A "Smart" Booktalk

I think every librarian can appreciate the power of booktalks. Student booktalks can be even more powerful. Thanks to inspiration from Daring Librarian, Gwyneth Jones, our library now has Livescribe Pencast booktalks in several books. I was lucky enough (ok, there was strategy and quick fingers involved as well) to win an Echo Smartpen from Livescribe on Twitter at the end of the last school year. Since then I have wanted to use it to create booktalks with the students. Finally I found a willing teacher. Hooray!

I purchased some of the Livescribe sticky notes for the project, but you can use a piece of the notebook paper and cut it out. I made a quick visit to each class and showed them a few examples I created and told them about the project. I created a booktalk handout for the students and teachers to use to prepare. The students were very excited. The teacher offered this as an alternative to a book report type project that they used in the first nine weeks. There were many students that signed up to record a booktalk immediately. They were all very interested in the Smartpen and I know of at least one that went home and asked for a pen for Christmas. That same student described the pen to his Math teacher and asked her to record her lessons so that he could go home and watch them whenever he needed from home. She promptly went out and ordered one. For some reason the pen has been a hard sell to my teachers. I plan to continue to use the pen with library activities and lessons so that the teachers can see it in action.

Yes. This picture is blurry. That's because they are jumping up and down after trying the pen for the first time. Luckily I had my camera nearby when I witnessed this spontaneous outburst of teen enthusiasm. I just love working with middle schoolers.










To date I have 8 boooktalks created by students. I plan to put them on display soon and invite the sixth graders to come in and listen to the booktalks. I know they will love it.

PD With a Twist Update

I was lucky enough to present with Tiff Whitehead about our efforts at professional development for the October edition of the TL Virtual Cafe. You can access the webinar recording, chat and links here. It was a wonderful experience and I have received tweets and emails from librarians thanking me for the ideas and telling me about programs they are trying with their staff. This is so exciting!

The major professional development program I have been focusing on this year is 21 Things. Three librarians, including me, and one teacher worked together to create a wiki that would lead our staff through 21 technology tasks. We chose the tasks based on needs we saw in our staff and tools we have learned about through conferences and online resources. It is geared toward a classroom teacher, but we have alternate assignments so that administrators and staff can also participate. We have already received a great response and we are 5 things into the 21. We have had almost 200 teachers and staff register for the course. There is a group from each school in our district and the best part, almost every group is being facilitated by a librarian. I am so proud of our librarians for stepping up to do this even when some of them are not very comfortable with technology. I believe this has gone a long way in illustrating our value and putting all of us in the position of being a go to person for technology.

You can view our wiki here. Feel free to take this idea and adapt it for your own staff. If you do please let me know how it goes.

Next year we are already thinking about a program specifically for administrators. Learning new things can be intimidating for this group because it is hard to show this weakness in front of your staff. We think a program created just for them might be the answer.

What types of professional development programs are you a part of? Do you think this is a responsibility of the librarian?

Don't forget to come to our next TL Virtual Cafe session with the wonderful, Jennifer LaGarde.

Reaching Those Female Reluctant Readers

Much has been written and discussed regarding male reluctant readers. I do believe it is warranted and necessary, but I also have a group of female reluctant readers at school that I am trying to target this year. I found this short article that offers advice for any reluctant reader and another article with advice for parents. This SLJ Webinar, Reaching More Readers, is worth your time. I am still on the hunt for more information about reluctant female readers.

There are many strategies suggested in these articles and webinars, but the easiest strategy for librarians to employ is finding high interest reading material for our students. I often refer to ALA's Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list. Story Snoops also has reluctant readers as an option in their search feature.
When classes come in for check out I can usually spot the students wandering around aimlessly and I try to help them find something that they will enjoy. Sometimes the teacher will ask for my help if they know of a struggling student and occasionally the student will tell me they hate reading and ask for my help. I usually start by asking what type of book they have enjoyed in the past. If they say, "Nothing", I ask about movies or hobbies. Then I walk around with them and point out lots of books and give little summaries. I also give them permission to quit a book and come back if they do not get hooked right away. If they come back we try again with no guilt. There is nothing better than matching a challenging student with a book they love. Often they become my most vocal supporters.

One major area of success that I have discovered for girls is novels written in verse. A few of the favorites (not all in verse) at my school right now are: Lisa Schroeder's Far From You, The Day Before, Chasing Brooklyn and I Heart You, You Haunt Me, Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers, Keesha's House by Helen Frost, Sonya Sones's One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, Stop Pretending and What My Mother Doesn't Know, Cut by Patricia McCormick, Once Upon a Prom series by Jeanine Le Ny and The First Part Last by Angela Johnson. If you have read some of these you might recognize that they are packed with some major drama. I must also point out that most of these books are being read by my 8th graders and I wouldn't normally recommend these for my 6th graders, but they all have an recommended age range within the middle school years.

Some of my nonfiction titles popular with girls are the Would You Rather...BFF edition, Seventeen's 500 Beauty Tips, The Teen Vogue Handbook, Bobbi Brown's Beauty Rules, What's New Cupcake?, The Good, the Bad and the Barbie and Nestle TollHouse Best Loved Cookies.

I can't keep any of these books on the shelf. As soon as they finish one they come in with their friend that wants it next. I love when this happens. I recently tweeted how much my girls loved Lisa Schroeder and she replied to my tweet and even mailed lots of signed bookmarks and promotional postcards about her new release. The girls actually squealed when I brought them to the classroom.

Any advice for helping reluctant female readers? What are your go-to books for girls that say that they don't like to read?

Student Locker Tags

I found this cute locker tag for students on the Scholastic website. It is fun to walk down the hall and see what my students are reading.

This Way to Reading Bliss

After seeing this idea on one of my library bud's Pinterest page, I decided I had to create my own version. My super sweet maintenance man for our district actually brought wood scraps from his workshop at home to create this for me. I took the arrows and used Mod Podge to adhere pages from an old Harry Potter book as a background. Don't worry. The book was missing 80 pages for some weird reason so I really couldn't do anything else with it. Then I used alphabet stickers that I found in the scrapbook section of the craft store to spell out the locations. I spray painted the plain wood base with stone textured paint. The locations I chose were Hogwart's, Narnia, Forks, District 13, Camp Halfblood and Lorien. Can you name all the books for those locations?

Flashlight Friday

I first heard about the idea for Flashlight Friday on a Twitter chat. I think it was #titletalk, which is held the last Sunday of each month at 8 pm Eastern and hosted by Donalyn Miller and Paul Hankins. It is also mentioned on the Daily Cafe site. I emailed the idea to all of my ELA teachers and one of the teachers tried it. Mrs. Foster tried it with her Honors English class and it went so well that she plans to try it with her other classes soon. She told the students to bring flashlights and they brought flashlights of all shapes and sizes. After a short lesson they brought out their books and flashlights and cut the lights.

A fun idea for kids of all ages.

My Middle School Guys Read

Today was a fun and encouraging day. Two weeks ago meetings started for my all boy book club. Students were chosen to be in the club based on reading scores and teacher recommendations. I wanted this club to target those reluctant readers that are not served with resource classes or other special education accommodations, yet they still found reading to be a challenge. I also wanted it to be gender specific. Unfortunately boys are usually our most reluctant readers so I decided to go with boys this year. I may expand in the future and have a girl club too. I explained the club to the boys in a delicate way. I wanted them to be excited to be chosen and not feel punished in any way. I let them know that they were hand picked by me and the club was invitation only (major bonus points in middle school society) and that based on their reading scores they were just on the edge of making some major leaps in reading progress (which I truly believe). Most of them were happy to be chosen. Two from each grade decided that they did not want to participate. I was disappointed, but I didn't want to coerce them. I may go back and add a few more in those slots after we finish our next book. I have had several other students come begging to be in the group, but I want to keep a consistent core group so that I can monitor their academics as the year goes on.

These students come to the library after lunch during SSR and read with me. We usually read in my back office because of our lunch time visitors and classes. I purchased ten copies of the following books: Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Not Reading by Tommy Greenwald, Storm Runners by Roland Smith, Genius Files: Mission Impossible by Dan Gutman and The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger. Three of the four have sequels. Sneaky, I know.

The 8th graders are currently reading Storm Runners. I have a recording of the book on our iPods so they read along with the recording each day. This title was one of the free titles provided this summer through SYNC YA. We will read the sequel, Storm Runners: Storm Surge next and then The Cay (another free title from this summer). We have copies of The Cay in our ELA book closets gathering dust so I've grabbed a few copies and plan to use them with my boys.

The 6th graders finished reading The Strange Case of Origami Yoda yesterday. I have been reading this to them aloud. We threw a little party today to celebrate finishing our first book. I drew inspiration from Jennifer LaGarde's amazing book release party. We watched a Youtube video I found of Tom Angleberger folding an origami Yoda and we created our own finger puppets. We drank Yoda soda (lime sherbet and 7Up) and snacked on Cheetos. If you've read the book you know why I chose that as our snack. We had so much fun and they were so proud that they finished the book. They can't wait to start reading Darth Paper Strikes Back on Monday.

I'm still waiting on a few students to finish testing in the 7th grade and then I'll get started with that group.

I'm still going to have our school-wide, open membership book club starting in November after our book fair. The four books we've selected for that club is Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman (one of our state's junior book award nominees), The Roar by Emma Clayton, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (one of our state's YA book award nominees) and The Heist Society by Ally Carter. Again, four books with sequels.

I'm not sure how I'm going to juggle all this yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something. I believe book clubs are so important that I'm willing to make some sacrifices to make it happen even if that means eating lunch while I sit with a group. I already eat in the library so it will not be much of a change. If you're still not sure if you should have a book club read the ideas of Jim Trelease. He makes many excellent points about book clubs in chapter 8 of The Read Aloud Handbook.

Do you have a book club at your school? How is it organized? Do you have a club targeted for a specific group or is it open to anyone?

What books do you recommend to reluctant readers? Boys and girls?

I would love to hear your ideas.