Skype in the library and more literary cafes

I've always wanted to use Skype in the library.  This month we used Skype, not only once, but twice!  Last week, our students participated in a Poetry Slam via Skype with Michal Hope's middle school students as part of Poetry Month.

This week we used Skype to have our seventh grade Language Arts students meet author Diane Stanley and discuss her novel 'Saving Sky' which is on this year's SCJBA nominee list.  We met with Mrs. Stanley online twice for 30 minutes each time in order for all of our seventh graders to have a chance to "meet" her.  Mrs. Stanley shared with students background about the book and about her life as a writer from her home office in New Mexico.  Students had about 20 minutes for Q&A and they did a great job asking thoughtful questions.

The Language Arts teachers and students really liked the literary cafes we did for The Outsiders unit and for the myths/fairy tales/legends unit and wanted to do something similar for this project.  I set up different stations in the library where students learned about Japanese internment camps, concentration camps and the US Patriot Act.  Students wrote journals about their reaction to what they read/watched at each station.  I pulled books from our shelves and from the public library to create the following stations: 

• poetry books with poetry written by children & adults in Japanese internment camps and concentration camps. 
• picture books about Japanese internment camps & concentration camps. 
• nonfiction books about Japanese internment camps & concentration camps.
• articles from DISCUS about the US Patriot Act
• Discovery Education videos about the US Patriot Act
• Discovery Education videos about Japanese internment camps 

Our literary cafes have been a hit this year with seventh grade.  I'm hoping to get sixth and eighth grade classes in next school year to try it out now that they've had a chance to see it in action a few times.  Another nice thing that happened this year is that I've had a chance to work with many of our student teachers during these literary cafes.  One student teacher told me on Friday that she will make sure to become best friends with the media specialist at her new school.  Yea for collaboration!!!

Please share any projects you've done using Skype!

Edublog nomination, Literary Cafe and "The Outsiders"

Edublog nominations were due last week and my friend & fellow SC library media specialist Tamara Cox nominated my little blog for 'Best New Blog.'  How cool is that?!?

I'm very, very flattered!!  I had to post a screenshot of her tweet just to make sure I was not making it up :)

Speaking of Mrs. Cox, she recently blogged about an activity in her library called a Literary Cafe.  After reading her post, I approached a seventh grade Language Arts teacher at my school to ask if she was interested in trying this activity out with her students.  Her class is reading "The Outsiders" and a literary cafe would be a great way to tie in videos & informational text with several of the topics addressed in the book.

Here are the stations and activities we came up with:

1. Crime- Our School Resource Officer (SRO) talked with our students about gangs, crime, and self defense.  Students wrote a reflection about what they learned.

2. Health- Students watched Brainpop videos about smoking and drinking.  Students took notes while they watched the videos.  After watching the videos, students created word clouds using the main ideas and facts about the health risks involved with smoking and drinking.

3. 1960s- Students watched video clips about life in the 1960s.  I found some great video clips on Discovery  Education about entertainment, sports, Science and government news during the 1960s.  While watching the videos, students took notes about important events and people from the 1960s.  Next, students went online to find images to create collages about the 1960s using PicMonkey.

4. High School Dropout rate- Students read articles from DISCUS and reviewed our districts' annual report card.  Students also reviewed the interactive dropout map on Boostup to learn the high school drop out rate for our state and nation.  After reviewing the website and articles, students created a graph to show the overall dropout rate of our country, state and school district.

5.  Family Court- Students read news articles and encyclopedia articles from DISCUS that shared information about juvenile court, child abuse and sibling guardians.  Students wrote a persuasive argument after reading the articles.

Students were engaged.  We were able to help students 1:1.  Students were reading, writing and creating visuals.  I look forward to trying this out with our sixth graders next.  Please feel free to share some ways you are tying fictional text and informational text in your libraries/classrooms.