For the Love of Reading- February in the Library

 January and all of the adventures got away with me- but I am ready to ring in February.

I am starting my February in San Antonio at TCEA where I will be talking about Leveraging Your Online Presence.  I am also going to have a Pop Up Storytime to celebrate World Read Aloud Day.  Lots of links with pictures throughout the blog (along with shoutouts to all the amazing librarians that are sharing their resources!  Of course, I have lots going on at school- but it is also Destination ImagiNation season, Girl Scout cookie season, and some extra events going on at the pool that I am working at.

Things that I have planned for February

-World Read Aloud Day
-Dino Hunt
-Blind Date with a Book
-TCEA
-Keep Irving Beautiful Valentine Cards
-Black History Month

World Read Aloud Day

World Read Aloud Day is February 1st and you can find a TON of different ideas already ready-made.  Check out the Scholastic Website or check out Twitter and look for #WorldReadAloudDay23 

I will be at TCEA  that day, but I have decided I will be doing a Pop Up Storytime that will have a technology extension activity.  If I was at school- I think I would do the same thing.  I will be reading Have you Seen Gordon Adam Jay Epstein and Illustrated by Ruth Chan. I will share the activity after my storytime on Wednesday!

Dino Hunt

Are you following Melissa Corey on Twitter- if not- GO DO IT NOW! Not only does she share great programming ideas, but she also shares the templates. She just shared the Dinosaur Scavenger hunt for February and it is SO cute.  My high schoolers enjoyed the last scavenger hunt that I did- so I can't wait to get this one.  You can find the original tweet here

Blind Date with a Book

Another one of my favorite librarians to learn from is Racheal Reads- great ideas and she shares so many templates.  There are so many ideas out there for Blind Date with a Book- but I love how Rachael Reads has it set up- AND she shared her great resource! You can find it here

I had to recreate and add some of my own books.  You can find my template here

The white space on the bottom is where I added the barcode for each book for easy checkout.  For the descriptions, I used the annotation from Mackin (to make my life easier)  I also found this website that would make barcodes for me- Online Barcode Generator

TCEA

TCEA is the Texas Computer Education Association.  I have been a member of TCEA for probably about 15 years.  Every year they have an annual conference that is absolutely amazing! This year the conference is in San Antonio.  I am not able to go for the whole time, but I am slated to present on Wednesday afternoon over Leveraging Your Online Presence.  The bad news- DFW is currently under a winter storm warning... so I don't know if I am going to be able to make the drive. I will share my presentation soon!

Check out #TCEA23 on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok for some great learning!

Keep Irving Beautiful Valentine's Cards

I love that Keep Irving Beautiful has started these different opportunities for the community to give back.  Last year they invited community members to create cards that would be delivered to nursing homes at Christmas- they got so much great feedback that they began to do it for Valentine's Day too.  I of course love doing programming- and doing programming that you can give back to is even better!  I create card samples and get materials for the different kinds of cards.  Students can of course create their own, but sometimes they need a little help.  To prepare for the card making I ask students to sign up first (this way I know who to expect)  I also invite attendees to create 2 cards.  They will donate one card, but then be able to keep the other card for themselves.

You can find the 3 different cards that I created by clicking on this template.

Black History Month

I don't have a huge amount of space for displays-so I try to be creative.  I created a display cart for Black History month of some of my favorite authors. Disclaimer- Most of these books are also my Keller recommendations- so I have these books visible 24/7 unless they are checked out!

What do you have planned for February? I have also been devouring books this month.  I have already finished 14 books with The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson being my favorite so far.  March will be full of Read Across America, Spring Break- and who knows what else I can fit in.

January in the Library

 Welcome to 2023! I had grandiose ideas of what I wanted to get accomplished- and then reality hit!

Teachers started back to school on January 6th, with students starting back that next Monday.  I spent most of my winter break working at the pool lifeguarding and other odds and ends (thank goodness for it being indoors!)

The Friday that teachers came back I used this time to work with my Destination ImagiNation Teams.  Destination ImagiNation is for kindergarten- college level students where teams made up of no more than 7 members compete in different challenges. I think I have been doing Destination ImagiNation (DI) for about 13 years.  You can find more at the website here This year I have 4 teams.  I have a team of Seniors (the Nerdy Birdys) that I have been managing since they were in 3rd grade.  I have a team of Juniors (the PEEPS) that I have been helping manage since they also were in 3rd grade.  The Nerdy Birdys and PEEPS have combined this year to become The Flock.  I also have a brand new team this year in high school called the ELVES.  Competition is fast approaching so tis the season for stressing out (but I love it!)

When preparing for the month, I first get my Google Doc lesson plan calendar going.  This changes year, to year, but I like how I am scheduling it this year. 

What has worked for me this year is to have one Google Doc per month with each page representing a week. After my dates are put into the calendar I then plug in the different dates from my Outlook calendar and also the district calendar.  By doing this, I can easily have a calendar ready for me to collaborate with teachers and grade levels.

I started all of this planning- and then germs hit and knocked me on my rear for almost 2 weeks! Some of the things I had planned for the beginning of January- got moved to the middle of January.

Things Planning for this Month

-Goals for 2023
-Preparing for Keep Irving Beautiful Service Project
-Promoting new books (and making sure they are ready to be on the shelf)
-Weekly Poll

Goals for 2023

Amanda Chacon (@thegoodread) posted on Future Ready Librarian page about how she was ringing in the new year  (Nikki Robertson also shared how she did hers)  The idea was to have books that invite students to try new things in the New Year.  I don't have as much space for displays, so I changed mine up just a little bit.  I created speech bubbles for different things the students might want to try.  You can find my Canva template here

Keep Irving Beautiful Card Making

Before the holidays we had a Keep Irving Beautiful community service project.  Keep Irving Beautiful has so many projects that they are always doing to build our community from picking up trash, to planting trees, to so much more.  During the Christmas season, they invited community members to create cards that KIB could deliver to nursing homes.  What a super easy way for us to give back to the community (and let's be real, perfect community service and KIB took care of making sure it got to where it needed to go!)  They do this for Valentine's Day too.  Our school will have a card-making session at the end of January (on my February blog I will share all that we do) but I start promoting.

New Books

Don't you just love the smell of new books! In the fall when we have lots of new books come in, I do a book preview for staff first.  This was a smaller book order, so I created a TikTok that I could share on social media and also created a cart that was easily accessible.

Weekly Poll

One thing that I had been wanting to start, and I knew I would the first of the school year was a weekly poll.  I have been following Nicole Graham (@GrahamLibrarian) for awhile and one of my favorite things she has posted recently was a passive programming poll.  I started with Who Will Win and had Cowboys and 49ers.  

The poll station is set up right outside the library.  For our first poll, I stood in the hallway and asked students to have them participate.  

For this last week, I put the poll up- and guess what- the kids came to me!! (which was of course the hope, but let's be real.. sometimes it takes a bit!) The second week I did best fast food burger. I have loved the different conversations and arguments that students AND staff are having over the different polls.  Next up is best fries... and then I think I will do favorite Valentine Candy.

February is just around the corner- and I am almost prepared for it! I will share all that I am doing in February soon.  Right now I am gearing up to be at TCEA for one day, but some of the things that are coming up for February:
-Valentine Cards
-Blind date with a book
-More Polls
-World Read Aloud Day
-Blind Date with a book
-Dino Hunt 

and I am sure more!

What was your favorite thing that the library did during January?  Do you have ideas ready for February?