Book Art

While attending our Chapter wind up, I spotted these wonderful works of art displayed in the library at L.A. Matheson Secondary. What a great way to use books that would otherwise have been discarded!

May Newsletter

April Newsletter #2

Dust Jacket Placemats

Do you have dust jackets that have piled up in your back office? Stephanie at Holly Elementary has come up with a creative use for them: placemats! She had Grade 4 students create the woven placemats and then had them laminated. Students use them under laptops or iPads on the whiteboard tables to keep the tables from getting scratched. Great idea and the students love them!

Have students use a ruler to mark lines to cut. Leave a margin.

The teacher-librarian cut up other book covers into strips on a large paper cutter. Weave, tucking ends in. Secure first strip with a paperclip to make it easier. 

Placemats are colourful and useful! 

April Newsletter #1

Spring Break

Chinese New Year Dragon!

Check out this Chinese New Year Dragon floating above the books at the Forsyth Road Elementary Library! Teacher-librarian, Robin, had students create the links in table groups using materials purchased at Urban Source: Alternative Art Materials located on Main Street in Vancouver.

Creating the dragon was a multi-age collaborative art activity.

Easy paper link chain created the body of the dragon. Interesting art materials were used to decorate each section.

Deselection in your LLC

Weeding, or deselecting materials in your library learning commons is a job that sometimes gets pushed to the back burner. With the myriad of jobs we do as teacher-librarians, it tends to be a job that can wait. That's why some TLs use the CREW method of keeping their collection current.
CREW stands for Continuous Review, Evaluation and Weeding. While CREW was designed for public libraries, it can be adapted by school libraries. In Surrey, we've extended the 10 year old age limit to 15 years and use the MUSTIE criteria. MUSTIE refers to Misleading, Ugly, Superceded, Trivial, Irrelevant, Elsewhere. 
I recently visited Latimer Road Elementary and teacher-librarian, Angela. We tackled the fiction collection and created space on each shelf for displaying books. It gave the wall a fresh look and provided a new space to promote books.

Discards included damaged and old books.

Shelves look much more open and appealing!

VCLR Serendipity 2018

You are invited to The Vancouver Children's Literature Roundtable Serendipity 2018. Registration closes February 28th.
More information at http://vclr.ca/serendipity-2018/

February Newsletter #2

Bucket Label Refresh

I was out at Coyote Creek this afternoon and wanted to share this great idea! The book buckets have been labeled with pictures of the book characters and the series name. I found it very visually appealing!

February Newsletter #1

Updated link for the coding unit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qjt2M_X3_zf_M0hJPuCXCfc7XqsekbLEBsA2uyyXsnA/edit?usp=sharing  For some reason, the link in the newsletter split so it doesn't work.

How can you use Discovery Education?

Yesterday, I facilitated the first event for our Discovery Education Ambassador series for Spring 2018.  It was a great opportunity for educators to learn more about how to use this wonderful digital resource and to connect with each other. We tried out Spotlight on Strategies: Paper Slide, which can be found on the SOS page (Strategies and Resources tab) under Professional Learning on the Discovery Education homepage.

Here's our paperslide video:

https://youtu.be/sPtTF7Itj80

January Newsletter #2

January Newsletter #1