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Wednesday, September 29th

I worked for two hours at Blue Ridge Elementary.  Today I got to experience working on "fixed assets," an additional duty for the media specialist at this school.  Part of this process involved going into three different storage locations and making note of surplus items, both equipment and furniture.  Once items have been marked as surplus, the media specialist is required to send her excess inventory out to all fixed asset clerks so that schools can claim excess items that they might need.  After five days of posting, the surplus is scheduled for pick up by the warehouse.  Anything damaged is discarded by these same employees.

I also shelved books and we talked about plan for the book fair that begins on Monday.  We also discussed the schedule for next week.  Now that the students are rotating into the media center, the schedule and format for the book fair has to be altered.  I plan to take one of my personal days on Monday to see how the first day of the book fair works and to go back each day from 2-4 to help since this week will be unusually hectic.

Our last item of business was the discussion of a "mythology" pathfinder and a list of possible additional in this area.  The media center specialist feels that she needs additional resources in this area.  I volunteered to do some research and to check the 5th grade standards to see what mythology standards are included.

Monday, September 27

I worked 3.5 hours today.  2.5 hours were in the elementary media center and 1 hour was in the high school media center.  When I went to the elementary media center, the media specialist asked me to do some reviewing of awarding winning books that she was thinking that she would add to her collection.  I used the book index with reviews in Galileo to read reviews on the books that she had chosen.  There were 5 or 6 books on her list that appeared to contain some content that might not be appropriate for elementary.  Most of these books were geared for pre-teens and teens and had some violent, teen romance, and discussion of extra marital affairs contained in them.  As such, we talked about whether these should be accessible to K-5th graders.  I was able to find all of her titles on Galileo, so that was very helpful.

While I worked on this the media specialist and clerk were working on adding students to an existing database.  This new database has been added as a new duty to the media specialist and the ladies were having some difficulty getting the names from one database into their XL file.  I only mention this to make the point that the duties of the media specialist are increasing and more and more technological knowledge is necessary to fulfill all responsibilities.

I also had the change to cut our the word LIBRARY (30 times) so that as classes are rewarded for good library behavior, they can receive their next letter.  When a class has all letters and can spell Library, they get to pick something out of the treasure chest.

Once I had finished both of these tasks, I helped shelve the remaining books that were returned today.  The ladies like to start the day with all of the books back on the shelf and ready for the next reader.

After I returned to my home school, I shelved the books the were waiting.  Senior project is underway so there were a few more nonfiction books than are usually on the cart.  However, there's always 3 times the fiction than nonfiction.  I was surprised to see that Suzanne Collins has an additional book in her "Hunger Games" series.  My list of books to read is adding up.  I have been checking out 3 elementary books each time I go to that library, so I can read more of those, but I haven't found the time to read the longer titles from the high school.

Thursday, September 23

I made my final visit this week to complete my reading enrichment unit with the fourth grade classes.   Like my other reading groups, several students from the group wanted to check out The Lightning Thief, but the two copies were already gone.

The ladies are getting geared up for this book fair the week of the fourth.  We will begin setting up toward the end of the week.  In the past, the school has profitted about $8,000 from the book fair.  The can only hope that this will be true this year.

I look forward to Friday's premiere of the books.

1 hour

September 22nd

I added 3 additional hours to my elementary and middle school time.  I went back to the elementary middle school for an hour and shared by reading enrichment (Percy Jackson) with another fourth grade class and I checked out books to the class.

At the end of the day I went back to the middle school media center to complete my staff development on wikis, blogs, and other tools to enhance wikis and blogs.

My staff development members were Language Arts teachers, a Science teacher, and the media specialist.  The 8th grade team already does a blog for the students to share ideas and conversations; however, the teachers and the media specialist were interested in wikis (I provided wikispaces, pbworks, and wix as possible) web page sites for them to use.

I think the most exciting feature of my presentation was the voki.com site.  All the teachers could see a place to embed the vokis, whether it was to create a character from a story, or to just create a voki to explain science terms or vocabulary.

Tuesday, September 21

Today I spent 5 hours in the elementary media center.  I had the opportunity today to do my reaching enrichment unit with 2 classes; the first was a fifth grade class, and the other was a fourth grade class.  Fortunately, both of these groups had a lot of avid readers.  There were excited about talking about books and they rejuvated my reading teacher spirit. 

I began the day getting a chance to see the WBRE school news show prep for the morning news.  This is the first week that Mrs. Mailey has had to work with the news crew this year.  She has an application process in place by which students compete for the news staff.  The four staff members did a professional job of sharing the news with the school.  She works with this group for 3 weeks and then trains another group and continues this practice until the end of the school year.

I also spent some time trying to locate just the right book for a 3rd grade teacher who wanted a work of fiction to read along with her science lessons on the scientific method.  I was able to find two possible choices that directly related to the 3rd grade standards.

I think one of my favorites aspects of the media center is helping young people pick out just the right book for them.  Most of them are excited about reading; they just need the right direction and it's rewarding to think that I can pass on a love of reading that might never end.

I am headed back tomorrow and Thursday to complete sharing my reading enrichment with two other fourth grade classes.

Spreading My Wings

Today was my first opportunity to do some cataloging from scratch.  My media specialist dug out the SEARS and the Dewey reference books to help me with this task.  I felt like I was back in the cataloging class completing the activities at the end of each chapter.  I think that it took me an hour to catalog 7 books and 3 of them were just updates versions of an existing book. so I only had to make minor changes. 

I also spent some time setting up and coordinatng both my reading enrichment and staff development.  Working in different areas, I wanted to be sure that everything was in working order and I had bookmarked the sites that I would be using.

I also had an opportunity to read another book to a 2nd grade class who was rotating into the media center.  This group has just finished a unit on kindness so we read a book about Abraham Lincoln to reinforce their discussion in class.  It's quite impressive that 2nd graders know that Lincoln in the 16th president and was the president during the civil war.

I recorded 4 hours since my last posting.
I have also recorded my 10 hours of collaboration on my units as well as additional units at the high school.

September 15 - Putting the Pieces Together

I logged another 2 hours in the elementary media center.  When I arrived the media specialist was reading a book to a class who was rotating through the media center today.  She had chosen a book about Abe Lincoln to compliment their unit on kindness.

We talked about my reading enrichment unit and conferred with a fourth grade teacher whose class I will read to next week.  The teacher is concerned about her third graders' book choices.  Instead of checking out chapter books, they are selecting smaller, easier books.  Hopefully, they will be engaged by The Lightning Thief, my reading enrichment choice.

We also went through my literacy unit plan and visited with the 3rd grade Language Arts teacher who is collaborating with me on this writing assignment--book reviews.

I have my staff development scheduled for next , so I am busily trying to get all the pieces together.

Tuesday, September 14 (2 hours)

Today I worked in the high school media center re-shelving.  I have going to the elementary school regularly, so I got behind with that task. 

There were two ninth grade English classes in the media center after school watching a film as an enrichment, bonus activity prior to a test over Lord of the Flies.  Needless to say, shelving in the dark proved to be a challenging task.

I plan to work again on Thursday doing some covering of paper backs.  It is these tedious, time consuming tasks that I have asked be left for me.  I am also scheduled to do some processing of books. 

Week of 6-10 September

I completed five hours this week at Blue Ridge Elementary.   Most of my time was spent reading to kindergarten and first grade students who rotated into the library.  I had come across The Library Dragon and purchased the puppet to accompany my reading.  Some of the kids were already familiar with the story but said it was a favorite.  They were fascinated with my ability to transform Miss Lotta Scales.  I also read The Keeping Quilt and A Bad Case of Stripes; one of my high schoolers recommended this book.  I thoroughly enjoyed these opportunities to read to such an enthusiastic audience.  It was fun to see how their little minds work and the questions and comments they make.

This is the first year that the library is included in the rotation.  Each class comes into the library for 45 minutes and it is the responsibility of the media specialist to have something planned for that group.  It can be a specific connection to their classroom instruction or it can be reading for pleasure.  We read a book together, they get to check out, and then we read  together again.  They do seem to love books and want to share. 

I also met with a 3rd grade teacher to begin talking about my informtion literacy unit.  We decided that writing would be my focus.  At the end of the 3rd grade, teachers have to submit samples of student writing in 4 modes (persuasive, narrative, informational, and responding to literature).  The class is going to wrap up their narrative writing in a couple of weeks, so they are ready for a unit on responding to literature.  We have decided to do book reviews and even try to connect with high school artists to illustrate book covers to accompany their reviews for the back of a book jacket.

I continue to shelve books to familiarize myself with their collection and actually received some instruction on cataloging this week.  I have located my 20 sources to accompany my reference review and am working to create an visually appealing page that the media specialist can link to her website.  I have found that the book companies Titlewave and Bound to Stay Bound have standards based links that are helpful in choosing books that focus on the standards and have reviews to accompany them.

Until next week...

Lost in Title Wave

Today I went back to the elementary media center to continue evaluating the reference section.  Once I had physically touched each book, I began to search for possible replacements and supplementary reference books.  I couldn't believe how fast an hour looking at titlewave could be.  I do like the standards connections and reviews that are included on this site.  Even after recording 2 1/2 hours in the media center, I found myself logged into titlewave at home and continuing my search.  Now that I have located some possibilties, I am ready to see if I can find additional reviews before making my suggestions to the media specialist.

Before I left the media center, I did make sure that any books left on the cart to be reshelved were ready for the morning classes.