April is National Poetry Month-“Never” Poems

All week we have been reading and writing poetry in the library!  The second grade students had a chance to write a poem involving alliteration.  I found a pin on Pinterest that led me to an entry on WriteShop.com called ” ‘Never’ Poems: Write a Silly Poem” by Kim Kautzer.  It is silly and the children had a ton of fun writing and reading their poems.

Coming Up with Words: Word Bank, Dictionary and Thesaurus

We have 4 second grade classes at my school, so I had the opportunity to modify and adapt my instruction as the week went on.  Of course, the last class went the smoothest and was probably the most successful.  I like to think of this as perfecting the process for next year!  First we discussed what the students knew about poetry and I mentioned that repetition is common in poetry and alliteration is also found in poems.  I found that the students had an easier time writing if they chose a consonant and just brainstormed words that began with that letter first and wrote them down.  They then worked from the list they wrote.  After working with two classes I decided we needed to have dictionary and thesaurus on each table for those that got stuck or couldn’t think of enough words.

Format for the Poem

Here is the format:

I would never eat

I would never wear

I would never buy

I would never read

I would never go

I would always like to think about

And I promise I will never

Flipgrid and Facebook

The students had a good time writing these poems.  They would tickle themselves when reading them and just laugh out loud!  How fun to hear laughter in the library.  I chose the best poems and had those students record themselves using Flipgrid.  We pay for a subscription to Flipgrid and it is worth it!  Flipgrid provides the students with an opportunity to videotape themselves and quickly see the results.  It also gives the students an authentic audience.  After I finished recording each class, I emailed the link to the teacher so that all the students could see the videos of the poems.

Our school now has a Facebook page (run by yours truly!), which gives us the chance to showcase our students’ work to an even wider audience.  It’s also an incentive.  When I tell the students that I will be choosing the best work to video tape, some will ask, “Are you going to put it on Facebook?”

Watch our students reading their “Never Poem”.  http://flipgrid.com/#2cb48680

 

Facebook…other duties as assigned!

Our school now has a Facebook page!  Despite the title of this post with the facetious “other duties as assigned” (the often included catch-all in a list of duties in a job description), my communications committee and I initiated the drive to get a Facebook page for our school and we are really excited.

The Road to Facebook: Be Careful What You Ask For!

The communications committee is an all encompassing group which serves as our library media center committee, but we also are in charge of the school newsletter, news item submissions to the district, etc.  At our fall meeting we bemoaned the fact that our school’s website had been eliminated when the district’s website moved to a new server.  The district has contracted with a company which will provide hosting services and a template for each individual school’s website, but we had no clear date for that to happen.

We wished we could have a school Facebook page as we saw that as an effective way to communicate with parents.  Not all of our families have internet at home, but nearly all have cell phones.  Parents are more likely to already be on Facebook than to think, “I wonder what’s new at school; let me go check the website” (no wait, there is no school website at this time!?!).  So, deciding to go about things through the proper channels, I contacted our public information officer (who is newish on the job and more up-to-date on social media than his predecessor) to see what the district’s policy on Facebook was.

Lo and behold that topic was to be discussed at the upcoming school board meeting.  Long story short, the board approved a social media policy. And even more helpfully, each school’s FB administrator’s would have their IP address unblocked so that we can work on the school FB account at school.

My school’s Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/International-Studies-Elementary-Charter-School-1722938171261429/

Library Media Specialist: a Great Fit as the Facebook Administrator

Library media specialists generally don’t need another thing added to their plate, but being the Facebook administrator for your school is really an important and great opportunity.  Who else has the overview of what’s happening at your school?  Who else is technologically savvy enough to do a good job?  Who else is up on social media?

I’ve always been the unofficial/official photographer of the school anyway, so this is an additional way to use the photos I’m taking.  Facebook is another means to spread the word about what’s occuring at our school not only to parents but to the wider community.  We are not a zoned school, so we rely on parents choosing to enroll their children at our school.  Facebook will be another recruitment tool for us.

So, despite the many, many things I am required to do each day, posting on Facebook will be a task that I can accomplish fairly quickly. Sometimes I need to be able to do one thing, one positive, fun, quick thing and think, “Check.  Got that done.” So tomorrow (and for several more days), as I try and run down missing assets from our recent asset inventory (entailing endless emails, phone calls, and room checks), it will be a pleasure to document our students being  engaged with technology on their new tablets or some other educational activity!