End of school in our district = SC Midlands Summit! This annual conference was held last week on June 12-13 at Westwood High School in Blythewood, SC. Check out the sessions and resources for this year's conference here.
I presented two different sessions. Mrs. Brown and I presented together about the different projects we collaborated on this year in the media center. Here is a link to our presentation titled "A Common Space." Our collaborative journey started with our first literary cafe about The Outsiders which I first blogged about here. The second presentation was about our school news show. Here is a link to the the presentation titled "Broadcasting Live from Our School Studio."
Presenting was definitely nerve wracking, but I was happy to meet other educators interested in learning from our experiences and being able to exchange ideas with them. It was my first time ever presenting at a conference. I will definitely do it again!!
Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer- I liked this title. It was funny, had some romance and a little drama. Here is Mrs. ReaderPants' review of this title. I like how she breaks it down.
Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park- I would recommend this book to a high school audience. This is a love story, but it also deals with family relationships and friendship. As I was trying to figure out the audience of this book, I became curious to find the publisher of this book (I already returned my copy to the library) when I came across author Jessica Park's article about self-publishing. Her story of why she self-published is interesting and informative.
Endangered by Eliot Schrefer- While visiting her mother who runs a bonobo sanctuary in the Congo, fourteen year old Sophie becomes separated from her mother. She must learn to survive during a revolution and in the company of bonobos. Great story!
How the Leopard Got his Spots: The Graphic Novel by Sean Tulien, Rudyard Kipling and Pedro Rodriguez
Marcell the Shell with Shoes On: Things about Me by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp
I started reading:
Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip by Jordan Sonnenblick
Here are some books I read during the last two weeks:
The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers The format of this book is unique as the story is told through encyclopedia entries and lots of footnotes.
Little White Duck: a childhood in China by Na Liu and Andres Vera Martinez
Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & other Female Villains by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple
Mister Death's Blue Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn
Stolen by Lucy Christopher- This story drew me in right away. Interesting story.
As I thought about a title for this post, "Dancing in the Street" by David Bowie & Mick Jagger came to mind. Being a kid in the 80's was the best! I'm not dancing in the streets, but I am getting the word out in the streets about what is going on in our library.
My first line of communication is our school newsletter. In our school newsletter, I share announcements about upcoming library events, research projects that involve the library, digital literacy articles from the internet and pictures of our students participating in library events & research. Our school newsletter creator is awesome and always saves a spot for my library news. I usually post the same information for the school newsletter to the announcement page on our school library website. The school library website has been a great tool for sharing pictures, videos and library news. I can easily update the home page with whatever information I want to feature at that time.
I send my principal and assistant principals quarterly reports sharing what we've been up to in the library. I also send them an annual report. I follow a basic format for all of my reports: program highlights, library statistics and information about collaborative projects. If time permits, I include pictures and videos to help illustrate the data. I also make the reports available on our school library website. I share the link with parents in our school newsletter and the library website announcement page each time I add a new report.
In the past, I created a document with lots of information for my annual report. This year I wanted to create an infographic after media specialist Fran Bullington shared how to do this on her blogInformania. I tried Piktochart and it was pretty easy to figure out. Thanks for sharing this great idea, Fran!!
Here is my annual report for 2012-2013 that I created using Piktochart:
I also help post information to our school Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts. I like to post lots of "reading is important" type posts on these accounts, along with the usual school announcements.
I think sharing what we do in the library is important. It does not take much time for me to put together a report because I keep track of everything on my calendars. I pull library stats from the library circulation system. I keep pictures filed by month. I just have to make the commitment to sit down once a quarter for 30-45 minutes to put it all together and send it out to my various outlets.
Everyone in my school is supportive of our library program, but I still want to advocate for myself and what starts in the library.
How do you get the word out about what happens in your library?
The last few weeks of school were a bit of a whirlwind. As I worked on a final collaboration with a teacher and end-of-year stuff, I was able to put together our fourth quarter report and our annual report. Completing a quarterly report really helps me keep track of everything we do in the library. (I shared in a earlier post about how I share what we do in the library with my school community.)
Using Smore this school year definitely was a time saver. It's easy to use and the final product is visually appealing. This year I was able to compare our students visits, circulation and collaboration statistics to last year's statistics. Doing this helps me see areas where I want to continue improving. I also used this report as a place to share my reflections on the school year and my progress on the goals I set for the library program.
I would love to hear about and/or see annual reports for other media centers.
Happy summer and thanks for reading my little blog.
