From September:
Good afternoon,
Today is my last day at Harry Stone before beginning maternity leave! I'll keep you posted and put up some pic's when he finally decides to arrive! :0) I am looking at returning to work the first full week of April. First off, thank you all so much for funding all of our projects for Harry Stone via the DonorsChoose.org website! We just got a few of the books in this past week and will be sending them to library services for processing. On the front page, the Dallas Public Library has some great early childhood courses set up. Please visit their website for more information. We might look at hosting one here at Harry Stone later this spring or when school begins. This is an ongoing program for them so even if you miss what we host, you can always go to their site and look and see what or where the closest workshop is for you if you are interested Audio books, a.k.a. Playawaways, are circulating! We are placing the kids requests for them and filling them as soon as they are checked in. If you need to remind them of any guidelines for using them, please refer to the prior blog post. New magazines are here! As soon as library services gets them in our system to check out then they will be available. If you need to see what we have that document is posted on the front page of the website. We also have brochures available in the library if you need to pick up one to see what magazines we have available for check out this school year and to see what new titles we are trying out. Also, please be advised that library services has sent us some Graphic Novels and we have created a little section for those. Graphic novels are by definition "juxtaposed pictoral and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer," [(McCloud 1993, 9) Knowledge Quest, v.39,3 2011]. More simply, they are similar to the Archie or Tin Tin or Spiderman comics you may already know, they just are not typically considered to be episodic like a comic book is. These are highly popular with the kiddos, however, I've not had a real chance to review them and make sure that everything library services sent is age appropriate for our campus. For example, I've already come across one that I've pulled because I can tell by the text and language it needs to move to high school. Right now, we are trying to keep an eye on making sure that only the older students are checking them out, like 4th grade and up, unless it's an obvious title that a 1-3 student wouldn't have a problem with (like batman). So help us keep an eye on that. Parents, I will be addressing this more in depth in a separate post soon. Finally, so far since the beginning of school we have circulated 5,329 items! We've added 980 new items! And we've cleaned out (remember this is good! we have to clean out the fridge sometime!) 5,169 items! Yay! :0) Keep reminding the students to work on their Million Word Challenge logs - those are due into the library in May! Happy reading, Kari L. Worsham, M.L.S. Harry Stone Montessori Academy Library Good Morning,
First off, thank you again to all of the parent volunteers we had who came and worked the book fair and created decorations. Your hard work really paid off! We had a really excellent Book Fair this past month, crossing just over the $5,000.00 mark in total sales!! There is approximately $800 in books that will be coming directly back into the library from the fair almost immediately (they are at library processing now!). I will be shopping in Scholastics school resource catalog for a book return (or two) and maybe a new DVD player. I'm checking first on the DVD player brand to see if the particular brand Scholastic is carrying would last longer than what we can buy from a mass retailer. Next, just a reminder that the million word challenge form is on the homepage if students need to download one to use or to type into. I have a folder created behind Teddy Bear Harry where they can turn in the form when they have one completed, or feel free to drop them in my box in the office, or if the student prefers to keep track of their reading log from the library that is fine too...whatever works best. :0) Just a reminder that we do have access to some really excellent databases for the students to use. Students CAN use these from home they will just need the login and password information which is available in the library. I can't post the password information on our website due to site licensing issues but I can get students the appropriate passwords for whichever site they need access to. I am also in the process of creating some information "sheets of gold" that will have all of our database passwords on them that the students can stop by to pick up at any time. I will locate the sheets of gold near the student computers in the library. We have magazines available for check out in the library! The magazine info brochure is complete and uploaded to the home page. A hard copy of these have been place in teacher's mailboxes for them to keep in the classroom for students to look over. New magazines titles should begin arriving this month or no later than next. One more thing for parents, if you wish to check out books from our library, a library account can be created for you! I use your phone number as your account number and the account will be good for this school year. Thanks! Have an excellent weekend! Good afternoon,
First off, I want to say a special thank you to Ms. Bixler and Ms. Wright for getting some thank you notes together for Trinity City Books who gave us the book donation at the end of September. Thanks ladies! Next, I have not gotten the magazine brochure finished like I wanted to this past month. I'm sorry, please know that it is still in the works and hopefully will be wrapped up soon! But our new magazines are beginning to arrive in the library! Also, I need to mention that in the past couple of weeks it came to my library director's attention that we do not have a wi-fi hotspot in the library and apparently we should. It's under discussion and I am hopeful. Please keep your fingers crossed!! I placed our fall book order this past month totaling ~$2,700 on October 22 and those books should hopefully be arriving before Christmas. :0) I'm very excited to get some new series and have also ordered some audio books called playaways that I think the students will really like. When those come in, I will do a short orientation with students on how to use those with each class. I will also post instructions here on the blog so that students can access them at home and parents can see how they work and know the rules for using them. Our library website is really getting some usage! We had 313 page views this past month and 267 of those were unique visitors! Wow! Upcoming is the Book Fair...it should be arriving sometime this week. I have several parents who have signed up to help Ms. Crawford and I get it all set up this Friday, Nov. 5th. It will be open as a sneak peek for teachers ONLY this Friday. Book Fair flyers will go home in Thursday Folders this week and we have some flyers to send home with middle school as well. The Book Fair will run Nov. 8-12 8:00 am until 4:30 pm each day except Friday. Friday, Nov. 12 we will close at 2:30 to close up and pack up so that it will be ready for pick up the next week. Finally, we had several classes sign-up for a regular library time. Check out the schedule in the Calendar section. PK/K are coming to the library every week for story time and check out! The students received a special book backpack for their library books. :0) Ms. Jefferson's 1-3 class is alternating weeks and part of the class comes to the library for a lesson or story or computer research while the other half goes out to work on their nature journal then they switch. Ms. Young's 4-6 class is coming in three small groups every other week where I do a book talk with the students, then they check out. I've also noticed that some of you seem to have pretty regular groups that you send on certain days of the week which is nice too :0) Have an excellent week! See you in the library, Kari L. Worsham, M.L.S. Harry Stone Montessori Academy Library Good Morning Harry Stone Family,
Here is what has been happing in the library this past month! First of all, I hope the students in 1-6 are enjoying the donated books they got to take home from the Trinity City Book Donation! We still have some to share with PK/K teachers for their classrooms. Next, our Magazine renewals for the 2010-2011 school year were due last Friday. I have added several new titles to this section and am working on creating a magazine info brochure that will list all of the magazines we should be receiving this school year along with a synopsis of each. I will be monitoring magazines closely this year and those titles not being checked out at all will be cut from next years order list. Be looking for several copies of the 2010-2011 Magazine Brochure to be arriving in teacher's classrooms sometime this month. I will also have copies of the brochure available in the library for parents, students, staff, etc and will post it here on the website as well for online viewing. An interesting website that I learned about this past month at one of my many library meetings is NASA's website for educators. They have many resources online for teachers. Check it out here: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html They also have a nice section for students as well! Check that out here: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/index.html Next, we have added new titles to our library from Library Redistribution! These are books that other libraries across DISD have too many copies of so they send them to Redistribution to share with others who may not have those titles. We received approximately 232 new titles valued at $5,210.72!! New Titles broken down per section: Spanish/bilingual.....11 books Easy Fiction............21 books Fiction...................61 books Non-Fiction............139 books And finally, I know that some students may have outstanding book fines from last year or possibly an accumulation over several years. I have created options for payment: 1) Pay in full OR 2) Pay half and complete at least 30 min. to 1 hour of library service OR 3) Complete at least 1-2 hours of library service OR 4) Complete at least 30 min. to 1 hour of library service and bring in gently used books from home for our Box Top Book Box. Depending on the fine amount, I will assess the time amount of library work/service on a case by case basis. <3 your librarian, Kari L. Worsham, M.L.S. |
Blog AuthorMs. Worsham, librarian, for Harry Stone Montessori Academy, a PK-8 school in Dallas ISD. Archives
August 2015
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