Category Archives: Children’s services

Advocacy, Books, Children's services

Accio Books! How Wizard Activists are Building & Saving Libraries All Over the World

Image result for harry potter library

Article from Book Riot website: “This guest post is by Katie Bowers. Katie is the Campaigns Director at the Harry Potter Alliance where she helps turn fans into heroes. She enjoys reading, travel, and most importantly, button makers. Follow her on Twitter at @CornishPixie9.”

“In spring, the air changes. It gets warmer, and sweeter, and for the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), it becomes filled with flying books! Summoned by our members (known as wizard activists), the books collected and donated during Accio Books — our annual literacy & library advocacy campaign — help build libraries and ignite a love of reading for children around the world.

Since 2009, wizard activists have donated over 315,000 books to communities in need. Some of the libraries we’ve built are permanent institutions — lending libraries like those at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda, the Bedford-Stuyvesant New Beginnings Charter School in New York City, and Borderline Books in Leiden, The Netherlands. Other libraries we’ve brought into being are what we call Apparating Libraries. The library appears overnight, popping up in places like the Brightmoor Community Center in Detroit, Michigan and Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, Missouri. As young people and their families visit the pop-up book giveaway and filled their bags to the brim with free books, the library slowly disapparates and the books become part of the young people’s personal collections.

These personal collections provide a great advantage to kids, particularly over the summer when students often lose the academic gains they have made over the school year. Research has found that kids with books in the home do better academically, and reading just four to six books while school is out can help prevent the summer slide. That’s why in 2017, the HPA is summoning books to Words Alive, an organization that provides literacy and education services to over 5,000 children and families in Southern California. HPA chapters and members right now are raising thousands of books for Words Alive, who will host an apparating library and give the books away to young people and their parents to build their own magical home libraries.

On top of donating to Words Alive, many wizard activists will choose to donate locally. With HPA chapters in 35 countries around the world, this means that Accio Books will have a global impact. Young people in Orlando will be able to find a new favorite book at UCP of Central Florida, a school for children with disabilities where the Central Florida Slug Club helped build a library in 2016. Rohingya refugees will feel welcomed at a small lending library, currently being developed by Kovalen, our local chapter in Malaysia. At Good Shepherd School in Masaka, Uganda (a school that our local chapter, Masaka HPA, helped build), students can check out books from around the world in a library stocked by last year’s Accio Books campaign. Across the globe, our chapters are pretty amazing — you can find out more about them, and even help their program win a grant at A Community Thrives.”

Read the rest of this article here!

Books, Children's services

2017 ALSC Summer Reading Lists

Young boy reading manga
From ALA.org:

“ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee has updated our Summer Reading Lists with new and exciting titles!

The lists are full of book titles to keep children engaged in reading throughout the summer. Four Summer Reading book lists are available for Birth-Preschool, K-2nd, 3rd– 5th and 6th-8th grade students.

Each list is available here to download for free. Lists can be customized to include library information, summer hours and summer reading programs for children before making copies available to schools and patrons.

Titles on the 2017 Summer Reading Lists were compiled and annotated by members of ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee.

cover image birth to preschool summer reading listBirth – Preschool

 

cover image k -2 summer reading listKindergarten – 2nd grade

 

 

 

 

 

 

cover image grades 3 to 5 summer reading list3rd through 5th grade

cover image grade 6 to 8 summer reading list

 

 

6th through 8th grade

Books, Children's services, Young Adults

Another book hunt! Book recommendation for defiant young teen?

source

We are passing on another Reader’s Advisory question, and a few suggestions in case this one comes up for you. If you have suggestions, please share them below!

“I have a tricky readers’ advisory quest. I’ve been asked by a parent to recommend some books (by tonight!!!) for a defiant 14yo boy who reads on a 12yo level. He dislikes reading, prefers nonfiction, and has Asperger’s. His parents are going to require him to write a book report. It sounds like she wants something like the Bernstein Bears’ books – but for teens (!)  They have not let him read or watch Hunger Games or the like, but he has been allowed to watch/read Percy Jackson and Harry Potter.

She wants a book on why he shouldn’t defy / lie / resist /  etc. She is not finding anything but parenting books on dealing with defiant children/teens.

I’ve explained books that focus on “change your ways or look what horrible things will happen”  are difficult to find for his age group and that I’m going to give her a wide range of books to look at that perhaps will get them talking about relevant issues. Tricky also since he prefers nonfiction *and* I need to stay away from edgier books for the older YA audience.

Any ideas?”

Continue reading Another book hunt! Book recommendation for defiant young teen? →

Children's services, School Media Specialist

Create Exciting Presentations with Pixton

Image result for pixton

Check out this blog by By from the AASL site:

“My students love research. Give them an exciting topic, and they’re off! But what they love even more is creating presentations to share what they’ve learned. Of all the programs we’ve used this year, their favorite, by far, has been Pixton. Pixton is an online comic strip maker, a way to create highly visual presentations. Students can choose a background, add characters that are fully posable, and insert speech bubbles. It can be used to share information on a variety of topics, and it is very user friendly.

My second graders used Pixton to share their research on community helpers.

My fourth graders used Pixton to share tips they learned about being safe online.

While I use Pixton as a way for my students to present their research, it can be used for many other purposes, as well. Teachers can use it to create engaging lessons; students can use it to make writing more exciting; or it can be used to assess student learning. There are a variety of templates, characters, and backgrounds, so it can be used across the curriculum. I use it with my elementary students, but Pixton is a tool that students in middle and high school would enjoy, as well.

Pixton is not, however, a free online tool. Schools or districts can purchase a one-year license, or individual teachers can purchase a monthly subscription. There is an option for educators to have a 15-day free trial. I would recommend doing that and playing around with it before deciding if you want to purchase it. But for me, the benefits outweigh the cost.

To learn more about Pixton, visit www.pixton.com. I know your students will have as much fun with it as mine!”

Children's services, School Media Specialist, Training

Register now for EdCampMidMN 2017!!

Join us for EdCampMidMN 3.0 

As with tradition, we are traveling around central Minnesota. This year Dr. S.G. Knight Elementary School will host!

 

EdcampMidMN is an open, participatory, dynamic and free professional development conference. Edcamp brings together those who understand the complexities and promises of learning – actual teachers, administrators, and educational support personnel. Rather than being lectured to by experts, Edcampers facilitate their own discussions about relevant pedagogy or promising technology, and share with each other effective learning practices.