My guest blog post from T. school

I was a guest blogger my last week at T. school.  Here is what I posted:

Wow, I can’t believe it’s May and that I’m almost finished student teaching here in the T. library!  The time just flew.  I am going to miss the creativity and excitement of the students when I return to my public library job full time later this week.  I have had so much fun sharing poetry and stories and working on special projects with the students during April and early May.

 I was very excited to be here for National Poetry Month because I love poetry and language.  The students amazed me with their own work.  We created acrostics in first grade, haikus in second, and alphabet books in kindergarten.  Shel Silverstein's poetry and the book Dogku by Andrew Clements were particular favorites. Students practiced writing rhyming couplets in first grade.  For Power Up, second graders spent several days examining different types of poems, exploring websites, reciting poems, and now writing and illustrating their own poems for a VoiceThread project. 

First graders had fun illustrating their own bad case of the stripes after reading David Shannon’s Bad Case of Stripes, and second graders wrote about terrible, horrible days after hearing Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.  A short SMARTboard lesson that I designed accompanied Stripes.

Last week we read lots of Chinese fairy tales and stories in honor of All School Study Day on Monday when the whole school learned about China.  Dragons were prominent in the stories, and assembling a huge dragon was a school-wide project. 

Today, the second graders will meet the Lincolnwood mayor who will be here in the library.  It’s been a very busy and exciting time for me here at T; thank you to Ms. T for extending this opportunity to me, and thank you to the students for being part of my wonderful student teaching experience.  I will miss you!

Elementary school placement

I just finished my second week at my elementary school placement, and I am learning so much! I've enjoyed using my theatrical skills during story times, and we've planned special poetry extension and gifted projects. I conducted my first nonfiction book talk, and I even spent an entire day on my own already with several classes. The students and I both love the Smart Board, and I am so to share in their enthusiasm for learning. I've done some basic cataloging, and we have weeding projects planned.

I've attended departmental, school, and special meetings, and it's interesting to see the numerous roles the media specialist plays within the school and community. She teaches a phonics class, and she's on the PBIS committee. Understanding all facets of the school is important, and I'm happy to have this opportunity to learn about how everything is integrated.

bookmarks

I've enjoyed creating bookmarks for students. A big part of this project was personalizing the bookmarks for students by adding individuals' pictures to one side of the bookmark. I originally intended to create bookmarks about databases, searching the catalog, and bibliographies; for the "picture project," I'm just using the general catalog/account information. I might still print the other bookmarks with general designs. I'll upload an example.

website

I have been adding pages and creating content for DuSable's website. I've created a few bibliographies, added websites, links, database page, and embedded the haiku video. I've taken a basic html course, and if I have a chance to experiment, then I'm going to apply html coding wherever applicable.

Before I leave DuSable (in 2 more school days, yikes!), I plan to add a screencast of searching databases and a video tour of the library. Now that I've successfully embedded one video, I want to add a few more! I'm going to add as many relevant research links as possible, too.

I have enjoyed this experience so much, and I'm alive and creating for the first time in awhile. I'm getting more ideas than I can possibly finish, and especially since I only have a few hours left, I'm trying to be realistic as I finish my projects!

Haiku Project

I'm editing a VoiceThread project that I created to showcase some of the haikus that were peformed and read by 7th graders at DuSable Campus School where I'm finishing my school library media internship this week. See the video at the bottom of the page for this work in progress!

I collaborated with the English teacher; a local haiku contest inspired this project. We introduced haiku to the students and shared a brief history of this Japanese poetry form, and we discussed imagery. We practiced writing a few haikus together as a class, and we clapped out the 5-7-5 syllable formation. Students read examples of past contest winners, and they jumped right into creating their own poems! They were both excited and shy to share theirs; the content ranged from love to tragedy. We didn't censor, and the contest accepted all subjects.

Students were invited to the library a week later for a Haiku Slam to share their poems and for some Japanese snacks that the school librarian generously provided (thank you, Ms. Sayigh!). Some students agreed to be recorded. I returned to their classroom to help the students who were entering the contest, and a few brave poets recorded their haikus onto VoiceThread.

I have a few more days before this internship is over, so the students have one last chance to participate in VoiceThread if they want!

I enjoyed this experience much and look forward to my next internship where we'll be working with poetry projects for National Poetry Month!

work in progress

This blog portfolio is a work in progress. I am in the middle of my first round of my school library clinical experience, and I intend to chronicle and share my work, experiences, ideas, and interactions with students. Stay tuned!