Tales from a Loud Librarian

Every year, I conduct a lesson for the English I students to celebrate ALA's Banned Book Week. This lesson has grown over the years, and I am very proud with what the English teachers and I have done with the topic. I will introduce the lesson using the slide presentation below. Please feel free to make a copy and adapt it for your own library.  We want the students to take a stance by writing a well constructed paragraph using the resources that I pulled together for them as concrete evidence to support their stand. We also want this to be a real world experience. Meaning we want their responses to be published on the web for anyone to read. Last year, we had the students post their paragraph in the comment section of the BBW post on this blog. This proved to be an issue because some of the students' comments were posted immediately while others were sent to me to be moderated before posting. Students were frustrated not knowing where their paragraph had gone...

On Monday, September 25th, we had our first author visit of the school year. Author and former 3rd grade teacher and librarian,  Nancy Cavanaugh , came to talk about her newest book, Elsie Mae has Something to Say . The book is set in 1933 in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. Nancy explained to the students how she was inspired to write the story--a television documentary. However, it was a trip that she took to the swamp 20 years ago that gave her the push to write a book about a place and time that doesn't exist anymore.  It took her a long time to get the story right because she started her research two decades ago, and the book was published in early September 2017. At first, she was going to try and write a non-fiction picture book about the swamp because her inspiration began with a documentary and book called Okefenokee Album by Francis Harper. When that didn't work she tried her hand at a book called. Henry James and the Hog Bandits . That never got ...

10 Best Tools for 5-Minute Formative Assessment I write regularly here on this blog, but several times a year I write a post for the Whooo's Reading Blog. Every post on their blog consists of lists of apps or websites that teachers can use to assist in their teaching or aid in student learning. They have a section just for librarians, but this time around you will find my post in the edtech section . If you use other tools that could be used for assessment, please list them in the comment section below.