September 2015

We kicked off September with a few contests -- reciting the Preamble to the Constitution (in honor of Constitution Week) and Shelfies.

Students who could recite the Preamble -- anytime during the month of September -- received a piece of candy.  Students could also submit "Shelfies" - selfies of themselves with the book they're reading. Students either emailed it to me or shared with me via Google Drive.  All were posted to social media and added to the public folder "Shelfies" saved in Google Drive.

For future add National Comic Book Day -- celebrated September 25 -- and do a contest of comic book depictions of books for a prize.

Held Bring Breakfast, Browse Books for parents.

Conducted sessions on library/online resources for 6th grade parents during our Parent Night.  Copy of the presentation shared is saved in Google Drive as 6th Grade Parent Night.

Took TOME Society students to PGE to read to Ms. Raybon's class.  Each  girl chose a book to read to their student and each 1st grader had a book to read back to the TOME student.  Pictures of the event are saved in Google Drive in the folder TOME Visit to PGE.

In the last week of September, we kicked off Grab & Go Mystery Book.  We took scary/mystery fiction and non-fiction books, put them in a paper bag (or wrapped them in brown paper), put a tag on them, and displayed them on the rack.  Students would choose a mystery book, check it out, read it, and when they returned it, they'd rate their scare on a Google Form setup on an iPad at the check-in counter.  Here's the form -- Share Your Scare and Share Your Scare (Responses).  We had over 550 responses and towards the end we quit having students share their scare just because we needed to wrap it up.  When the students returned their book and shared their scare, we gave them a treat (ogre boogers, witches warts, jack o lantern teeth, ghost poop, monster scabs).  Tags for this and the other printables are saved to Google Drive in the October - Mystery Book folder.  Here's what our display looked like...



Taught lots of ELA classes about evaluating sources using CRAAP.  Posted the posters in the library and gave half sheets of paper with the CRAAP guide on it for interactive notebooks and shared this information:

Struggling to Help Your Student With Research Assignments… --Encourage your students to use C.R.A.A.P.-y resources to keep from relying on questionable resources.  Check out the CRAAP graphic organizer on the next page and use it to evaluate the trustworthiness of sources.  I encourage students to use GALILEO resources, SIRS Discoverer, and Britannica Middle; links are available on the Pine Grove Middle School webpage under Student Links.  To access these resources, you’ll need the current GALILEO password which is pottery (and will be the password through the end of this calendar year).  I also encourage using Newsela (newsela.com).  Students who have not created a Newsela account can do so easily by clicking “Sign-up with Google”.  Nearly all of these resources can be narrowed down to a specific Lexile level to make sure your student reads the appropriate article. --Encourage your students to use the EasyBib Add-On built into Google Docs (to add this tool, go to Add-ons, Get Add-ons, and find and add EasyBib).

September's Media Newsletter is here.