Accelerated Reading at the Middle school

  We are doing Accelerated Reading again this year at my school. Last year we did not have a huge number of students that participated and read books.  So I am looking for suggestions on how to motivate the students to read and take tests.

 Each week I select three students to select from my box of goodies.   I will also give out cafeteria rewards to the two or three highest point scores each month. But I am looking for some good motivators / rewards to get more students reading and taking tests, Can anyone comment below and tell what kinds of prizes / recognition they give? Or special privileges?

Middle School Book Club

    I held  the first meeting for both 7th and 8th grade this past week. The students are really interested and ready to read. 

     I put out books that I had multiple copies of , and let the students select what they wanted to read.

  My 7th grades all boys. They selected to read Chains.  ( I love this book) So they are up and running. The 8th graders will be reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian( Alexie)

    Seventh graders will meeting after school. Eight grades during their lunch.

   We are required by administration to take attendance and minutes which we hand in.We set a date for the next meeting which was good. So now I can prepare a mini poster with dates on it to hang around the school. Last year I never thought to schedule the next meeting so I feel super organized.

  I will still announce each month when the book club is over morning announcements. Usually I start announcements about three days ahead of time.

   Does anyone else do Middle School book clubs? I would love to hear from you!
  

Using Non-Fiction Books/ articles with students

I am searching four ways to use and help teachers use non-fiction selections with students. Here are just two easy ideas.

1.       Teach students how to summarize, paraphrase and pull out main ideas. This shows students how to put ideas into their own words. Also this will reduce the amount of plagiarism. It will also determine if the student is understanding the material given. Start with a small amount of text.

2.       Give them choices- Use some different articles, books, selections on a unit of studies. Students choose what they want to read. Give them a variety of items on different levels-

This is where the library comes in- we can help getting together books on your topics.

Weekly Reading

Into The Wilderness by Sarah Donati  is a book I could't put down. A historical novel series  begins in the 1790's . Elizabeth Middletown, an educated spinster of 29, comes from England to join her Father in upstate NY. She wants to be a teacher  to the children living in the area. Her Father wants her to marry Dr. Richard Todd,

 Elizabeth has no intention of marrying anyone. But she is drawn to Nathaniel, a backwoodsman, son of Hawkeye ( Hero of the The Last of the Mochicans)

  Nathaniel's people want to buy back Hidden Wolf mountain  from her Father's property. Elizabeth will inherit  the mountain as part of her wedding gift.

 The novel is  full of action, adventure, romance, and family life in that time period. NOw I can wait to get the next in the series- there are 6 in all.

Smithsonian Learning Lab

Smithsonian Learning Lab is a free resources of digital resources. There are more than a million images, recordings, and texts for use by students and teachers, or anyone who wants to investigate digital sources.   The SLL is designed for discovery, creativity and  sharing. There are more than one million images, recordings, and texts. Search results display pictures that you can click on.  you can add notes, tag questions , save and share.

The learning lab helps build critical skills by having students  select , organizing and create new resources.  Enter a subject that interest you  in the search bar. Keywords can be from broad to specific/ Search results in an image grid but can also be changed to a list view.
There are resources and learning lab collections tabs at the top.  resources can be individual or a group. A curated group of resources will be a collection or resources.

  There are icons to help you distinguish between images, video, audio, and text, There are also learning resources( lessons , games, interactive online exhibition websites.
  users can collect resources, save them to favorites and also share resources with co- workers and colleagues.

https://learninglab.si.edu/

Personal Professional Growth

  At the  Summer Institute , we were given a continuum of school Librarian competencies, This rubric is for self growth to help up develop professionally. The competencies are from AASL and PSELS ( Professional Standards for Educational Leaders)

 Out of the 11 competencies I am going to work on  #1 first- which is Mission, Vision and Core Values. Being ion the middle school and the state of librarianship  with the strong digital aspect I will have to ponder before setting my mission and vision.  I have a small budget so that will be limiting as far as the digital/maker space aspect.

  Do you have mission or vision , or core values. I am struggling with this so if any one can comment please please do!

Setting Library Goals For a New Year

   It’s the first day of school   and time to set a few goals for the upcoming school year! After our Future Read Conference I have to decide what goals I want to pursue. I am thinking of two that are most important.

    One is continuing to build instructional partnerships with more teachers this year. Last year I had quite a few collaborative projects, and I am hoping this year to have those same teachers and then add several more that I did not get to work with last year.

  Another goal that I want to pursue is to become more proficient at a few key new technologies. The specific ones I have not decided on yet, but I am thinking of Symbaloo or Buncee . Those are a few of the ones Shannon McClintock Miller showed us at our conference.

   Do you have goals for the year? What are they? Share with us in the comment section please!