Absolute Favorite Comic Strip of All Times

http://www.comics.com/comics/arlonjanis/index.html

My absolute favorite comic strip of all times is Arlo and Janice. This strip is the creation of Jimmy Johnson who was originally from a small town near where I live. Jimmy is a graduate of Auburn University. His strips are true to life (my family's at least) and he has been accused by many of "peeking in windows" for his ideas. He once came and visited my 5th grade classroom and talked to my students about his work. Take a look and be entertained, and bookmark the page so you can go back everyday.

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!

Library Open During Orientation

We had quite a success having our school library open last night during 5th and 6th grade orientation. For the first time ever students could check out books during this time...the day before school actually started. We probably circulated 60 plus items. I was able to "on the spot" booktalk several books I read this summer to students who then checked them out.

No Talking by Andrew Clements came out of my purse and went to a fifth grader even though I was only on chapter 3. She left with the promise it would come back to me when she finished so I could finish it.

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis and Among the Hidden by Margaret Haddix Peterson, two others I finished during vacation, flew off the shelf.

Three copies of The Invention of Hugo Cabret , and of course...some Series of Unfortunate Events, Captain Underpants, Eragon, and Eldest. It was a surprise that only 1 Harry Potter left the library.

I pushed a Madison Finn to a young lady who wanted to read about fashion....it was a guess on my part but another student encourage her with it saying she had read one last year and really liked it.

Reading is really an important part of our job. And how eager these kids are to also read something we liked and recommended.

Batgirl was a librarian!

Just found an interesting link on a fellow librarian's blog.. http://knightsreadbooks.blogspot.com/

(thank you Sonja) that Batgirl was a librarian. The link is below

http://www.naughtykitty.org/librarian.html

Lots of other useful librarian links here.