No Shhing Here

Better late than never, right? For May, our book displays celebrated National Bike Month. If your school sponsors a "bike to school" day, this kind of showcase is a great way to promote it. Because I was late taking photos this month, certain parts of our display are looking a little weary. Not everything we come up with is a home run - check out our sad "bike tires" - repurposed trufella tree trunks. Though, the bike was a hit - kids loved ringing the bell on the handle bars. Eventually we scraped the "tires" and just moved the signs to the columns on either side of the desk. We used tricycles and scooter type toys on the display shelves, along with Fourth of July table decorations. We used the theme to display books that in some way deal with wheels, including NASCAR, skateboarding, and cards. We REALLY wanted to include a couple of stationary bikes, so kids could pedal as they read, but we couldn't find any, so we scrapped that id...

Over the weekend, I presented at the 2012 NYLA/SSL conference . It's New York's state level school librarian conference. I got to listen to some great speakers, including Joyce Valenza and David Wiesner. I presented with my librarian co-worker (and neighbor), Leslie, on using apps for instructional purposes - our workshop title was App-ealing Instructional Practices - aren't we creative? :) At the presentation, we handed out bookmarks featuring the apps we used. Here's Leslie's suggestions for elementary apps:  And here are my suggestions for secondary apps. If you follow my blog, many of these probably sound familiar.  I've covered Doodle Buddy, Index Card and Book Creator in this post , Explain Everything in this post , SimpleMind+ for note taking , and Evernote as part of our listening skills unit . Also, I did a guest post for the SLJ blog Touch and Go . I talk about applications for many of the above apps - check it out here. Do you have a ...

Are you sick of hearing about note taking yet? If so, you're not alone - our students are right there with you. We've finally wrapped up our study skills unit, and had the kids take a survey to assess the experience. We needed to know what was successful and what was unsuccessful. So we asked. When you ask a 9th grader to list the ways in which you bombed as a teacher, be prepared, 'cause they aren't afraid to tell you exactly what they think. Here are a few of my favorite gems from their survey: "The entire system of SimpleMind [a concept mapping app] was, in my opinion, superfluous at best, and a waste of technological resources and time." "...Grading the cornell notes on a RUBRIC is RIDICULOUS...I found that totally ridiculous, stupid, and unnecessary. like seriously, who grades notes?" "Most students simply don't like doing the extra work that goes into study skills, so even though you taught us the information we will probably...

During the school year, I've chronicles my efforts to teach study skills to 150 AP World History students. At some points, note taking was kind of like eating brussel sprouts , and but we improved from there . This week, we switched gears a little bit to talk about listening skills. Specifically, we focused on 8 habits of bad listeners and how to ID the important stuff in a lecture. Bad habits we covered included:   We also talked about signal words - cues and clues that help the listener understand where they are in a lecture. Following my 20 minute mini-lesson, the teacher delivered a lecture on Chinese dynasties. This was the FIRST TIME most students had ever taken notes purely from listening, without the help of a cloze or fill-in-the-blank activity (What's up with getting to April of your 9th grade year without taking lecture notes?!? Why did we phase that out - it's such a great critical thinking/listening activity?!?). To help s...

At the junior high we're loving an iPad app called Explain Everything . It's $2.99 for a single copy, and the price drops to $1.49 when you buy 20 copies or more. Explain Everything allows students to create a narrated slide show. In addition to recording the student's voice, the app also records any action that happens on the iPad screen. So, for example, if a student draws an arrow while they're narrating, the app records the arrow being drawn. A 9th grade global studies class recently used Explain Everything to create vocabulary projects for 6th graders. Their format was pretty basic, and I think it translates well enough to work with vocabulary words in any subject area: Slide 1: Provide a visual image of the vocabulary word, and ask the 6th grader to predict the word's meaning Slide 2: Provide a definition of the vocabulary word Slide 3: Explain a simile comparing the vocabulary word to a more familiar object or idea Slide 4: Ask the 6th graders to wr...

I'm always looking for little activities - AKA "bellringers" - to kick off a class period -- something for the kids to do while they wait for their classmates to log on, papers to be handed out, etc. Bellringers help ease the transition from the hallways to instructional time.  The best bellringers: Require little or no instruction Have directions that can be posted on the SmartBoard Are engaging (a game, competitive challenge, relevant to teens, etc) Reinforce information literacy skills (DUH!) Recently, Google provided the EXACT thing to fit the bill. It's called " A Google a Day. " Thanks, Geek Dad , for introducing it to me (I'm neither male, nor a parent, but I still dig the blog). Google provides a daily question, and challenges users to find the answer. Users playing along search via a special interface that filters out results designed to specifically answer the Google-A-Day question. Google says, "to keep the game interesting for ever...

 April displays are up! Once again Deb, our fabulous secretary, has taken creativity to new heights. This month's theme is The Library: Your Shelter from the Storm .We thought it was appropriate because, for many students, the library provides a refuge from all different kinds of storms, like bullying, overcrowded cafeterias, and bad days. Above: The main circulation desk We have no concerns about open umbrellas bringing bad luck, so we suspended them from the ceiling and hung rain drops stitched together along with 3D clouds - both inspired by Pintrest .  Open umbrellas and stitched paper raindrop chains  Here's another shot that shows off the open umbrellas from afar.  A different view of the umbrellas. And here's our nod to School Library Week. I know it's not much, but the sign's on the circulation desk where every kid can see it, so hopefully it makes a little impact. What are you April displays like?