I Tried It: Kicking Off Research With Costumes!

Seventh grade writing teachers at my middle school recruited me to dress up in order to kick off their research projects -- all about the 1960s! Students were able to pick a topic they were interested in and also pick the ways in which they presented the information. I love projects that support student choice.

I also snuck in some handy tips about navigating our state's amazing online database resource, Tennessee Electronic Library.

I showed them how to find primary sources on the databases as well as the nifty feature that automatically generates their citations for them. They were pretty pumped about that one.

It's been so interesting to check in with the students as they discover more about their topics as they research.

Happy teaching!

Mentor Text In Action: The Day the Crayons Quit

I've always been inspired by other media specialists that I work with and I'm so lucky to have these ladies as friends who want to collaborate and share their work with each other. My friend Sarah of Everything Library has a knack of sparking teachers' interest with cool books in her library, as seen in this post. She inspires me to really try to connect new books with my teachers on a daily basis.

I was talking to a teacher at my school the other day and I practically begged her to read Drew Daywalt's The Day the Crayons Quit to her class when she asked me for a book suggestion on personification. There are so many great writing extensions that students and teachers can do with this book! If you haven't read it, please remedy this now.

Her students responded to the book by writing letters, much like the ones in the book, from the perspective of the different colored crayons. Here's the result:

Dot Day: Make Your Mark

I'm thankful for the little things in life.

Like having amazing colleagues that love to work together and collaborate with their librarian.

I guess that's not really a little thing after all.

Each year my art teacher and I co-teach classes on Dot Day, which is a celebration of the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds. It's a book all about inspiring creativity in young minds.

This year we hosted 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade classes to read The Dot with us and make their own dot.

1st Grade made 3D art sculptures:

2nd grade made dot flowers:

3rd grade made aluminum dots (which I somehow didn't get a pic of...)


We both look forward to Dot Day each year and seeing the creativity in our students!