Author Studies- Library Sparks

        This is a good time of year- actually any time is a good time for an Author study!   When you work with  teachers when they are doing an author study  the students really get soaked in  the authors works and writing style.  
        Author studies are great for  librarians whether you collaborate with a classroom teacher or not.  Books of the author you are doing  fly off the shelves when you present the author and some of  their works. 
         Always provide some back round on your author besides reading  excerpts  / books of the author selected.   A great site for getting back ground and  lesson plans is TeachingBooks.Net.  If you are  able to use this resource you will find a great many ideas for your author study.   
        Another way to find great ideas is to look at the authors website if they have one. Prolific authors usually do and they most always  provide information on the author. Some have additional acclivities s that go along with the books that they have written.
         Make sure you take the time to discuss the authors life, and their works with students. Reading complete books, or excerpts of the authors work of course is crucial.  Make displays of the authors work. Have students do a poster , pod cast, blog, or wordle /tagxedo of the  one of the authors book is also a great idea to have students really get into the project.

TeachingBooks.Net

    If you haven't seen it yet - the current issue ( Dec) of Library Sparks has my article  about Non-fiction books passes and how to use them to teach many library skills. I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think!

Technology Tools- Wired Wednesday

        A new tool is  Tagxedo.  This is very similar to Wordle  , users produce word clouds on a specific subject.  However with  Tagxedo , word clouds are formed into a specific shape selected by the creator.  Words are sized according to the frequency of how often they are used.

     This tool is more fun and users can be more creative, but they also need to be more focused in their creation.  One can chose from standard fonts to use custom fonts. Also there is the capability to change fonts, themes, colors and shape.

     On  the site there are  many assists. One  is  101 ways to use Tagxedo which show many ways to use with with students.   Turning words into art work will appeal to many users.

     Look over the site and see how you might use it with  your students.  Although I have not used it yet I can see using  Tagxedo as a culminating project for research  and  a way to share author studies. another idea would be to have students pair up and do  Dewey clouds  for each of the categories,  and then display each one by each section of the library.


Tagxedo