Tag Archives: mini grant

CMLE Mini Grant: Spanish Books for Collection

This is a guest post from Ellie Michaelis, Library Media Specialist at Pinewood Elementary in Monticello. Find more mini grant reports here.

Through the aid of the CMLE minigrant, our school library was able to purchase 19 Spanish language books for our Spanish speaking students. 

This amount nearly doubled the size of the collection – we have increased our selection of books from 25 to 44. Though still small, we were able to purchase books that were of high interest to our students (such as Diario de Greg and Sonrie!)

Over the past years, our Spanish collection was neglected, because there was almost no demand for these books.  Recently, we have had an influx of new-to-country students who absolutely love the library.

They quickly devoured the small selection of books we had available and were asking for more, something we were glad to provide!  Our students provided input on the titles purchased with suggestions including Scooby Doo and “more big books”!

We also took input from the teachers, who suggested popular class read-alouds (Charlie y la fábrica de chocolate) and book study genres (biographies and fairy tales).

When our students heard that we had received the books, they were ecstatic and couldn’t wait for them to hit the shelves.  The joy of putting the right book in a child’s hand never gets old!

CMLE Mini Grant: Branches Series Books

This is a guest post from Doug Asquith, Media and Digital Learning Specialist at Dassel Elementary Media Center. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today! 

I am honestly humbled and excited by this CMLE mini-grant getting accepted.  We at the Dassel Elementary Media Center have other Branches stories on our shelves, but this grant will allow us to expand and round out our collection to even genres and student interests at Dassel Elementary. 

These books fill a need for high-interest low-level books in our Media Center. Seeing students take the leap from leveled readers and picture books to books that look like, to quote a first-grader, “big kid books” brings a level of excitement to their faces as they begin to dive into the wonderful worlds created by these books. 

If the students enjoy what they have read, it is now easier to recommend students to either the next book in the series or other books in the same genre as the book they read.

Also because of the Branches mark teachers, particularly our SPED department, feel better about recommending these books to their students as the teacher has a better idea of the general reading level just by glancing at the cover of the book. 

The next step for us at Dassel Elementary is to keep an eye out as more books are released in each series. Again, thank you CMLE for this mini-grant and helping Dassel Elementary grow readers with Branches.

Report from Teen Lit Con 2019!

This is a guest post from Stephanie Schlangen, Instructional Coach – Technology Integration at Sauk Rapids – Rice High School. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today!

Thanks to CMLE, Sauk Rapids-Rice, Upsala, and Rogers students were able to attend the Teen Lit Conference, an annual event held at Henry Sibley High School.  At this fantastic event, we were able to meet several different authors writing for young adults.  All of the authors talked about how they worked to bring new perspectives to the forefront of young adult literature. 

Lamar Giles talked about his #weneeddiversebooks movement.  A pivotal point for him was when he was a young adult and went to his local librarian to ask her for a book featuring an African-American protagonist, and the only books she could lead him to were Roots and the Autobiography of Malcolm X.  When he showed the following image, it became very clear that this sort of experience is common for many.

Tomi Adeyemi, the author of Children of Blood and Bone, also emphasized the need for literature to feature characters with diverse perspectives.  She said one of her main goals was to make people fall in love with a character that was different than them. 

Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. The Homosapien Agenda, and What If It’s Us? spoke about how she drew from life experience in her writing, including difficult situations with her father and with current political events.

Likewise, author of Hey Kiddo, Jarrett Krosoczka, in his graphic memoir, also drew from painful memories in order to write this book.  He likened the writing experience to Harry Potter writing with the blood quill, where it hurt a lot to go through the memories of growing up with a mother addicted to heroin. However, after he finished he felt a great burden was lifted off of him.  It was also very interesting to hear him speak about how the choices he made with the illustrations in his book were intentional down to the specific colors he chose, and the fact that he made them with ink rather than digitally.

All of these authors offered new perspectives to our students and reinforced the idea that, in a library, we need to provide windows and mirrors for all of our students.

Mary Berning CMLE Mini Grant Report: Author Visit

Tracy Nelson Maurer sharing her presentation with students.

This is a guest post from Mary Berning, District Library Media Specialist at Chisago Lakes Area Schools. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today!

Who loves author visits? Students at Taylors Falls Elementary, that’s who!

Students participating in activities.

As part of this year’s I Love to Read month festivities, students met author Tracy Nelson Maurer. Tracy is the author of over a hundred books including Noah Webster’s Fighting Words and John Deere, That’s Who!, which won the 2018 American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture Book of the Year. Tracy presented three sessions. She shared props and photos with the students; she talked about being a writer. Kindergarten and first graders enjoyed listening to her read and sang a song about John Deere with her. Second through fifth graders learned how she became a writer, how she conducts research, and about the revision process. At the end of each session, Tracy gave students time to ask questions.

It was a fun and valuable learning experience for all! Thanks to CMLE for funding part of Tracy’s visit.

Watch this very fast, very cute video of students singing along:

CMLE Mini Grant Report: Jenny McNew Digital Citizenship Books

This is a guest post from Jenny McNew, Media Specialist at Talahi Community School. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today! 

As technology use begins at a younger age and the opportunity for kids to leave a permanent digital footprint while using technology increases, teaching students about digital citizenship is more important than it has ever been.  

As a Media Specialist, one of my many jobs is to help kids learn about digital citizenship. This important skill was difficult to teach in context as the exposure to some situations may not have presented itself to kids yet.

Enter the picture book.

Picture books present digital citizenship skills in an engaging manner. These skills cannot be taught in a single class and it is important to begin to teach students how to behave in a digital community since they spend much of their time online. This skill is as important as teaching students to behave face to face.

Through a CMLE mini grant I was able to purchase some wonderful picture books to help us teach the concepts of digital citizenship. Whether we were reading about spending time on technology in books like, Tek: The Modern Cave Boy by Patrick McDonnell, or Once Upon a Time Online: Happily Ever After is Only a Click Away by David Bedford, When Charlie McButton Lost Power by Suzanne Collins, or Unplugged by Steve Anthony, these books reinforce that kids need to find balance when using technology. Getting away from it is as powerful as using it.

Some of the books likeThe Technology Tail: A Digital Footprint Story by Julia Cook and The Internet is Like a Puddle by Shona Innes remind us how important it is to remember Internet safety and not share our personal information and how wrong cyberbullying is. These books brought much buzz and excitement to students as we shared and discussed this information.