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2019-2020 School year is coming!

7/23/2019

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Diana is starting a new adventure! She is challenging herself by changing schools, grade levels, starting on her PHD and being KISD's Library Lead.
As for me, I am enjoying growing where I am at.  Diana & I are still presenting at variety of conferences.
This school year, we are still focusing on reading initiatives & STEAM activities. I will be adding a before school STEAM Challenge once a week. We will fully roll out the STEAM Backpack circulation. In addition, we will be looking into continuing & add several new items to focus on creating a buzz about reading.
Here is our Reading Initiative items​:
*New this school year
    Events: Dr. Seuss Week; Book Fairs; March Book Madness; Book Character Parade
   
*Book Trailers: (play as class enter library for their lesson)
     Staff Emoji Poster: Elementary picture book/novel
     Summer Reading Book Bags
     *Bins in Everybody Section: Library
     *30 second teacher challenge: Book Talk
     
Battle of the Books
    *Some hall lockers: Book Spines
    *Free Book Table: Library
    *Principal’s/Staff’s recommendation shelf: Library
    *Book Drawing: for a free book (Free Book Friday)
​     Destiny book Reviews
​    Incognito Readers Club
Books and technology are both important in a Library.  Finding the balance is always hard. The Library is a place of "AWE" & "WONDER"! We are always trying to create a space our students can explore, discover & find something to engage their mind.




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Where has the year gone?                     Is it May already!

5/4/2019

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2018-2019 School Year Round Up
Diana & I have been busy!
1- Grants: We teamed up and received an KellerISD Ed Foundation Grant
Check It Out! : STEAM BACKPACK - Books get checked out all year round. It is now time for STEAM items to join the books and become available for check out all year around. These STEAM BACKPACKS will be made available for check out to students at 2 elementary schools.  The kits will include activities to engage engineering, physics, electronics, robotics, arts, technology, and mathematics. Even a book might be in some to promote STEAM and literature connections. (Plus - Diana received one focusing on reading.)
2- Clubs: Battle of the Books; Tech Ninjas; Incognito Readers; Girls Can Code
We are really liking the before school times for the club meetings. Plus adding eating lunch in the library opportunities for the club members. Our Tech Ninja Friday Tips definitely were very successful addition this year.
3- Presentations: Girls Can Code; Design Thinking; Seesaw; Librarians-Wild Card; STEM Boxes To Go
These presentations were done at varies conferences...TCEA, Service Center XI, KellerU, District PD, Staff PD
4- Building a READING Culture:
  * DREAM BIG: (Diana) kindness/reading/physical activity school-wide project
  * "What I Am Reading" - POSTERS: so staff can show off what they are reading
  * Global Read Aloud
  * Book Character Parade
 * Dr Seuss Week (Dr Westfall did a read aloud FaceTime from Bluebonnet ES (Diana's Library))
  * March Book Madness
 * Bus Book Mobile Grant (Cross your fingers that we can get a grant/grants to make this happen)

Here comes the books!  The KISD Libraries dream of bringing books to KellerISD students during the summer; as well as, have the ability to do Pop Up events during the whole year. We want to provide access around the District in a variety of places so students & their families can acquire books to read. Research has shown that reading during the summer stops the “summer reading slide”. This dream needs wheels!
5- AR/VR : These are still creating "AWE & WONDER". 
6- Digital Citizenship Lesson: We are  helping to develop these for our District using Common Sense Media.
7-  District Technology & Library Leadership Committees
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#SummerBookBus

6/8/2018

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Books + Design Thinking = Awesome Summer Book Bus
Third time's the charm, right? I really want to share this incredible story, but it is not that easy because I want  everyone who reads this to understand and get the picture of how wonderful this experience has been for me. It combines what we have been working on for the last couple of months, Design Thinking with community collaboration through partnerships such as an Eagle Project - book donations, Durham Bus services - donating the bus and driver, Keller Public Library, Ace Hardware  and Keller ISD schools - locations, and of course librarians.

What we were able to do was to provide over 6000 books for over 1500 visits from the community for the month of June was not only amazing becasue we actually did something, but the very act of serving the community was a lot of fun.

Every teacher wants their students to read over the summer because they know that if a student reads over the summer they will not suffer from the dreaded summer slide. They also want students to develop a love for reading. However, many times students don’t have the opportunity to visit the library during the summer  for various reasons. So, the librarians used Design Thinking to create a Summer Book Bus. This small fact that we actually followed the Design Thinking also makes the success of this project even better. You can see from our other posts that we have been using it with our students, but now as librarians we used it to solve a much bigger problem. I will have to write another post about the actual method. 

Through Design Thinking, we created a bus that traveled to ten different locations each week and gave books to students, families, and community members.  The best part was that they did not need to return the books. They could keep the books to build their own library.

Most of the locations were elementary schools in our district. We chose schools that had students who might not get to visit libraries over the summer and who might not have books in their homes. We also had four evening events, two at a public library and two at a neighborhood hardware store. All of the books were either donated from an Eagle project or from a grant. The bus and driver were donated by Durham Bus Services. We used the Design Thinking steps to work through the challenges so that we could provide books for students.


Results: Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday mornings, we handed out books to people. Most of the patrons were students, but parents were welcome and there were books for all ages. We loved having families come and pick out books. One best surprises was the fact that some of the schools that we chose had summer school programs so there were a lot of students who were able to access the bus and the books. We did have four evening stops and these were busy with families. ot have many patrons.

As several librarians have said, “this has been a very fulfilling project, but it was also very tiring” because we were so busy.  The bus far exceeded our expectations. We are looking forward to using this year and Design Thinking to help this product evolve and make it bigger and better.

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Summer reading : Check it out

5/10/2018

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Diana went to a presentation at Service Center XI Lib2Tell Conference 2018 and brought this idea back. A special thank you to our Follett Rep. Naomi Bates for arranging for the bags for our students to place their summer books in. In two weeks, we will have 150+ students fill their bags with books. Some books they can add to their home libraries and others will be checked out from our library collection.  
Question:
Why do we let our library books just sit on our shelves all summer break?
Thought:
We know research shows that students need to read over summer break or their reading ability will decline. So why not let the books get checked out by students over the summer. We are calling the program "Beat the Heat" READ. Below are images of the flyers and bag tag we are using. I will post a follow up blog in September to let you know how it went.

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    two authors:

    Diana Colby @DianaColby Mother of eight. Librarian, one busy momma. "Live as if you were to die tomorrow, Learn as if you will live forever." Gandhi
    ​Suzanne Ross @pgelibrary TCEA 2017 Library / Media Technology Specialist...Mother...Wife...Grandmother...trying new things one 'byte' @ a time...too many 'squirrels'...but that makes learning and sharing fun.

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