My Favorite Books of 2013

Goodreads tells me that I read 64 books this year, but I'm not entirely sure how accurate it is, as sometimes it doesn't automatically time stamp the finish date. I also rarely log my picture books, because I read several of those per day. I'm sure 64 is close, though, as far as everything besides picture books goes. I've split them up into categories, and only picked one book per category.

If you're interested in what else I've been reading, check out my Goodreads page or my book quotes document.

Favorite Picture Book:

 

Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea was by far my favorite picture book that I read this year. It is just so funny! I laughed out loud several times while reading it, and then laughed again and again as I read it to my K-2 students. The goat putting the plunger on his head and dancing around like a pretty little unicorn is an image that will stay with me forever, I think. The pictures are gorgeous, and you learn to love and accept both unicorn and goat. I think everyone can relate well to goat--there's always a unicorn in your life, someone who is constantly doing everything better than you are. But, as goat learns in the end, even unicorns have their struggles. 

Middle Grade:

I first read Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper in January. I absolutely loved it and handed it to every 5th-8th grader that I possibly could, and every single one of them loved it. Then, it was chosen for the Global Read Aloud for Fall 2013, and I couldn't have been happier. That means that every 4th-6th grader in our school heard this powerful story of Melody and her struggles and achievements while dealing with the cerebral palsy that had defined her for so long. This is such a powerful book that has a message that every student should hear, one of acceptance, belief and love. This book sparked so many quality conversations about how we treat people who are different than us, and what it means to be brave. 

Young Adult:

This was much too complicated to have to choose one, and since this is my blog and I get to make the rules, I'm saying that this trilogy, Divergent by Veronica Roth was my favorite YA read of 2013. I have never read books so fast, nor have I ever had as many heated conversations in as many places--Twitter, Facebook, real life conversations with students, friends, and strangers. My favorite conversation of 2013 happened with a student on Twitter about Allegiant. It was over 1.5 hours and over 70 tweets back and forth about the book. I invested several hours AFTER reading Allegiant reading review after review and tweet after tweet, plus reading all that Veronica Roth had to say about it in her blog. I just don't even have words to describe how much I love these books. Truly. 

Adult:

This was possibly the easiest choice for me, as adult books aren't my favorite. Honestly, I only read them when they are part of our book club. But this is by far my favorite book we've ever read for book club. The Storyteller was nothing like any other Jodi Picoult book I've read. I'm not a huge fan of hers, but I'm wondering if I've just read the wrong books by her that didn't pique my interest. This was a story of a German man who killed people in the Holocaust, and a bakery shop girl whose Jewish family was impacted by the very same man and how their worlds collide in a strange way when he asks her to kill him.

Professional:

I can't believe I hadn't read this until this year. Every pre-service teacher should be required to read this. Such a different approach to teaching reading, but one that I truly believe would help kids enjoy reading more, thus choose to read more. This is another book that I wrote so many quotes down from it that I practically rewrote the whole book--so many I had to create a separate Google Doc from my regular book quotes one. 

Goals for next year:

--75 books

--log more picture books

1st Grade Christmas Traditions

In between Thanksgiving and Christmas break, all of my library classes did some projects related to winter. The first graders filled out a template explaining some of their Christmas traditions. Unfortunately, that template was on my computer that crashed over break. (Insert sad, dramatic sigh here.)

Anyway, if there were a picture of a template, there would be areas for students to explain about their decorations, their food traditions, who they visit and about their gift giving and receiving. 

Then, we used Educreations to insert pictures and audio related to their traditions. This was the first time that we had created an Educreations project that used more than one page, so the kids were super excited about it.

Because we missed a few days of school, not everyone got 100% done with their recordings, but here are the ones that did get finished:

It was so fun hearing about everyone's Christmas traditions and seeing how excited the kids were to share....and to go on break, I'm sure!

Thanks Coach Sloth

Last month (I'm a little behind!) we welcomed author Coach Ryan Sloth. Coach Sloth has written several books about his character Sammy Sloth. I was able to share these books with students before he came in, and they thought they were awesome!

We also did some research about sloths using Britannica Online and posted them out in the hallway for Ryan to see when he came in. Our 1st-3rd graders listened to or read the article on sloths, and picked out their favorite facts to write down. The fourth graders used Keynote on their iPads to insert a picture and some facts.

We were able to amaze Coach Sloth with all we knew about sloths.

The kids really enjoyed hearing about Coach Sloth's history with football, movies and how he decided to become an author. He has inspired a few of our students, who have showed me books that they are writing. He also inspired me! I wrote a book about a year ago, and hadn't done anything with it, but recently I've started sending it out to publishers and literary agents. We are all thankful to Ryan for joining us, and inspiring us!

Hour of Code

This past week, we joined in with millions of other students around the world and participated in the Hour of Code. Granted, we didn't complete the full hour because of scheduling, but the kids enjoyed it all the same. It was quite possibly the quietest I've ever seen some of them, and then there were others shouting suggestions across the room. I absolutely loved it, and I think that the students did too.

We are lucky because we have opportunities for elementary, middle, and high school students to participate in robotics through FIRST which includes programming. The elementary and middle school students use a drag-and-drop programming software, and the high school students use more of a linear code with RobotC, and some drag/drop with LabView. I am also hoping to start up a programming club using iPad apps after school in the Spring.

These three 5th graders finished the first 20 lessons in under 30 minutes. They are rockstars. Two of them are programmers for our Lego League team, and we're going to recruit the third one!

The code.org games were by far the favorite, since they featured angry birds and plants vs. zombies. Some of the students played with Tynker, as well.

Overall, this was a super fun experience, and I'm hoping we make this an annual thing!

We Are Thankful For....

At the end of November we spent some time during library talking about things we are thankful for. We put a big turkey on the wall, and students cut out their handprint and wrote some things they are thankful for on it.

Our turkey looked a bit like a peanut before he got his feathers, but he turned out cute!

This was another one of my favorites: thankful for his bff's.

I enjoyed this one!

I appreciate that Keara wrote that she was thankful that her family's money. 

This 3rd graders was thankful for myself and Mrs. Smith, the library associate, and for one of his friends. He earned some good brownie points here!

Books!! Success!!

Frog Research to End Marty McGuire

As part of the Global Read Aloud, our 1st graders read Marty McGuire. I was nervous that the book would be a little bit over their heads, but the students did a great job. I am also very thankful to their teachers for volunteering to read aloud the book in their classrooms and to let me do the fun connecting in the library.

To wrap up the project this week, the first graders used Britannica Online to research frogs, since frogs are Marty's favorite animal. We started with a sheet to take notes on that looked like this:

The students were able to listen and follow along with the article on Britannica using their iPads. I love that the read-aloud feature works! As they read, they would pause the article and write down the facts they learned. Some kids had a FULL sheet of notes, I was so impressed!

Then, I showed them how to use Educreations to insert photos and to record their notes. Educreations isn't perfect, but I do love the final products. 

And here they are! I think these all turned out really well, and the kids had a great time watching them in class on Friday.

1st Quarter Newsletter

Our first quarter came to an end 2 weeks ago. One of my goals for this school year was to complete a library newsletter to send home with K-6 elementary students each quarter. It took me awhile, partially due to not saving the first one I created, but it is finished!