Organize your day- Map out a schedule

    After you have your master list written for the week or day, and prioritized you jobs/ tasks. A good step would be to maps out when you will complete your items.

    All Commitments, / appointments. / Scheduled classes   should be put first into your plan book or daily planner at the time specified,

   Then you can incorporate from your master to do list. Look at the most important items (marked with an A) and then B items. Write these tasks / activities in available time slots. But do not pack in more to dos than you can realistically get finished.

    Also allow 30 minutes in your daily schedule every day so you have a little flexibility in case things don’t go as planned.

    Also leave yourself time at the end of the day to work on the next few days schedule.

Netsmartz.org _Parent site for NSTeens

       Netsmartz.org    is the 'parent ' site from the one that I talked about last week. This has lots of  links , ideas, videos, etc for parents and educators   to help  children and students learn more about the safe use of the internet.
  NetSmartz is an interactive and educational program of the National Center for Missing and Exploited children.  It consists of age appropriate resources  for students 5 to 17 to be used by parents, and educators.  There are  many resources here  which include videos, games, lesson plans, activity cards, and presentations.
     The programs are  both educational and entertaining. My students love the NS teens and go back  to replay the games and look at the comics.  If you poke around you will find something you can use with your own children or students.

   Did anyone  find anything similar?  I am constantly on the look out for more sites like this that have excellent content for use with the students.

Common Core Standards and School Librarians

    I received a question just the other day about my book pass article  in Library Sparks and what CCS that activity would be related to . So I really started to think about the CCS and how they fit into the library program .
    Reading is at the core of the ELA common core standards, so really most of the standards go along with the library program of reading readiness for college- even in the youngest grades.  Each and every book that students read will help them on their way to becoming better readers.
  As librarians we build collections for students to read for pleasure - we have story hours, read alouds, reading incentives, and use award lists to promote the best books.

  As students read they are also gaining confidence  in pulling out main ideas, parts of the story  characters, plot, and  story curve.  The standards give some great examples of stories, poetry  and drama that apply the range of reading text types.
  We need to be aware and know the CCS and be an advocate  to administration , teachers, parents, and students that school librarians are at the core of learning within  the standards.  When you dive into the standards for you state, you will begin to see the important job we need to do to help students in all areas.

Tech Tools - Wired Wednesday- one day late

          I am a day late- We spent yesterday finishing our Christmas shopping and also doing some grocery shopping. We got home late - it was a tiring day!
           I found a great site that I have used in preparing my genre studies and  other lessons. . I have adapted some lessons from each one for the grades that I had taught the genres to. For the upper grades I like to highlight a different genre each month  with mini lessons and posters and displays.   I also encourage students to write down the genre on their  reading book list as they also have to do this for their teachers so why not keep track of ALL their reading.
          One of the best sites for almost any subject area and grade level is READWRITETHINK . This site is amazing when you take some time to look at all it has to offer.  There are classroom resources , lesson plans, interactive  tasks ,  activities based on the month, and printouts available. 
          There are professional development links to a great many tips and hints, and articles on teaching the different topics.  There are also  parent and after school resources.
    When you share this with your staff, they will treat like a rock start because they will LOVE it!

Library Signage / Library Vocabulary

      The Storm is over- we did not get that much rain  but it was very windy! The wind knocked down a large pine tree right next to our house. Thankfully it fell away from the house , other wise we would have a tree throught the rooof of our living room.

   We did lose  electric, phone, heat, and internet  . We just got it back last night around dinner time on Sunday night..  I hope everyone is safe and has their electric .

      Now that you have your library vocabulary started- keep it going.  Do you have your signs up with definitions? Have you 'played ' some vocab games? What else can  you do with the signs and the vocabulary?    Make some games using the same words once you have  most of your vocabulary done.

     Try this: For the youngest set , you could make flash cards or make a concentration game. For intermediate and a little older ( middle  school) make several bingo boards with the words on the cards in several location and then  make cards to call  out with definitions.

    Try this: Take down the definitions  ( have them laminated). Have Students match  the definitions with the words.  Or swap and put up definitions and have students match up the vocabulary.



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