Smart Librarians: January 2013

Monday, January 28, 2013

January 24

Every Other Thursday, you’ll get this short, fun, relevant newsletter. It will contain a quote about the library and those who love it, an idea you can use to promote your library or reading in general, a Common Core implementation idea and occasionally a shameless plug for the programs I offer. Enjoy!

Quote

“Having fun isn’t hard,
When you’ve got a library card!”

Arthur Read and friends

(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg516PSgG5I for one minute and 42 seconds that will make you smile!)

Promote (From the “Getting the Work Done” Section of 45 Ideas in 45 Minutes)

With your principal’s permission/support, set aside a morning for admin and PROTECT it. One reason you end up doing so much at home and on the weekends is that you don’t have time during the day to do office and administrative stuff. The reason you don’t have time during the day is that there is no time blocked out on the calendar for that important stuff. It’s part of your job. You should be able to do it at work. It also validates the time you spend doing admin work, because you prioritize it. And if you have it written on your schedule, when a teacher says “Can you come by my classroom and fix the internet?”, you can say, I don’t have an open slot on my calendar this morning. I’ll come by at 1:00.”

Common Core Connection

Did you know that the state of Georgia DOE has now put the Common Core Standards on their website? Check out http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/Curriculum-Instruction-and-Assessment/Curriculum-and-Instruction/Pages/CCGPS.aspx for webinars, print resources, videos and much more. Share this information in bite sized pieces with your teachers or have it ready to share at the point of need and you’ll be a hero!

Shameless Plug

It’s time to start thinking about THE BIG TEST! Whether your elementary students take the CRCT or the Stanford Achievement Test and the Alabama Reading and Math Test, I have a show for you! We Can Do This! is a Big Test PREP Rally that gets your kids excited about doing their best on the test AND gives them strategies and tips to help them excel on this important assessment.

Using interactive media, magic, puppets, and old fashioned question and answer, we look at sample test questions, talk about preparation and strategies for the testing days and discuss the importance of the BIG TEST for your students, teachers, and school. Admittedly, most of the 45 minute assembly program includes stuff your teachers will tell your students, but there is something about having a magician tell them that really reinforces what they have heard.

Here’s what some of your colleagues said about I Can Do This!

"All of the information was extremely relevant to the CRCT. The strategies were the same ones we have been stressing to our students, but I think it helps to hear it from someone else and in another format."

Carrie McAtee, Mimosa, Elementary School, Roswell, GA

"We just had Tommy Johns perform his CRCT assembly program, 'We Can Do This!' for the entire school and he was great. 'Awesome' was the comment of one of our teachers!

Tommy is very professional and entertaining. He weaves magic and puppets into important messages about preparing and taking the big test and the children loved the program. This is just what our children needed after taking benchmark tests; a positive, upbeat message. Another teacher commented that she really appreciated the fact that the assembly was academically oriented."

Karen Liebert, International Studies Elementary Charter School, Albany, GA

"The students heard from you some of the same things that their teachers have been telling them. I think it's a good reinforcement."

Helen O'Brien, Level Grove Elementary School, Cornelia, GA

If you are only testing some grades, I can bring a different show for the other students to fill up the half or full day of programming you need.

Let me know how I can help!

Encouraging kids to read, I am
Tommy Johns
Educational Entertainment Specialist
www.TommyJohnsPresents.com
tommy@tommyjohnspresents.com
Call (770) 640-6509 or Toll Free at (866) 490-READ
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Your peers appreciate your advice about quality programs. Please tell them about your experience working with us. Our best sales people are our many loyal clients.

January 10

Happy New Year!

Quote

“Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Books," Society and Solitude

Promote (From the MONEY Section of 45 Ideas in 45 Minutes)

25. If you need to raise some funds for a special event or a needed resource not in the budget, consider doing a Mile of Pennies competition. (FYI, laid side by side, it would take 84,480 pennies to make a mile.)

Kids love competition, especially when it’s going for a good cause. A school of 600 students and 50staff members would have to donate an average of $1.30 each to make a mile worth $844.80. They don’t have to turn in just pennies to make this work.

Encourage teachers to come up with creative ways to use math to measure classroom participation (counting the amount for the younger kids, sets and groupings – # of pennies, # of nickels, etc. – with middle grades and measurement (one penny is ¼ of an inch, X 12 to see how many are in a foot, X # of feet in a mile).

Get teachers to share their ideas with their colleagues and keep the ideas in a folder so when you do it next year it will be easy to lead teachers to participate.

As with any competition, keep it friendly, make a public progress chart to encourage participation (and shame the ones who don’t!) and celebrate the achievement of the students. You could even have a staff team in the competition!

Common Core Connection

Speaking of math, I found this helpful from the Core Standards website:

In Mathematics, the Standards lay a solid foundation in whole numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals. Taken together, these elements support a student’s ability to learn and apply more demanding math concepts and procedures. The middle school and high school standards call on students to practice applying mathematical ways of thinking to real world issues and challenges; they prepare students to think and reason mathematically. The Standards set a rigorous definition of college and career readiness, not by piling topic upon topic, but by demanding that students develop a depth of understanding and ability to apply mathematics to novel situations, as college students and employees regularly do.

http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CoreFacts.pdf, page 1

This entire 4 page document is a quick read and is quite interesting as it discusses some of the myths and facts about the Common Core Standards. Let me know what you think!

Shameless Plug

Here’s what some of your colleagues said about I Can Do This!

Carrie McAtee, Mimosa, Elementary School, Roswell, GA

"We just had Tommy Johns perform his CRCT assembly program, 'We Can Do This!' for the entire school and he was great. 'Awesome' was the comment of one of our teachers!

Karen Liebert, International Studies Elementary Charter School, Albany, GA

"The students heard from you some of the same things that their teachers have been telling them. I think it's a good reinforcement."

Helen O'Brien, Level Grove Elementary School, Cornelia, GA

If you are only testing some grades, I can bring a different show for the other students to fill up the half or full day of programming you need.

Let me know how I can help!

December 13

Quote

A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.

(Daniel Handler, writing as) Lemony Snicket

Promote

With apologies to John Wesley,
“Promote all the books you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as you ever can.”

Let your passion for reading shine through in all you do. Be an unapologetic promoter of books and reading. Be loud and be proud!

Common Core Connection

With connections to literature at the center of the Common Core Standards, your job as an equipper and collaborator with classroom teacher becomes MUCH more important to the academic success of your school. That’s a lot of responsibility, but I see two things growing out of this.

First, your role as TEACHER becomes more obvious, and second, the role of the media specialist becomes even more OBVIOUSLY essential to the school. We’ve always known that school success is based in large part on what you and the media center do and offer students and faculty. CCS helps to make that more evident and visible to staff and administration, IF you become the “go to person” when it comes to resources – helping teachers understand the standards and providing resources as needed to implement them.

I found this 14 minute video very helpful in understanding how to adapt the exemplar performance tasks for use in the classroom and understanding the importance of teaching literacy across disciplines. Share it with your teachers! Enjoy!

https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/understanding-the-common-core-standards

Shameless Plug

No promotional plug this time. Just a BIG happy wish for a wonderful holiday season (whichever ones you celebrate!) and a time of rest and recharging for an exciting new year!

Thanks for reading this far! See you next year! (I always loved saying that to my classmates when I got off the bus on the last school day before the Christmas break!)

November 29

Quote

The richest person in the world - in fact all the riches in the world - couldn't provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your library.

Malcolm Forbes, one of the richest people in the world

Promote

Refer to yourself as a teacher and your library as a classroom. Words mean things. You ARE a teacher and your media center IS a classroom. One reason your colleagues talk out loud at the copier when you are teaching a lesson (something you would NEVER do in THEIR classroom), may be because they don’t see you as a teacher or your classroom as a classroom. Use the words teacher (or teacher/librarian) and classroom when you talk, when you write, and even when you think! It will catch on and others will start seeing you that way, too!

Common Core Connection

These videos are a great overview for your teachers (or parents) as an introduction to Common Core.

Elementary - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/common-core-state-standards-elementary-school

Middle School - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/common-core-state-standards-middle-school

High School - https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/common-core-state-standards-high-school

Shameless Plug

Tommy Johns Presents offers several reading programs for middle and high schools! Go to http://tommyjohnspresents.com/teens.htm for more information!

Thanks for reading this far! See you Every Other Thursday!

November 15

Quote

“Librarians are almost always very helpful and often almost absurdly knowledgeable. Their skills are probably very underestimated and largely underemployed.”

Charles Medawar, author

Promote

To encourage students to read “whenever they get a minute,” set up a Lunchroom Library.

I LOVE this idea. Get, make, or find a set of bookshelves that display the fronts of books (not just the spines) and put a hundred or so paperback books in the cafeteria for kids to look at before school, or after they finish lunch. You can provide bookmarks that students can put their names on so they can find their places the next day. Include quick reads, short chapter books and high interest titles on the shelves. And don’t get too attached. Some books may walk away, others may fall apart. It’s okay. That’s why you use inexpensive paperbacks and books you and your colleagues get at yard sales, Goodwill, the Friends of the Library sale, and from donations.

Common Core Connection

There seem to be LOTS more questions about the Common Core standards than there are answers. One place I have found a lot of helpful information (and your teachers may find it helpful too!) is in the FAQ section on the Common Core website.

Go to http://www.corestandards.org/frequently-asked-questions and read over the Q’s and the A’s. If you find information there about something your teachers have been asking about, copy it and send it to them in an DL e-mail. You could be a HERO!

Shameless Plug

Did you know that Tommy Johns Presents also offers Media Specialist training? I have 45-90 minute workshops for promoting your media center, dealing with stress in the school’s largest classroom, using puppets in storytelling, and more. If you are planning a training event, give me a call! You might be surprised how affordable training can be!

Thanks for reading this far! See you Every Other Thursday!

November 1

Quote

“Knowledge is free at the library. Just bring your own container.” Seen on a T-shirt at COMO, the Georgia Library Conference, 2012.

Promote

This idea came from a Gwinnett County school I visited.

Post your Media Center stats and update them every week or so. From an office supply store, get a sign board with changeable letters and share at least the following information:

SO FAR THIS YEAR, WE HAVE CHECKED OUT

765 items to staff and faculty

2,376 items to students

For a total of 3,141 items!

This is a 17% increase over last year!

Way to go, Bobcats!

If you can’t spend the money on a permanent sign, print it out on a brightly colored piece of paper and post it near the door! People need to see what the media center is doing and how valuable it is!

Common Core Connection

Much of the Common Core focuses on the work of the classroom teacher. This paragraph from Appendix A reinforces the positive, powerful role the library and library media specialists also have.

“Being able to read complex text independently and proficiently is essential for high achievement in college and the workplace and important in numerous life tasks. Moreover, current trends suggest that if students cannot read challenging texts with understanding—if they have not developed the skill, concentration, and stamina to read such texts—they will read less in general. In particular, if students cannot read complex expository text to gain information, they will likely turn to text-free or text-light sources, such as video, podcasts, and tweets. These sources, while not without value, cannot capture the nuance, subtlety, depth, or breadth of ideas developed through complex text. As Adams (2009) puts it, “There may one day be modes and methods of information delivery that are as efficient and powerful as text, but for now there is no contest. To grow, our students must read lots, and more specifically they must read lots of ‘complex’ texts—texts that offer them new language, new knowledge, and new modes of thought” (p. 182, emphasis mine). A turning away from complex texts is likely to lead to a general impoverishment of knowledge, which, because knowledge is intimately linked with reading comprehension ability, will accelerate the decline in the ability to comprehend complex texts and the decline in the richness of text itself. This bodes ill for the ability of Americans to meet the demands placed upon them by citizenship in a democratic republic and the challenges of a highly competitive global marketplace of goods, services, and ideas.”

-from Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, Appendix A, page 4. (http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_A.pdf)

Shameless Plug

It’s time to start booking Arctic Express, the reading assembly program that celebrates fall and winter festivals from around the world!

This holiday season treat the kids to a program that’s trainloads of fun, filled with puppets, magic, storytelling, music, and audience participation. This imaginary train ride magically takes kids around the world to learn about winter holidays like: Diwali, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Chinese New Year, Hanukkah and of course, Christmas. Find out more at www.tommyjohnspresents.com!

Thanks for reading this far! See you Every Other Thursday!