roll off you when they are pushing your buttons. Our kids all say "Oh, Wow" (sarcastically) whenever they get in trouble so I'm going to try to respond with something that diffuses the tension (at least for me) rather than lecturing them.

How do you handle respect from your kids, particularly when you only have them once a week?

Category Labels for Elementary

So my new obsession is these little category labels with pictures (you can get them from Highsmith or Demco and probably other places - Demco has a better selection of them). I started with labeling my holiday books so that it'd be easier to pull them, but I'm finding it makes it the library so much more user friendly for the elementary kids (and some of the teachers) so I've now labeled poetry, biographies, sports, dinosaurs, and space and am gradually working my way through other highly requested areas. It's kind of relaxing to just sit and do it for an hour, and I am able to weed a little as I go along. I decided to do fiction as well so I can quickly pull a dinosaur or space fiction book. One thing to note is that you do need to buy label protectors or they fall right off and/or get scratched.

Some of the categories I am ordering labels for next:
Animals
Art
Dogs/Cats/Horses
Cars
Crafts
Cooking
Fall/Spring/Summer/Winter
Fairytales/Fables/Mythology
Health
Horror
Technology
Weather

Ethiopia Reads

I just found out about a really cool library-related charity: Ethiopia Reads. I posted more on my professional blog, but definitely check out their website.

Karin Librarian

Ha...check out this blog: http://karinlibrarian.wordpress.com/

I was searching for info on the book Extras by Scott Westerfeld and somehow came up with this blog! Anyway, the book was awesome. More on that to come. Oh, and there is a librarian named KarIn in Central New York also!

Teacher Tube

How cool is this! All education based videos - some for professional development and some for classroom use.

www.teachertube.com

I had no idea this existed until today, but I'm really excited about it.


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