Pawnee School Library Annual Report: by Kathie Shepoka: 2014-2015

Focus on Fiction and Story Collection (short stories), sport books and graphic novels.

Students had a big influence on the books we ordered as they were asking for specific ones. My para has a great repoire with the students and they are constantly talking to her about special series and specific books.

 

When we had a taste test (like speed dating) with our students , she got special flowers to go on the table. We then let the students know they were only "tasting" the books in our book restaurant for a few minutes. After going to all six tables, they could then choose their special book to read.

 

Book Tasting!      

      

Circulation was up because students really got into telling our para which books they would like us to add to our collection. We had chats in class when I would walk around and see what they had chosen to read. 

When meeting with Gumdrop, my para would let me know IF we had the books or if they were NOT circulating like we had thought. When the new books did come in and we had a "NEW" book sign on the cart they were flying off the cart. The sixth grade permission slips brought many great readers coming to check out their favorite books.

 

Many special displays got the books moving as well as having the author, Aaron Reynolds come visit! Those books flew off the shelf all year and we couldn't keep up with supplying students with their favorite. (Our principal has a shelf with Reynolds books in the hallway, and the students would walk down and "borrow" books from the shelves!)

 

After Stacy gave us a report on low circulation of books, we made a shelf and the books flew.

For some fiction books, my para made a special sign and the students were hooked on those books also.

      

And with special incentives to LOVE the library: everyone got into contests!

 

Testing times in the library and lab left us running around to rooms with as many activities as we could carry. The book bags from the Omaha Public Library came in handy but were so heavy!! The sad thing about testing time is there is NO check out even though we ask the students to come into the library at another time (before and after school times are key) but only a handful would come in so our numbers were down from last year.Our check out percent change was -3.23% and our check in was -1.81 %. We were shocked that we only checked out 22.400 but did find at the end of the year many books that were never checked out but came back to us.  (One sixth grader's mom brought in many books which she said he had "lifted" so sad.)  We also found out that many teachers were frustrated with getting into TLC and would not check them out but just took them. We did let them know we would check the stack out if they would just leave it with a note and some did.

We are now trying to find out where to house some of the graphic novels so they will be in our eyesight! We are going through all of our eye catching ways to get more books to go out! This incentive will be one of our goals for next year to make Pawnee the library to beat with readers!!

Resources used are : Pebble Go, Culture Grams, all encyclopedias online, Kidspiration and Inspiration.

 

I also added these urls to our website for parents and students: http://bedtimemath.org

 and http:www2.readaloud.org/importance on the front page of the website.

 

I have many links on the websites for teachers, staff, community, students and all. They are under the main page under links . Some included are Student Friendly Standards at http://www.education.ne.gov/index.html (the student friendly standards)and active ebooks if they know our username and password for reading pleasure at home.

Add your 5 personal goals for you/your library this year.

Main goal was adding or sharing more information about the library:

Add new libguides for staff to use with students and students to use at home.  I did show these at technology meetings. 

For example: ABCmouse and sumdog.org and bedtimemath.org

Another: Add new sites to the Cubshare on First class for staff to share. (Later, I added information to Office 365 and shared there.)

Give talks on what is new in the technology world that could be added to staff's use. (i.e. Safari montage)

Help set up movies for teachers to share after giving them the url in Safari Montage. I sent those by way of emails.

 

One goal: Adding and buying Bookflix and Brainpop for staff to include in lesson plans which they asked for at a meeting.

 

One personal goal was to have students check out more books. I always tell them I will be here before and after school and many used that opportunity to get more books. The five book check out went well this year and the students were telling us which books they wanted either orally or by which books they checked out. It helps when I can be in the library at these times!

 

And an extra goal I had was to get the kids to work more in technology based lessons. (They are getting much better at that also).

Many classes used the databases and learned more information for each of their projects.

 

 

My five personal goals are showing how to get to specific

Getting more books into the hands of children. We had many books going to anyone who would read. We had special incentives such as:

Third graders: biography books on a cart:

 

 

Upper grades:

Blind dates with books:

     The students had a blast trying to figure out which book to check out for their "date" book!

 

Stacey L. helped us much when she did a report on which biographies were not going out. We put them in a display and they were being checked out.

She also helped when a report on fiction books that were not circulating. After my para got those and made a display that said :

" I have never been checked out. Please change that and read me!" the students loved that and started checking those books out so we knew which ones to weed.

(We did end up weeding over five boxes of books though! Most were outdated and in poor condition.

The 3 strategies you picked from the Academic Achievement Plan spiral bound book.

Think Alouds, Quick Writes and Summary Writing were used daily.

 I did many think alouds which help the students visualize what we are chatting about in each lesson. The lower grades did many quick writes and became very good at using Somebody, Wanted But Then So with all books that were read orally to them. They loved the Golden Sowers and made little booklets to go with each book while using SWBTS in words and pictures. We had two sixth grade teachers who read the 4-6 Golden Sowers to their classes and did summaries with those.

We are trying to get all 4-6 grade teachers on board with reading some of those so that their students can also vote in April.

We did many summary writings with all books that were used and the upper grades became excellent when writing their summaries of whichever tools(Inspiration outlines, Word documents, Kidspiration, etc.) they used in the lab.

The three goals picked from the

Objective learning goal written in student-friendly terms. 

Objective learning goal is clear and measurable.

All assignments are aligned with objectives and standards. 

 

Our goals are printed out and talked about at the beginning of each class. I use "kid-friendly" terms and each are allgned specifically with their objectives and standards. This action is showed in each lesson plan. Student Friendly Standards at http://www.education.ne.gov/index.html were used!

Check out our bulletin board in the hallway by the PIC! All the bootiful work that has been done by grades K-3 is shown on it.

Kindergarten has been working on all the animals related to fall: owls, spiders and bats! They can tell you many facts about these animals from their non-fiction books. Can they sing you the Non-fiction song??? Ask them!

 

First graders have been working on giving facts about spiders in a sentence. They also made little spiders out of boxes. They enjoyed doing their hands-on project after completing their fact.

 

Second graders have been working with the Thesaurus. They can tell you what a synonym is and give you some “ghost” words with another word to put in its place.

They also completed some games on synonyms. Ask them where they are located on the Media page. Did they say, “Go through the fire!” If so, they are on the right track!

 

Third graders have been studying genre. They can tell you that it is a French word that means “kind” or category. They can name some of the genres and even made a genre web!

 

Fourth graders can tell you what pemmican, travois and parfleche definitions are and probably draw one too! They are working on biographies of Native Americans.

 

Fifth graders are working on the difference between weather and climate and after research will be making a Venn diagram of the two.

 

Sixth graders are starting their project on the Aztec, Maya and Inca Indians. This project by Miss Badura will be completed in Keynote in the lab after their research is complete in ABCLOU!

 

November was writing month and we did very many activities that included fall and turkeys!

The Kindergarten class added the feathers on the right of the turkey and on the left while drawing different colored feathers from a template They then decided to add them at the bottom with some prompting!

First graders wrote about what they had learned when reading  What is Thanksgiving? 

Second graders wrote a paragraph on Thanksgiving and completed a 3-D turkey to use on their table at home.

       

Third graders had a sheet with many different topics to complete. One was: What will I do over break?

Maybe they will play with Fact and Opinion with Arthur like they did here:    

Fourth graders made a sequence of how to use the corn after talking about the uses of corn and the "Three Sisters". 

 

 

Fifth Graders finished up their Weather/Climate

         

 

Sixth Grade

(sometimes having three windows opened)

completed their Social studies on Maya,Inca and Aztec Indians by using ABCLOU notes in Word and Keynote Presentation which they then presented orally.

 

December brought many different areas of study for all classes and many different features were studied even though it was a short month.

     "K" students making a penguin from templates where they have to trace, cut and assemble. Then they use the dictionary to find words that tell what a penguin eats, does or lives! They did an awesome job!

January gave us studies of many "cold" adventures. "K" worked on Arctic animals. First grade worked on dictionary skills and Martin Luther King Jr. Second grade worked with many different reference books. Third grade started their typing skills and atlas work.

All classes K-3 began their Golden Sower Booklet of ten books with summaries (third grade completes this task online with their Word documents.)

(First two Golden Sowers!)

Fourth grade covered Literary Terms and discovered Powerpoint slides! Now they will begin defining them and adding a picture.

 

Fifth grade started their US state projects and citation work. They will work with the Inspiration organizer to organize their ABCLOU notes. Taking ABC notes using multiple sources.  

Sixth grade worked with citations while beginning their "Speed booking" (Like speed dating only with a book!) to learn about many different countries on their passports.  How many can they complete within a month? Good Luck to them! The really did a great job and know how to do a citation in record time!!

 

  Some of our completed January work!

 

Golden Sower booklets continue:

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

February found out working on Groundhog Day in K-3 with different activities!

                              

In January we had many different projects but students were in their classrooms in April  for testing so most of the crafts you see in the second photo were actually because we had to "make it fun" for "testing" students!

 

January working hard and showing it!

 

April: Many fun creative projects!

May gave us two librarians: One from Omaha Public Library and one from Bellevue Public Library. They shared the summer program with all the students. We were so grateful!!

 

Omaha Public Librarian from the South Branch.

 

Bellevue Public Librarian!

We had a great time at our library (except testing times) and the students learned much! We even played games the last few days (One called "Lingo" like Bingo was very popular and had many facts for the library. I would have liked to share more on this report but the computer kept freezing up and the desktop looked like a patchwork quilt. (I did let Stacy know earlier in the year that it was doing that most of the time.) Maybe I had too many pictures, right??