Wordle Word Cloud

There is such a neat site http://www.wordle.net/ that will take words you type in or scan yourblog and make a word cloud of the words. You are able to print them out, but not post to your blog. I have had fun with the site and wish there was a way to save and put on the blog. So far no luck. I took a screen shot of the words but no luck posting it.

A fifth grade teacher and I just used the site creatively. Parenting Day is being celebrated here on Friday. All homerooms have been asked to make a poster to put up in the lunchroom for that day. We just copied the email about making the poster into wordle, created the word cloud, printed it, mounted it on construction paper, and now we have a completed poster. (Perhaps not exactly what the sponsors were looking for, but it worked for overburdened 5th grade teacher and me.)

Twilight Series

One of my fifth grade teachers (thank you, Meg) hooked me up with Twilight (if it is necessary for me to say, "by Stephanie Meyer" then you haven't been around any teenagers in the last few years.) Now I am well into New Moon. A 6th grader had talked to me about it the first day of school and now I have seen several with one of the books in the series. One of our PE coaches finished Breaking Dawn, the final book, yesterday. Two mornings this week I have seen a 5th grade boy reading Twilight. Yesterday I asked if it was his sister's book and he told me yes. I told him I thought a girl would probably like it better than he did since the main character was a girl but the second main character was a boy so he could keep trying it if he wanted. Then this afternoon I recommended it to an 8th grader and she told me she didn't want to read "any sappy old romance." You know, you can just never tell.

However, it will not be a series I purchase for my 4 - 6 grade school. In the same sort of decision I made on the Uglies series, I think we need to leave some for the Jr. High and Sr. High kids to have as their own. I won't discourage those that want to read it, but they will have to either purchase the books or get them from the public library.

I have enjoyed looking at the Stephanie Meyer website and have included the link below.

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/

So Bella and Edward, Alice and Jasper, Rosalie and Emmett, Carlisle and Esme (love that name)

I am enjoying visiting in your world. Of course, last year, Moonlight, was a favorite TV show too.

We have been matched with our sister schools for International School Library Day.

This year we will partner with the following 3 schools

G D Goenka School, Delhi, India
LaSalle Primary School Hong Kong, China
Worsley School Worsley, Alberta, Canada

If you would like to learn more about these schools the links to their websites are provided below.

http://www.gdgoenka.com/gdgws/

http://www.la-salle.edu.hk/

http://www.worsleyschool.net/

Our students are excited. We have visited all the websites. Our next activity will be to research the countries where our sister schools are located. Each class will make a poster with the information they found. Last will be the bookmarks that are exchanged with the other students. Our high school art classes have joined with us in creating some of the bookmarks since some of the schools have high school aged students. Many thanks to Julie Sikes, art teacher extraordinaire, for her willingness to assist me with this project.

I have mailed a map of our state, travel brochures, and information on the Arts, and sports in our state. Also included in the packets was a history of our state.

New Shirts

Courtesy of one of our district's innovative high school librarians, all the Media Specialists in our district have new shirts.......Take a look!