Walking with the Washingtons

 

As a  lifelong learner, I think it is important for educators to continually challenge themselves by seeking out new (and unique) learning  opportunities.

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I have just returned from a wonderful week at Mount Vernon, where I was accepted into their fabulous George Washington Teachers Institute Summer Residential Program.  In addition to being treated like guests of Mr. and Lady Washington, we participated in an exceptional week of multimodal education.

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Each day had a theme:

  • Welcome to the History of the Washingtons
  • George Washington’s Early Years
  • Washington and the American Revolution
  • Washington and the Exemplary Farm
  • Setting Forth a Nation:  The Constitution and Presidency
  • Washington’s Legacy

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and the agenda was packed full of hands-on activities, lectures from early American history experts, field trips,private tours, and living historical interpretations. We were immersed in the colonial time perioFB_20150914_08_33_31_Saved_Pictured, and it was completely A-W-E-S-O-M-E (can you tell I am excited?). I mean, how cool is it to have full access to  the grounds of Mount Vernon, and sit on the mansion’s piazza with amazing educators watching the sunrise (or the moon rise) over the Potomac, speculating what the Washingtons thought about as they enjoyed the natural beauty?

 

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I attended week 3, and dedicated educators from Arkansas, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Ohio were the invited guests.  Each of our trips was paid for by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Regent from that state, and we stayed in the ladies’ quarters. One requirement of participation was that we must present the program to other educators, which I plan to do at my MCPS School Library Media Program professional day on August 19, 2015, and again at the Maryland Association of School Librarians annual conference on October 16, 2015.

WP_20150731_19_42_14_ProWhether you apply to this summer program, or one of the many others around the United States, I highly recommend taking advantage of your extended break by participating in a summer residential program!

 

 

To view pictures from the week, click here.

To view resources and my MASL presentation, click here.

Guest Post: On Digital Citizenship

Guest Post: On Digital Citizenship

This post appeared on The Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet on July 31, 2015.

Our 21st Century libraries are the perfect place to explore, and what better way to practice digital citizenship than by connecting with others around the world!

Common Sense Media’s vast website is chock-full of resources related to kids, tweens, teens, parents, and media. Their Digital Literacy and Citizenship educational resources and curriculum are well written, aligned with the Common Core State Standards, and they are kid, tween, and teen friendly.  Their Power of Words, Pause and Think Online are great videos to share with elementary school students, and Oversharing: Think Before You Post is perfect for tweens and teens.

One way to incorporate the Digital Citizenship curriculum and to honor the Digital Citizenship pledge is to connect with other schools via Google Hangout or Skype, and practice what they have learned in a fun way.   By celebrating various literature-inspired holidays with other schools within your district, the United States, or worldwide, elementary students can  hone their 21st Century communication skills.

In September, we celebrate courage, creativity, and collaboration with International Dot Day, We read books about art and taking risks, and share dot-inspired art with other schools.

In October, we celebrate Read for the Record and collaborate with other schools to share the book of the year.  Also in October is Digital Citizenship Week – the perfect time to teach this topic, and practice new skills like communicating kindly with someone else online.

In March we celebrate  World Read Aloud Day where my students connect with other classrooms around the United States to share information about each other’s state and read aloud to one another. Mo Willem’s Elephant and Piggie books are perfect books for Gerald, and the other, Piggie, Older students can the younger grades – one school can read the part of read two-part poems such as Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman  or read a Readers’ Theater version of a book, such as Judy Schachner’s  Skippyjon Jones- Lost in Spice, dividing the parts between the two schools.

Another favorite holiday I celebrate with my students Poem in Your Pocket Day.  This year, after reading a few examples of list poems, we collaboratively created list poems, using Google Hangout, and typing together on Google Drive as our students created and dictated the lines of the poems.

As students go farther and farther into their exploration of cyberspace, powerful digital citizenship lessons such as these will serve them well.

My collection of Digital Citizenship resources can be found here, or check out Julie’s blog!

Melissa McDonald is the School Library Media Specialist at Flower Hill Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and is the author of the blog, The Creative Librarian – Adventures in School Librarianship.

 

Oh, the Places You’ll Go this Summer!

Oh the places you'll go

I would like to thank my students, their parents, and the entire Flower Hill staff for a fabulous first year at Flower Hill Elementary School! We’ve learned a lot, had many adventures and had fun, too, and I am looking forward to another great year beginning in (late) August!

I came across an interesting article in the Washington Post, written by Deb Werrlein, an adjunct professor of English, and include an excerpt here, and link to the full article.  In it she says, “A few weeks ago, my son and I finished reading Stephen King’s “11/22/63: A Novel.” The unusual part is the fact my son will be 18 years old in less than a month. I also read with his sister, who is 14. I didn’t plan to read aloud with my kids for this long. It just happened. As a former adjunct English professor who tutors students with dyslexia, I am an ardent lover of literature. Our home is packed with magazines and novels for all interests and ages. But these days, having a parent who loves and promotes books is not always enough. Reading competes with busy sports schedules, homework, and the ever powerful screens that dominate our kids’ lives. My kids have trouble saying no to the incessant flow of Netflix entertainment that draws them away from books. While they love a good story, they are not bookworms the way I was as a kid. Consequently, I discovered early that reading together encouraged an activity that my kids may have skipped altogether. It’s well known that reading aloud benefits infants, toddlers and emerging readers. Aside from introducing children to a love of literature and storytelling, reading exposes them to written language, which differs from the spoken word. Writing contains more description and typically adheres to more formal grammatical structures than speech. When you choose books that exceed your child’s independent reading level, you promote language acquisition, increase vocabulary, and improve comprehension. These benefits foster literacy in young people, but the pluses don’t diminish just because the kids grow up. When we finally turned the last page, I was sad for the end of an era. My son will graduate this June and leave for college in August. But I’m so grateful for the stacks of books and memories we’ve made over the years. From “Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?” to the Magic Treehouse series, to classics like “Huckleberry Finn,” to fantasy series like Harry Potter, to dramas like “Ordinary People,” and of course, to Stephen King, we’ve shared a lot. Many parents already understand it’s never too early to start reading with their kids.—and it can never go on too long. Reading aloud isn’t only about teaching literacy, it’s about sharing stories, and we can do that at any age. So if you’ve already got a good reading ritual going, don’t stop. And if not, consider plowing through some of that summer reading list out loud. You never know what you might discover together.”

I encourage everyone to read this summer, and for inspiration, provide links to several book lists below:

For more family reading-together ideas, be sure to check out Matthew Winner’s “Let’s Get Busy” podcast!

Wishing you many fun summer adventures through books!

Melissa

Pocket Poems & Journeys

Every month there are celebrations both large and small in the Flower Hill media center. We celebrate learning, connecting, collaborating, creating – and reading!

April is not only School Library Month:

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…but also National Poetry Month, and April 30th was Poem in Your Pocket Day.   poem in your pocket day

If you visited our school during the month of April you would have noticed our large bulletin board inviting all to pick a poem or two from the pockets, and share them with others.   Throughout the month (and into May) we have been exploring different types of poems – Haiku, List, and Book Spine Poetry, to name a few. Book spine poetry is a bit eclectic, and it’s created and read by stacking books so that the title of each book is one of the lines in the poem. Below are a few examples of book spine poetry that my fourth grade students created:WP_20150414_14_12_47_Pro[1]

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We read Guyku (haiku poetry for boys) by Bob Raczka and Peter H. Reynolds and my 4th grade students created some fantastic Guyku and Galku (haiku for girls) –

Diego Guyku

Ryan Guyku

Samanthagalku

During the week of April 27th – May 1st, many of my classes connected with students in other states via Google Hangout. We collaborated together to create some wonderful list poems with our new friends in New York and South Carolina.  We read a few selections from Falling Down the Page –  A Book List Poems, edited by Georgia Heard. and then, using Google Docs in real time, we created poems together, alternating lines, and color coding the poem to help!  If you’d like to read some of them, please click here.                               

The month of May was filled with industrious students finishing book trailer videos, researching and creating online newsletters, learning about effort and persistence, taking care of the earth, and much, much more!

I will be preparing my 2015-16 library book order soon, and have asked all the students to give me input. I have several book catalogs available for them to peruse, and they can add their suggestions to the wish list.

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The Black-Eyed Susan Book awardees were announced on Saturday, May 2nd. I attended the event, and knew my students would be thrilled to find that The Day the Crayons Quit (educator guide), and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library (website) were this year’s KidLit winners!  All three have been very popular titles in our Flower Hill ES library, and rarely stay on the shelves – if they make it back on them at all!  WP_20150504_07_37_53_Pro[1]

On June 16th, I was thrilled to be a guest reader in the Story Time Tent at the 6th annual Gaithersburg Book Festival.  I read two great books by Patrick McDonnell – Wag! and The Monsters’ Monster. WP_20150516_10_38_52_Pro[1] Both have wonderful messages of friendship, kindness, and love, and both have downloadable activities from the publisher’s website.  I also volunteered in the Edgar Allan Poe Pavilion, and there was able to listen to many authors of adult literature.  At one point during the day when I wasn’t volunteering, I had the opportunity to listen to Michelle Knudsen and Matt Phelan discuss Marilyn’s Monster, a delightful book about a little girl who has been found by her monster yet, so she decides to go out and decides to go out in search for him herself, and the adventure that ensues.  (Michelle reads her book to us)

 (Matt gives writing tips)

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Another book I like to finish my year out with is The North Star  by Peter H. Reynolds – a quiet book about a little boy who learns to follow his guiding star.  I love sharing this book with my 4th and 5th graders and getting them to think about their own strengths and following their own paths to greatness.

WP_20150512_19_29_41_Pro[1]Reading is my super power, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to share my love of books and learning with my students.  I have spent many enjoyable hours this weekend listening to The Busy Librarian’s podcasts, and have been so thrilled to learn more about authors and illustrators (and everyone in between) and their amazing books and hope that I’ll be able to stretch my media center budget to include the purchase of all of the books I have heard about on the Let’s Get Busy Podcast.  If you haven’t discovered Matthew Winner’s fantastic website or podcast series, you need to do so quickly by clicking here!

Steadily We March Along

We’ve been very busy learning in the library!

In early January, members of my 4th grade Technology Rocks Information Literacy group were treated to a video chat via Google Hangout with author Chris Grabenstein – author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library – we had a wonderful visit with him, and am so very thankful of his patience and flexibility while I frantically tried to fix our technology issues – we could see and hear him on our Promethean board, but he could neither hear or see us!  In his typical good-natured way, he offered his phone number so that we could speak to him via cell phone.Flower Hill ES 044WP_20150107_15_49_41_Pro

Just for fun, we celebrated Rubber Duck Day on January 13th and learned about the meaning of friendship.

Students learned about Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. and importance of the Civil Rights movement.   Dr. King once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”  In honor of Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. National Day of Service, Flower Hill students decorated 288 Valentine’s Day cards that were to be distributed to wounded soldiers at Walter Reid Hospital by WP_20150203_17_03_11_Provolunteers of Operation Second Chance. GWGVFD

My students also created four thank you posters that I delivered to the Gaithersburg-Washington Grove Volunteer Fire Department.   The firefighter second from the left, Charles Fowler, was especially pleased

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Dr. King is well known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, and I posed the question to staff and students …. “What is your dream for the future?” on an interactive bulletin board.  Some of their sweet and thoughtful dreams are here:

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In February, in addition to our regular lessons and work on inquiry projects, students also learned about many black history makers in celebration of Black History Month.  Every morning during the announcements, we spotlighted an important person, and students were encouraged to come down to the library to learn more about them by checking

WP_20150131_15_01_09_Pro out a book, researching on our databases, or completing one of the activities at our library learning center.  I have also had a display of books by Jacqueline Woodson, and students have been reading many of her thought-provoking books.

March promises to be another exciting month in the library.  Lots of learning, research, and creativity – including a week-long celebration of World Read Aloud Day where my students will be connecting with other classrooms around the United States to share information about each other’s state and read aloud to one another.  For more information about World Read Aloud Day, please visit www.litworld.org/wrad.    My students and I are looking forward to connecting with schools in Vermont, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas!

Dr. Seuss’ birthday is March 2, and his birthday is celebrated with Read Across America Day, sponsored by the National Education Association (NEA).  Maryland offers Read Across Maryland, and students are encouraged to take the Radical Reader’s Pledge to read 30 minutes each day for 30 days.  For information about Read Across Maryland, please visit the website here: http://www.readacrossmaryland.org/read-30-30/.

…and let’s not forget Pi(e) Day on March 14 – who says you can’t have fun with math in the library?!

Celebrating in the Library – December Edition

Here in the Flower Hill Media Center, my students enjoy celebrating in BIG and small ways!

We began December by decorating my “Reading is Snow Much Fun” bulletin board with handmade snowflakes.

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National Cookie Day – December 4th:

Although I didn’t have actual cookies for the students to eat (I did for the staff, however!), I did have a poster for them to sign with their favorite cookie flavor noted, as well as a variety of cookie recipes for them to try at home with their parents.

Dewey Decimal System Day – December 10th:

WP_20141208_15_09_58_ProDiane Creel, my predecessor here at Flower Hill, had left me her Melvil Dewey puppet, so I set up a learning center with him as the centerpiece so that I could remind my students how and why the Dewey Decimal Classification System was created.  I finished up the mini-lesson with  Melvil Dewey, the International Library Hip Hop Superstar’s Dewey Decimal Rap – a student favorite!

Celebrating the Hour of Code was the highlight of the month – my students absolutely loved learning the basics of computer programming during the week of December 15-19.  Kindergarten through grade 2 students worked together at the Promethean board; students in grade 4 worked individually in the computer lab, and students in grades 3 and 5 used their Chromebooks. Looking at these pictures you can see how engaged they all were – and how willing they were to help each other when someone got stuck.  My plan is to go “Beyond One Hour”  and continue with an in-school (and after-school, depending on popularity!) programming club to encourage my students to continue learning about programming – and perhaps inspire them to pursue a career in computer science!   Wouldn’t that be awesome?!

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Happy New Year!   I will end this post with a quote from Albert Einstein, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

Celebrating in the Library – November Edition

Happy holidays!  The winter months are full of many different holidays – Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, to name a few.  Did you know that December 4th was National Cookie Day?  Or that December 10th was Dewey Decimal System Day?   My students do!  We celebrate lots of things here in the library.

In November, we not only celebrated Veterans Day, a very important holiday in honor of our armed service members, but also Picture Book Month, World Kindness Day, International Games Day, and Thanksgiving.   Throughout the month, in addition to reading a variety of them in media lessons, all students were encouraged to check out both non-fiction and fiction picture books in honor of the celebration. Students also added their favorite picture book titles to my interactive bulletin board.picture book month If you would like to read more, please visit Picture Book Month.

International Games Day, sponsored by the American Library Association, celebrated its 7th year of gaming in libraries.  I registered for the event early, and was able to request donated games from a variety of the ALA partners — my students and I were thrilled to receive all of these games just in time for our gaming week celebration!

WP_20141111_002Flower Hill ES media center, along with over 2000 libraries around the world, enjoyed games of all sorts.   Playing games with others is not only enjoyable, but also helps builds community, strengthen critical thinking skills, and teaches sharing, collaboration, and good sportsmanship.  The picture below is of the interactive bulletin board I created, asking the students to sign their names under the pictures of the games they most like to play (Minecraft was the clear winner!)

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During media time, we incorporated the playing of many games into our lessons – board games, building games, online games (click to visit my Brainteasers & Logic Games website) –  even simple Tic-Tac-Toe on a piece of recycled poster paper was a favorite!  Click for  and website, which includes lots of great information in support of gaming for education.

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For World Kindness Day, I asked my students to do something kind for someone else … and left blank note cards for them to complete and deliver to friends, family, and staff members.  Hopefully, there were many recipients of one of these notes!  More information and resources about teaching kindness can be found in my Choose Kindness Scoop.it.

thankful bulletin boardLastly, in celebration of Thanksgiving, I asked staff and students to share what they are thankful for on my bulletin board. I created  Tagxedo word cloud poster with lots of words related to being thankful.   Many students were thankful for their friends, family, their teachers, and Minecraft!  Staff were thankful for their own families, their students, and for working here at Flower Hill Elementary School!

thanksgiving tagxedo

Our media center was the recipient of a $500.00 grant from the wonderful literacy organization FirstBook, and our students received a book for their home libraries in time for winter break.  FirstBook also donated approximately 150 books to our school library, including books from kid author favorites Mo Willems and Rick Riordan. WP_20141106_006 WP_20141106_14_39_39_Pro

Thank you FirstBook for your outstanding work to give all children – especially those in financial need – access to books! To support the organization,and to say thank you for supporting our students here at Flower Hill ES, my daughter and I participated in  FirstBook – Montgomery County Run to Read on November 8th. WP_20141108_002  For more information about FirstBook, please visit their website.

Thanks for reading, a watch for my next post very soon!

Level up! Fighting the Zombie Librarian Apocalypse

In October, Maryland Association of School Librarians (MASL) held its annual conference.  As I always do, I left energized and full of new ideas to bring to my school library.  Although I am far from the level of school librarians like Matthew Winner and Jennifer LaGarde, I strive to be a mover and shaker in the field of school librarianship, and I continue to Level UP my library program.  I follow Jennifer LaGarde’s philosophy … I am NOT a Zombie Librarian – I am definitely fighting the Zombie Librarian Apocalypse in my school library media center!    Each year I challenge myself to submit a proposal to MASL, and again was chosen present this year.  You can see my Session 1 presentation on becoming a Common Sense Media certified educator here.

One of the exciting things I was asked by my administration to create was enrichment programs for our 2nd and 4th graders.  This fall I launched “Technology Rocks Information Literacy” to give my students more opportunities to do more in depth research and create projects using technology.  Students were invited based on their MAP-R scores,  and I have twelve 2nd graders and thirty-four 4th graders participating this session.    I meet with the 2nd graders twice a week for 30 minutes, and with each of the 4th grade groups once a week for 30 minutes.  I chose two MASL 2014-2015 Black-Eyed Susan books upon which to base the programs:    Lifetime cover final_0Lifetime by Lola Schaefer andlemoncellos-library-300h Escape from Mr.Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein.   I have asked the 2nd graders to research one of the animals in the book Lifetime, and create a Google presentation based on their research to be shared with their classmates and teachers.  After reading the book (and working through all the riddles within it), my 4th graders will be creating book trailers and a scavenger hunt for all the Flower Hill students.  We will be culminating our fall session with a Google Hangout session with the author (whom I was thrilled to meet in person at MASL conference after having emailed back and forth for some time)!Chris Grabenstein   MCPS launched Google Apps for Education this year, and rolled out Chromebooks to the 3rd and 5th graders; my goal is to prepare not only these 2nd and 4th grade students, but all of my students (and staff!), to the Google products and to build their computer navigation skills for the rigors of PARCC online testing.

In October, my PreKindergarten through 2nd grade students participated in Read for the Record (a partnership between Jumpstart and We Give Books), and we made good use of the activity guides for the book Bunny Cakes by Rosemary Wells.

Here at Flower Hill ES we also celebrated Common Sense Media’s Digital Citizenship Week , and continued conversations about staying safe on line.  CSM has created two great videos – one geared towards elementary students “Pause and Think Online” and another (with Flocabulary), for middle and high schoolers “Oversharing:  Think Before You Post”,

I  asked all my students and staff to sign the Digital Citizenship Pledge  and shared with them these THINK bookmarks  created by Technology Rocks seriously blogger Shannon Long.  Digital Citizenship Day Digital Citizenship Day2 It is amazing the engagement when you start talking about being safe online, posting on Facebook, Instagram, etc., and discussing the reasons for minimum ages on social media. Even the youngest of students emphatically shares their personal experiences with online games and social media!

Look for another post soon!  Happy November!

Dot-to-Dot Connections

My students and I just completed a fantastic week of dot-to-dot connections as we celebrated International Dot Day with educators and students in Florida, Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and nearby neighbors in Clarksburg!

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This was my third year participating in International Dot Day, inspired by the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.     This was a celebration of creativity, courage, and collaboration, and we made our mark (and the world a better place) by connecting with new friends around the United States via Google Hangout.

After reading and discussing The Dot, my PreK–grade 2 students created dot pictures using the template in the official educator’s handbook, which we shared with our video chat partners.  A few examples are here …

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My students in grades 3-5 created dot day trading cards using index cards, and these cards were sent to our video chat partners in Florida (a few examples follow).  We’re looking forward to receiving some back from them, too!

Dot trading cards

During our video chat connections, we shared state symbols, read additional “dot-and-creativity- related” books, such as The Dot and Ish, also by Peter H. Reynolds,  Dot by Patricia Intriago, Press Here by Hervé Tullet, Beautiful Oops! by Barney Saltzberg, and Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match by Monica Brown.

Thank you Irene Allaire (Wilson Wims Elementary School), Lori Dearmore (Naselle Elementary School), Sue Halbert  (J.F. Tatem Elementary School), Cristol Kapp (Clifton Hills Elementary School),  Meghan Nels (Turtle River Montessori), Cathy Potter (Falmouth Elementary School),  Carol Scrimgeour (Essex Elementary School), and  Esther Uribe (Rutledge Elementary School) for your creative and fun dot-to-dot connections!

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Another blog I encourage you to follow (if you don’t already) is Jennifer Reed’s Reederama.  She posted every day last week about her school’s experiences, and then posted a wonderful reflection – “The Value of Virtual Visits” –  on Monday.  Please take the time to read it (you’ll want to go back and read the others, too)!

If you didn’t connect the dots this year, I highly encourage you to do so next year!   Participating in International Dot Day is a wonderful experience for our students to celebrate creativity, courage, and collaboration, while also developing there digital citizenship skills!

Bulletin Boards – Teachable Art

I consider a well-planned bulletin board not only informational, but a work of art – my media assistants think so, too – and together we have created a variety of bulletin boards over the past few years.  

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Below are a few things to think about as you create your library’s bulletin boards:

In her article Interactive Bulletin Boards – Make the Classroom Experience More User-friendly, Beth Newingham states, “ I can spend hours creating beautiful bulletin boards, but if they are not meaningful or if they do not serve a real purpose for my students, I find they do nothing more than take up important space on my walls.”

Cara Bafile interviewed author/educator Michael Gravois in her Education World article “Pretty” to Practical: Using Bulletin Boards to Teach, and he explained that, “too often bulletin boards are just thought of as decoration, when they really should emphasize the learning that is taking place in the classroom. Those two qualities do not have to be mutually exclusive; a bulletin board can be both educational and decorative.”

From Carolyn Tomlin’s article, Staff Newsletter: Bulletin Boards Make a Difference, is a helpful list of criteria:

As you create bulletin boards for your classroom, evaluate them using the following criteria:

  • Does it convey a message?
  • Is it bright and colorful?
  • Is the children’s work displayed neatly?
  • Is the material related to the children’s level of development?
  • Does it build a healthy self-concept?

Lastly, I wanted to share a wonderful resource with you – Julie Greller’s  blog, The Media Specialist’s Guide to the Internet – and her post “24 Places to Find Bulletin Board Display Ideas”.

Wishing you a spectacular school year!