Just In Time For Back-to-School....TWO New Background Categories In Buncee!

I always love when there is a new announcement from Buncee and today was one of those days!

As we get ready for Back-to-School, Buncee rolled out TWO new Background categories today.

They include...

 About Me and...

 Technology. 

This will be very helpful as we prepare get-to-know and goal setting type projects and activities with our students at the beginning of a new year.

You will find these backgrounds and so many more at eduBuncee.com.

Thank you Buncee for always thinking ahead to the needs of our students.  :) 

Take Your State And National Award Book Lists And Turn Them Into Collections This Year!

With school starting in the next several weeks, it is also time to celebrate and highlight all of the wonderful state and national award books.

In our library, we always kicked off the school year with engaging displays in the library, hallways and also online of the Iowa Association of School Librarians Book Awards books.  Not only were these great titles to highlight and have our young people read, they were also books that our students could vote on in the spring after reading them throughout the year.

Most books, authors and illustrators have sites and book trailers that highlight their work, so this makes it easy for us to pull these resources together in a Collection within our Destiny Discover!

Today, I started by adding the 2017-18 Iowa Association of School Librarians Book Award lists in my Collections.

The Iowa Children's Choice List is one of my favorites so I gathered up book trailers and author websites from this list and added them to a new Collection I called Iowa Children's Choice Award 2017-18.  

You can go to this Collection here.

I selected Anyone with a link can VIEW so that makes it super easy to share through a link, email or Google Classroom.

When I located the book trailers and author websites like Crenshaw by Katherine Applegate, which is one of the 2017-18 Iowa Children's Choice Award books...

...I clicked on the Add to Collection Bookmarklet to add the resource to my Iowa Children's Choice Award 2017-18 Collection.  

That book trailer is now embedded in that Collection.

Remember...if you have the book in your library, you can even include a link to that book in the Collection. 

This is such an awesome way to get these books into the hands of our students through the library, classroom and online.  It will connect them to these special books we want all of our students to read.

Iowa isn't the only state to have book awards!  Most states celebrate books for our young readers too!

 We could take lists such as the Texas Bluebonnet, 

 South Carolina Picture Book, Florida Teens Read, 

South Caroline Young Adult Book and Illinois Monarch award lists and create Collections of these books too.

We can also create Collections from the ALA Youth Media Awards.

One of my favorite days each year is when these award winning books are announced at ALA Midwinter.  We would always celebrate these in our library too so to make a Collection would be a super fun way to share these with the students and teachers in our school.

As we think about our state award books and those that have been given national awards, Follett has the perfect place to go!

You will find all of the National and State Award Lists on this page on the Follett site.

And if you want to see the Award Lists and other information for your state, just go here...

 where it will ask you to log into your Titlewave account.  From here, you can search state resources.

You can see in the image above I am searching all of the Iowa award books.  This is an easy way to see which titles I can pull into my Collections.

I can even order all of the Iowa Award books from this Titlewave page too.

At the bottom of this page, you will find this little United States icon which will let you search Other States too.

You can search National Award Lists here too.

With all of this talk about award winning books, I decided to create a Collection for Caldecott Books too.

I started by adding the Caldecott winners for 2017 but plan to add even more to this Collection too.

You will find the Caldecott Books Collection here.

Our students will love exploring the state and national book award Collections.  They will watch the book trailers, read about the authors and illustrators, and learn about new books they want to read during this new school year.

I can't wait to see what Collections you create to get your students excited about these books too!

Join Me For The Back-To-School In The Library Webinar On August 24...Sign Up Today!

I am excited to announce that I will be part of the Back-to-School In Your Library With Buncee webinar on August 24 from 7:00-8:00pm EST.

It will be a LIVE webinar that I will host with my Buncee friends as we talk about....

1) How Buncee helps educators achieve the ISTE and AASL student standards.

2) Examples of back-to-school Buncee creations and lessons.

3) How Buncee has been used in school libraries around the country for signage, genrification labels, branding and so much more! 

4) The Buncee creation canvas and classroom dashboard.

And if you are not a librarian, please join us too because there will be something helpful for all educators and creators!  

As Buncee shared in the webinar post on their blog, 

We can’t wait to see the creations and lessons made after the webinar. The creativity of Teacher-Librarians inspire us every day. It is because of their feedback and inspiration that we were named one of The 2017 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning by the American Association of School Librarians for the category of Digital Storytelling. Thank you for your support!

I hope to see all of you on the 24th.  You can sign up for the Back-to-School In Your Library With Buncee Webinar here. 

I promise it is going to be a whole lot of creative and collaborative fun!  

A Different Pond....A Beautiful Story Of Family, History and New Beginnings

There is a very special book that I can't wait to share with you. 

It is called A Different Pond by acclaimed poet Bao Phi and graphic novelist Thi Bui, which Capstone is very proud to release in just a few days on August 1.  

Capstone shares, 

Acclaimed poet Bao Phi delivers a powerful, honest glimpse into a relationship between father and son—and between cultures, old and new. A Different Pond is an unforgettable story about a simple event—a long-ago fishing trip. As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. A successful catch meant a fed family. Between hope-filled casts, Bao’s father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam. 

You can watch the book trailer for A Different Pond too.  

When we read this beautiful book, it takes us into Bao Phi's life as a young boy.

The panels on the pages are the perfect way to represent his emotion as he travels through the early morning to their fishing spot.

I love seeing how excited Bao Phi gets as he encounters all of the different people in his life.  The diversity in this book is very special too.

The New York Times has said that Bao Phi’s poetry “rhymes with the truth.” Together with graphic novelist Thi Bui’s striking, evocative art, Phi’s expertly crafted prose reflects an immigrant family making its way in a new home while honoring its bonds to the past.

Not only do we all think A Different Pond is a book that every child needs to read and every library needs to have, it has received four starred reviews as well.

Just look at these....

★ “Phi’s bittersweet story of the resourcefulness of an immigrant family is lovingly illustrated in Bui’s evocative artwork. . . .This wistful, beautifully illustrated story will resonate not only with immigrant families but any family that has faced struggle.”

—Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

★ “A fishing trip is not just a fishing trip in this poignant, semiautobiographical tale. . . .Together, Phi's gentle, melodic prose and Bui's evocative art, presented in brushy and vividly colored panels and double-page spreads, rise above the melancholy to tell a powerful, multilayered story about family, memory, and the costs of becoming a refugee. Spare and simple, a must-read for our times.”

—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

★ “Graphic novel panels and strong figures give the pages the air of a documentary as Phi celebrates an unexpected superhero: a father who endures a strange new culture, works to support his family, cherishes time with his son, and draws no attention to the sacrifices he’s made.”

—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

★ “This gorgeous tale about a father/son fishing trip shows the interconnectedness of family and the inexorable way that generational history impacts the present. . . .Bui’s cinematic illustrations make use of panels and weighted lines, evoking the perfect background or facial expression for each piece of text. . . .This gentle coming-of-age story is filled with loving, important aspects of the immigrant experience and is a first purchase for all libraries.”

—School Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW

A Different Pond is available on August 1 from Capstone.  

You can order it here. 

A Dot Day Collection Of Resources, Projects, Songs, Books and More!

With Dot Day just around the corner, I created a Dot Day Collection in Destiny Discover today.

And one of the great things about Collections....We can make it a Public Collection for everyone to see!

You will find the Let's Celebrate Dot Day and Making Our Mark On The World Collection here.

What else should I add to this Collection?  Let me know in the comments below. 

Students Will Make Their Mark On The World For Dot Day With The Global Buncee Project!

One of my favorite days, International Dot Day, is coming up on September 15.  

This is the day we celebrate with Peter Reynolds, author and illustrator of The Dot and other books, in making our mark on the world...just like his sweet little character Vashti in the book.

I have celebrated Dot Day for several years and love finding art, writing, science, math, photography and lots of other projects which empower children to make their mark on the world.

That is what Dot Day is all about....Making a difference by the mark you make on the world!  

And this year, I have the perfect project idea for Dot Day!  

We can use Buncee to have our students create Dot Day creations in a variety of ways.  

To explain this Global Dot Day Buncee Project, I put together a special Buncee that you can click through at the top of this post or find here. 

Here are a few ways your students can create Buncee's for Dot Day.  
              

1. Students can create a one-page or multiple-page Buncee just like my friend Lila did in her Dot Day Buncee.  

2. Your entire class can do a collaborative Dot Day Buncee like this one.  I asked several friends to create their very own Buncee to add to this one.

In fact, these came from friends in Illinois, New York, Iowa and Chicago.

With the Clip and Stitch feature found in Buncee, you can create a collaborative Dot Day Buncee with a class, your entire school or even students and schools around the world by stitching all of their Buncee pages together into one.

Learn more about the Clip and Stitch feature here.  It is super fun and very easy to create a  digital global collaborative project with Buncee.

3. Students can also create Buncee's with their family at home.  This is a wonderful way to pull in the meaning of this special day into a family and community project.  

You will also find a few quick tips in the Dot Day Buncee from me and my friends....

We would love to know how you are going to create your Dots in Buncee too!.  

To make this Dot Day Buncee project even more meaningful, I would love for you to have your students share their Buncee's here on the Global Buncee Dot Day Project Buncee Board. 

Not only will they create a Buncee, but they will have the chance to connect to another school or schools which truly makes a difference and impact on our children too. In Padlet, they can also make comments and read comments that others make.

One more thing...I created a Dot Day Collection filled with resources, The Dot Day video and song, and lots of ideas to make your Dot Day super special.  

Have fun with this Global Buncee Dot Day Project and please let me know if you have any questions. 

I can't wait to see all of the DOTS your students and community create too. 

Writing, Projects, Library and More Buncee Possibilities Than Ever Before!

Our amazing friends at Buncee have added a super cool spot for lots of Buncee Possibilities to their homepage.

All you have to do is scroll down a little and you will see 6 different Buncee Possibility categories including Blended Learning, Writing Activities, Projects, Library, Invitations and RSVP's, and Communication.

Under each of these categories are three little boxes that will take you to posts filled with ideas, examples and inspiration of these Buncee possibilities.

For example, if I click on the Writing Activities, 

I can open Digital Story Books,

Buncee Doodle and...

Language Learning, which takes me to resources like...

this post for each one.

These Buncee Possibilities will open up so many more ideas as they get us thinking about the amazing possibilities for you and your students too!

You can check these out half way down the Buncee homepage here.

Lead From The Library Like A Rock Star.....Join Us As We Kick Off The First Follett Institute On August 8-9!

This week I have been getting ready for the very first Follett Professional Development Institute and I couldn't be more excited!

The first one will be in Chula Vista, California on August 8-9 from 8:30am-3:30pm at the Professional Development Center.

I will be leading the first day as we kick off with Lead From The Library Like A Rock Star for Destiny and Non-Destiny.

The second day will focus on Leading Beyond the Library for Destiny Librarians.

You can read more about each day and register for the two-day Follett Institute here.

It is the perfect way to spend a couple days learning, collaborating and connecting with others this summer as you get ready for another wonderful year within your library and school.

I hope to see you there!