2016 November

Accomplishments

• All American Boys author talk event
• Parts of Speech with Ms. R's Class
• Organize equipment from RCSD Technology Grant
• Little Bits unit with Ms. R's class and Ms. H’s class
• Family Under the Bridge reading and lesson with Ms. R's class

We started this month with a wonderful author event with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Thirteen students attended the talk and five other students attended a luncheon with the authors and Rochester’s Deputy Harris. Students, staff and guests discussed community and racism.  

I also began utilizing the Little Bits kits that were provided by a RCSD grant. I provided a kit to the OT department. I also developed a lesson for the primary students to learn about the basics of electronics. 

Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely were our guest speakers

2016 October Theme: Poetry

Accomplishments

• Research unit with Ms. H's class
• Sign Language with Ms. H's class
• Poetry with Ms. R's Class
• New Halloween display for hallway
• Represented library during Open House

This month, I implemented research unit with Ms. H's class. This interactive, multi week lesson was integrated directly into the student’s social studies research project. Students focused on learning the research process from brainstorming to citations to final editing of the research paper.

So far, the lesson is going well. Students have been receptive to the information presented and our activities. More work needs to be done on actually getting students focused on researching beyond the basics. Finding a method that can keep students interested on one topic is also needed. I have one student who falls victim to the research rabbit hole (i.e. jumping from one topic to another).

2016 September

Accomplishments

• Processed donations from Mercy
• Weeded materials
• Read Friendship According to Humphrey with Ms. R's class
• PMP Meeting
• Developed Research lesson plan with Ms. H for middle school

This month consisted of wrapping up plans with Ms. H for her middle school research. Having the ability to embed myself into a classroom and be part of a research project from beginning to end is something that I have been looking forward to since I decided to become a librarian. 

Continued reading Humphrey books with Ms. R's class this month. These books are wonderful teaching tools for primary age students. They teach valuable lessons (friendship) and also focus on skills such as work ethic, self-efficacy and writing basics (including great nerdy rhymes). 

2016 August Theme: Summer Reading

Accomplishments

• Distribute books from storage to other campuses
• Weeding
• Olympic programming for four classes with Claudia Herman
• Read at Highland unit
• Began moving library resources to Discovery Ed

2016 July Theme: Summer Reading

Accomplishments

• Summer Olympics Summer Reading display
• Process donation from Parent Magazine
• Read James and Giant Peach with Ms. R’s class.
• Olympic faces project with Ms. R’s class
• Organize Title I paperwork for potential audit
• NYS research assistance for Ms. H
• Prepared title I documentation for potential Title I audit

2016 June Theme: Summer Reading

Accomplishments

• Organized small book order for superintendent with a focus on African American authors and stories.
• Initiated storytelling PD planning for teachers
• Hosted volunteers from Mr. Sterling and Ms. H's class
• PMP Paperwork
• Continued story time with Ms. R’s class
• Summer reading newsletter
• Organized summer reading information and logs
• Brighton Library Book Sale set up with students

June was a wrap up month. I spent time on paperwork and prepping for summer reading. 

Book donations from last month

2016 May Theme: Caring for Others

Accomplishments

• School wide book festival!
• Ellen Hopkins talk to select students
• Delivered ~300 books to the units
• Worked on parts of speech unit with Ms. R's Class
• Processed large donation from City of Rochester library

The Spring Book Festival was a success! In partnership with the St. John Fisher College Senor class of 2016, the Monroe County Library, the Library presented an afternoon celebration of reading. Students spent the afternoon learning about a variety of book genres; including graphic novels, urban fiction, poetry, historical fiction and non-fiction. Each student participated in an informational scavenger hunt where St. John Fish College students provided clues and answers. Over 50 students participated. Students also received free books courtesy of the Monroe County Library System. Local librarians, Shelley Matthews and Darlene Saunders, provided personalized readers advisory. They also distributed over 500 free books to students.

Ellen Hopkins came to speak to a select group of students. It was an interesting talk about the power of not giving up and the downside of drug addiction. After this talk, the superintendent expressed interest in having other, more diverse authors come to speak at our school. I have started the process of securing a local author to speak later this summer or early fall.

I worked with a local librarian to deliver about 300 books to the units. We went from unit to unit and removed old, titles then replaced them with newer books donated by the Monroe County Library.

I continued working with Ms. R's class. We focused on parts of speech. I read them a book on adjectives and verbs. We then used knowledge from those books to complete several hilarious Mad Libs. We also started reading James and The Giant Peach. 

Volunteers getting ready!

Scavenger hunt central

Superhero cape and balloons ready to go!

2016 April Theme: Getting Outside

Accomplishments

• Finalized book festival plans
• Processed new Title 1 and donated books
• Created display for Poetry month
• Poetry unit with Ms. R’s class

This month I really focused on finalizing book festival details. It’s coming soon! A few things I have prepared for the event: BINGO/Scavenger hunt game to reinforce literacy goals of the event, collect and organize prize books, order decorations, finalize directions for St. John Fisher volunteers, finalize schedule and logistics with the help of two wonderful teachers, invite administrators and marketing, coordinate with culinary to provide cookies and select books for 12 table displays.

The Title 1 books came in! I processed the books with Title 1 stickers & stamps and prepped their circulation cards. I also created a new display to highlight the new titles. 

In celebration of poetry month, I worked with Ms. R’s class discuss poetry creation. We read several poetry books including, A Light In The Attic, Poke In The Eye and If I Ruled The School. We then practiced brainstorming and playing with adjectives.

2016 March Theme: Woman’s History

Accomplishments

• Created Women’s History display
• Eric Carle story time and craft with Ms. R’s class
• Prevention and choices with Ms. R’s class
• Focused on administrative tasks

Unfortunately the book club, has fallen to the wayside due to scheduling conflicts. I hope to revive the group in the summer when scheduling may be a bit easier. Several students still are very interested.

This month, I focused on getting the library organized. With the book festival coming, a large donation and Title 1 books coming in, I needed to make sure the library was organized and behind-the-scene tasks were attended to. This included circulation, reporting, physically organizing books and weeding old books. 

I was able to create a new mini unit on prevention and choices with Ms. R’s class. I read them the book, Alexander’s Terrible, Horrible, No-good, Very Bad Day. I then presented the class with visual representations of each ‘terrible’ thing that happened to Alexander. We then worked together to identify if each thing was ‘preventable’ or ‘inevitable’. Of course the ensuing message is that ~90% of the events were preventable. We then had a discussion about prevention in their own lives.

Later in the month, we read several Eric Carle stories and utilized a kit to create our own Eric Carle style artwork. We presented the art to Ms. R.

2016 February Theme: Diversity

Accomplishments

• Created Black History Month display
• Held book club meeting in the library
• Read Anna, Banana to Ms. R’s class
• Coordinated and organized huge book donation from Monroe County Library
• Coordinated with units to attend Wes Moore talk through MCC and provided copies of The Other Wes Moore to clients.

Book Club! Finally! I was able to get a group of students together to start a book club. We held the meeting in the library. The students selected A.S. King’s Everybody Sees The Ants. It’s a wonderful book about bullying, dysfunctional families and relationships. Of course, being an A.S. King book, it has a touch of magic where the main character communicates with his POW grandfather through dreams. Together we read the first few pages and shared our thoughts on what might happen. 

This month I also managed a HUGE donation from the Monroe County Library. I brought in about 30 boxes of books. Our campus does not have enough space to manage these, so I contacted the other campuses and coordinated the delivery of about 12 boxes of books. It was quite the task. I took requests from campus representatives and attempted to match each campus with books that would be most read in each location. Yay, readers advisory practice! 

I also reached out to the units and encouraged them to attend a talk by Wes Moore. I ended up providing one of the units with a set of books, allowing clients to read his book prior to the talk. I heard that some of the clients got to speak with him directly. 

I also continued to work directly with Ms. R’s class. We read a trilogy by new author, Anica Rissi. These books are wonderful conversation starters. They discuss the difficulties of friendships and how to navigate life changes. http://www.anicarissi.com/books/

2016 January Theme: National Book Month with Historical focus

Accomplishments

• Wrote and published a book with Ms. R’s class
• Had a few students volunteer their time in the library
• Planned new AT Book Club
• Continued to plan Book Festival
• Created display for Black History Month

This month focused on library upkeep and maintenance. I worked with a student volunteer to label the spines of books for easy student access. I also worked to process new book donations into the collection.

From the suggestion of Ms. A., I organized a student book club. I identified about 10 students to participate. I have sent official invitations and coordinated snacks and teacher volunteers. We will be having our first meeting at the beginning of February. 

With Ms. R’s class we read If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and If You Give A Moose A Muffin. After reading these two books, we wrote our own story, If You Give A Hyena A Ham Sandwich. We worked on re-creating the structure of the book, analyzing the logic between the chains of events and illustrating our own story-line. The book has been published and distributed around the school. A copy resides in the library. 

I have also continued to work on the planning of the Book Festival. There is an opportunity to have Ellen Hopkins speak at school during the Book Festival week. This is a huge draw for many students who love her work. I will be planning and executing her visit with Jennifer Perry. 

2015 December Theme: Give-a-ways

 Accomplishments

• Distributed Book on every Bed books
• Distribute unit library books
• Acquire and process donations from Mercy High School
• Create spine labels for Bibliotherapy titles.
• Provide Monster to Focus unit for book club.
• Compiled student work for poetry book printing
• Created Title I order
• TCI update

December was a busy month. The Book on Every Bed program took many man hours. Although I am still waiting on more feedback on the program, I feel it went really well. I hope to do it next year.  What an exercise in readers advisory!!

Program details:

1. First, creating a pool of about 200 appropriate (no trigger-able topics) books in new condition.
2. Second, matching student reading levels and interests.
3. Third, labeling books and sorting for delivery.
4. Finally, delivering the books.

Aside from the book give-a-way, I focused on collection development. I worked with Ms. Armstrong to re-institute the Title I budget from last year. I also compiled a book order list and got a quote from Liftbridge Books. I am still waiting on final budget approval. 

I also compiled a wonderful set of student poetry for the libraries first student poetry publication. I distributed this book to all students to contributed material and various administrators. I was very proud of their work. The goals of this workshop were to expose students to a variety of classic poetry and also explore self-expression and inspiration. In addition, we focused on poetic structure and techniques.  We started by reading and analyzing Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. We discussed breaking traditional rules of writing. We then moved to the poem, Oranges by Gary Soto. With this poem we discussed similes and metaphors and utilizing imagery in the written format. Finally, we discussed The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. With this poem we discussed symbolism and structure. Students also played with fun poetry formats such as acrostic, concrete and book spine poetry.

 One of my student's work