Reading Is Out of This World Book Fair

We recently held our spring book fair. The theme was Reading Is Out of This World! Here are some pictures of our decorations. We also turned out the lights in the hall and used a light to project stars onto the ceiling. 

My district is using Bedford Falls Book Fairs this year. This company sets up the book stands and book carts when they deliver the fair. Here are pictures of our set up. We used black butcher paper to cover the shelves behind the carts and added space themed cut outs to draw attention to the books.

The top selling books for our younger students were the National Geographic Kids readers, and the top selling books for our older students were Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea by Dav Pilkey and The Tryout by Christina Soontornvat.

I created a book fair website to inform our staff and caregivers about the book fair. The website includes a class shopping schedule, volunteer sign up, and directions to set up Kid Credit for students to shop with a preauthorized credit card.

The proceeds from this book fair will help us purchase new books and other supplies for our library!

Shanda McCloskey Author Visit

We recently hosted author and illustrator Shanda McCloskey! I have been talking to Shanda for a few years about coming to our school, and we finally made it happen this year. Shanda lives in our county and went to high school with some of our teachers.

Shanda is the author and illustrator of Doll-E 1.0 and T-Bone the Drone. She also illustrated Bedtime Ballet, Little Red and the Big Bad Editor, and Nubby. Shanda and her husband created a website called Author Visit Central to help schools with book sales for author visits. We offered book sales through this site, so all I had to do was promote book sales! Shanda provided a flyer and a link to purchase books. When she arrived, all the books were already signed and organized by grade level to make it easier for me to deliver them to students.

Shanda's website contains thorough descriptions of all her programs. We selected Rad Robots for kindergarten through second grade and Be a Big Rad Editor for third through fifth grade. Both programs were engaging and fun! At the end, Shanda led a drawing lesson for students. One of the most memorable moments from the day was when a fifth grader stayed behind after his class's session. 

Reading Is Sweet Book Fair

We recently held our spring book fair. Scholastic is not providing themes for their book fairs at this time. So I decided to use Reading Is Sweet as the theme. Our students, teachers, and parents loved the theme! The bright colors in the decorations looked so happy. 

During this fair, I was finally able to have volunteers again! Our parents helped students add up the cost of their selected items and compare the total to the amount of money they had to spend. This helped our line move faster since students already knew they had enough money to buy their items when they got to the register.

Before the fair, a colleague helped me set up eWallet accounts for all of our teachers. I linked these to a special website designed to provide information about the fair. Many of our families donated to the teacher eWallets. The teachers who received donations were able to purchase new books for their classroom libraries. In addition to eWallet links, the website also contained links to the book fair homepage, book highlights, class shopping schedule, and volunteer sign up. Click here to see the website.

To generate excitement about the fair, my PTA had our school spirit rock painted with the book fair theme. Also, I asked a teacher at my school create t-shirts for a parapro who helps out in the media center and myself.

Scholastic is currently experiencing supply chain issues, so we did not have the same amount of books and school supplies to sell that we usually receive. Even so, this book fair was very successful! We made enough money to purchase quite a few new books for the media center.

Victoria Kann Virtual Author Visit

We virtually hosted author Victoria Kann on October 7! Victoria is the author and illustrator of the wildly popular Pinkalicious books. Victoria joined us from her home studio on Microsoft Teams, which allowed students from all over our district to participate in the event. 

Victoria's presentation focused on her new book Rubylicious. In this book, Pinkalicious is searching for stones for her rock collection when a surprise pops out suddenly! Rocky is here to grant Pinkalicious and her brother Peter one wish, and one wish only, so they must choose wisely. This book has a wonderful message about how being selfless can be its own best reward. The bright, colorful illustrations add to the engaging story.

Victoria's presentation was perfect for our kindergarten through second grade students. She started by talking about her books and asked students to wiggle their ears, shake their hands, etc. if they had read the books. Then she read Rubylicious and finally students asked questions. Best of all, Victoria's visit was sponsored by FoxTale Book Shoppe. We are so fortunate to have a local book store that connects our students to authors. I know they will remember "meeting" Victoria for many years to come!

ISTE Live 2021

I am so thankful to the MIEE Travel Program for the opportunity to participate in this year's ISTE Live Conference! I presented two sessions and attended many others that taught me a lot that I will take back to school with me next year!

The first session was "A Whole New World with Minecraft." Over the last few years, I have learned a lot about Minecraft: Education Edition through trainings offered in my district and courses on the Microsoft Educator Center. I use Minecraft regularly with my students and was excited to share my lessons with other educators. Click here to access the presentation I used during this session.

I started this session with information about which devices support Minecraft, the benefits of using Minecraft, and game basics such as modes of play. Then I shared ways I have used Minecraft with my students, including the Georgia Performance Standards reinforced by the lessons and examples of students' creations. 

The second session I presented was "We Love Our Library: Using Your Learning Management System to Promote Student Engagement." Click here to access the presentation I used during this session. Throughout the past year, our learning management system has been invaluable in helping me stay connected to students and parents. During this session, I shared how i use my media center learning management system courses to communicate media center news and events. The session also contained information about the badging system I developed for my fourth and fifth graders. I created 44 modules and a badge for each. Students are rewarded with a digital badge for completing activities such as monthly reading challenges and monthly makerspace challenges. Other badges are awarded for using Microsoft tools such as Sway, PowerPoint, Forms, and OneNote. I also use our learning management system to share Minecraft worlds with students.

During the conference, I also attended many very engaging sessions. I loved each of the main stage events, with inspiring speakers such as Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Priscilla Chan of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Esports and animation were popular topics in the sessions I attended. I also learned about many Microsoft product updates, including Reading Progress in Teams, PowerPoint Live, and Teams breakout rooms enhancements. I look forward to incorporating my new knowledge into my plans for the 2021-2022 school year!

2021 Georgia Children's Picturebook Award Winners

This year's Georgia Children's Picture Book Award winner is Hair Love, written by Matthew A. Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. Hair Love was also the second place book at my school. My students loved this sweet story about a father who tries to fix his daughter's hair while her mother is away.

The first place book in our voting was The Cave by Rob Hodgson. This is a hilarious book about a wolf who tries everything to get a little creature to leave its cave.  

And our third place book was The Scarecrow, written by Beth Ferry and illustrated by the Fan Brothers. This book is about the connection between two unlikely friends. The rhyming text and beautiful pictures were so engaging to my students. Several of them actually cried when I read this book to them.

As always, my students enjoyed reading the books on this year's Georgia Children's Picturebook Award nominee list and participating in voting!

Jungle Book Fair

We recently held our spring book fair. Last spring, I had everything prepared for our book fair but it was cancelled after school closed due to covid. So this year, I used the spring 2020 theme, which was Book Fair Jungle: Elephants, Tigers, and Books Oh My! The inside and outside of the media center were decorated to correspond with the theme.  

Several changes were put in place to make this book fair safe. Students were required to sanitize their hands as they entered the book fair. Previously, teachers were invited to sign up for one preview time and one shopping time. As a result, we often had two classes in the book fair at once. During this fair, I created a video preview for students to watch and asked teachers to sign up for a shopping time only.  This allowed us to have one class at a time in the library. Our digital learners were invited to shop after school. My students and teachers were so excited to have an in-person book fair that they did not mind any of the new procedures!

During this fair, my younger readers loved Babysitters Little Sister: Karen's Worst Day by Ann M. Martin, Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry, and My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World by Malcolm Mitchell. My older readers bought Dog Man: Mothering Heights by Dav Pilkey and Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon.

Because we did not have any family events, this was not our most successful book fair ever. However, we made enough money to purchase new books and filament for our 3D printer!