The End (almost)

We read this today.  My littles loved this one.  But I have a question.  Who names their bear Donut?  Jim Benton, that's who!

Ninja Red Riding Hood

We read this today. It was a hit from K all the way up to my 6th graders.  That doesn't happen very often.  I love the rhyme scheme.  It rhymes without becoming sing-song half-way through!

A good addition to our library.

My White Board (aka how I communicate to the school)

At my old school I had a large white board on wheels that sat at the entrance to my library.  I used to put notices and funny sayings each day.  I would let them know if they could come in and check out books, if there were special things going on in the library, if there were deadlines they needed to know about, etc.  I also introduced each day with an alliterative phrase - "Today is Marvelous Monday!"  "Today is Terrific Tuesday" "Today is Thankful Thursday!"  I add cartoon pictures or decorations.  The kids (and the staff) love it. 

When I moved to my new school, I didn't have one.  At first, I was too overwhelmed with just figuring out what the heck I was doing to miss it(I moved in the middle of the year, in the middle of the week. I literally hit the ground running!).  But after I got my bearings, I really wanted that sign back!

Turns out that my new school had a brand new, fancy schmancy white board that they bought for staff meetings. It hadn't been used yet and was being stored in the back of an unused classroom.  Could I store it in the library and use it for my message board? Why yes, I can!

So now I write my messages and draw my pictures and I'm happy again.  I will be posting pictures of my various boards.

The Mrs. Moss Zone

This is the Mrs. Moss Zone!  What, you ask, is the Mrs. Moss Zone?  Well, I'm glad you asked!

At my old school I had the Mrs. Moss's Favorites Cart.  A small cart with books that I had read that I thought were good books for kids.  The ones that I think will appeal to a large section of kids.  I try to include a lot of different genres and reading levels.  Those books were very popular.  I liked having a cart of recommendations.  When kids would ask me for book recommendations, I had a cart full of books I liked and thought kids would like. I would walk kids over to the "Mrs. Moss's Favorites Cart" often to look for good books.  It made it easy for me.  Because of this, I wanted to carry on the tradition at my new school.

When I got here, I realized there was no place to park a cart on a permanent basis.  I did, however, have this shelf which used to house the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  Those books will circulate no matter where I put them so I shelved them back with the fiction books.  I took that shelf and put my Mrs. Moss's Favorites on it.  I had chapter books on display on the top shelf.

Then I had an epiphany!  I often have kids ask for "that book you read to us last week."  That usually means three weeks ago and I can't always remember what book I read to what grade level.  I always wished I had a place to display my past read aloud books.  While moving some other books around, I ended up with a small display shelf with no home.  I looked at it, then looked at the top shelf of this bookcase and thought - Hey!  You should use this to display your read alouds!

The bulletin board above it seemed perfect for sign to acknowledge what this space is.  The Mrs. Moss Zone popped into my head and it has stuck.

Genrefication - why?

I have decided to "genrefy" my library.  And, I hate that spell check does not recognize that word!

First, what does it mean to genrefy? What is genrefication?  Basically, it just means to organize your library by genre.  Some people do this just to their fiction sections.  Some to their whole library.
Some of you might ask, "But isn't that what the Dewey Decimal system does?"  Well, yes it does.  Sort of.  Which leads us to the "why?" of genrefication.

The Dewey Decimal system is a fabulous way of organizing books and it has proven effective for many, many years.  But there are some flaws in the system.  For example, some of the books about the Titanic are found in the 300's, others are in the 900's.  Books about the branches of the military are in the 358's but books about military vehicles are in the 627's and books about wars are in the 900's.   Mammals are in the 599's, unless they are domesticated animals and then they are in the "science and technology" section in the 636's. And in the fiction section, all books are shelved alphabetically by the first three letters of the author's last name regardless of what the book is about.  All of this makes it confusing for kids and not very intuitive for adults.  When you go into a book store,  you look in the section that has the books you like.  A mystery fan? You go look in the mystery section.  A romance lover? You go to the romance section.  Why doesn't it work that way in libraries?

So, some libraries are making the change to genrefication.  It is much more straight forward for kids.  They can find the kind of books that they like.  Most librarians find that their circulation numbers go up after they genrefy because kids can browse in the section of books that they are most likely to read.

There are concerns, of course.  Shouldn't we be teaching the kids Dewey so that they will be able to find their way around other libraries?  Yes, we probably should, which is why I am not going to do my non-fiction section.  Yet.  What about authors that write in many genres, how will kids find their books?  If a student is interested in reading a particular authors work, they can still look them up in the on-line catalog and find what genre sections those books are in.  It may be a little more difficult than before but still doable.  However, finding all the mystery books, regardless of author, will be much easier.  Most of the time my students want a particular kind of book, not a particular author. My fellow library ladies in my district had questions about how it would affect them when they want to borrow a book.  When looking up a book by title or by subject, or even by author, it will work the same way as before.  Just the call number will be different.  Since I will be the one pulling books it only affects me.

I did a lot of research on this topic before I made this decision.  I'm still a little scared but mostly I'm excited.  It is going to be a lot of work.  I'll post updates so you can see how I'm doing it.

Paint!

When I accepted this job, one of the requests I had was to paint the library.  I think what I said was "Can we please, please, please paint the library?"

The dark green and the blue behind my desk just made it feel so dark and seemed to emphasize the smallness.  Thankfully, my principal is awesome and we had some amazing help.  Comcast is a company that encourages its employees to volunteer in their community.  Occasionally Comcast does a big volunteer day and during those days they have flagship locations.  This year, we were chosen as a flagship location on a Comcast Cares day.  Between us and the adjoining school, we had over 200 volunteers!  And painting my library was one of our big projects!

I chose a happy yellow color.  Unfortunately that meant that the dark green and blue needed to be primed first.  On Friday night, a bunch of volunteers showed up to do just that.

It looked so much better even with just the primer on! It was a tinted primer which helped.

And now that it is done?

And the blue behind my desk?  It is gone.

And my reading rug area?  It looks even better!

I am so happy with the paint! It is so much brighter and cheerier!  And it feels much bigger.  And the kids LOVE it.  That is the important part.

Beginnings are cool

The transition here was hard but now that I'm over the shock I'm settling in.  I'm learning the kids' names (I figure I'm at about 60% or so), I'm making friends with the staff.  And I'm making changes.

Whenever you takeover an already existing job, you make changes to make it work for you, to make it feel like "your" job.  I have done this in spades!

I started by moving the beginning chapter books out of the fiction section.  I wanted the transitional chapter books (Junie B. Jones, Magic Tree House, A to Z Mysteries) to easily found by my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders.

I pulled them out and put them together on a book shelf in between the easy reader picture books and the rest of the chapter books.  Then, I moved some other cool but less popular series out into baskets and bins.

The biggest change I made was I added my reading rug!  The previous library lady had only read to Kinders and 1st graders.  Because of this, she had her rocking chair in a very small space and didn't have a reading rug.  I read a book to every grade level (K-6), every week.  Those 6th graders were not going to fit in that spo!  I moved it to the other side of the library, moved some bookshelves out of the way and ordered myself a big, colorful reading rug. 

It is MUCH better this way.

I've also been cleaning things out and figuring out what exactly I have.  Going through cupboards and finding out I have lots of craft supplies is kinda cool.  Going through drawers and finding out that I don't have all the mending supplies I need is not as cool.  But now I have an idea of what I have and what I need.

I'm feeling kind of moved in, but the biggest change is coming up - paint!