Summer School Adventure begins

Tomorrow I will meet with the other summer school teachers and do some planning for our month together. I am excited and nervous since it has been a while since I taught general ed. I look forward to the opportunity to create some deeper relationships with these students and find out what they need from school. We will have a great time, I am sure.

School begins Tuesday

School begins in less than 48 hours.  I am starting this year with the goal that I will post a blog about each cycle's lessons.  I hope that this will offer some ideas to other Library Media Specialists and help me make sense of what I am doing with my students.  I know that there are some big changes coming and I want to be able to meet them head on.

So, lesson one:

I teach a 30 minute lesson to each class, K-5 at two Elementary schools in MN.  There are about 750 students in both schools.  I work on a 6 day cycle, so only see each group about 3 times a month.  The first lessons is a welcome back lesson that includes introductions, a Power Point on rules in the library, a story and a discussion of fun summer reads.  I sometimes skip the story if we get into a good discussion about books kids have read.  That is wonderful insight on the students and can be very valuable in relationship building as well as reader's advisory.  I also include a funny video about book care. http://youtu.be/oW25mqJjEF4. The students all get the importance of taking care of their books from this. 

Some books that I have read this summer:

Cinder, Scarlet and Cress by Marissa Meyer

About Average by Andrew Clements

Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman

Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

Have a great first week everyone!