As I sit at home watching the snowy weather around the country, I can't help but think of this adorable and fun activity I saw in Buncee the other day.
This snowman activity is part of the wonderful Copy and Create Activities within Buncee.
In Buncee under the Resources tab at the top, you will find Copy and Create Activities.
When you click on that link, you will find several of these Copy and Create Buncee's that you can copy, create and customize to use with your students.
Here are a few more....
The iSpy Buncee Copy and Create Activity is one of my favorites! This is not only super fun to do with your students, but think about them creating their own too.
You will have to check these out after you log into Buncee at edubuncee.com and take a look for yourself. I know you will find lots of ways to use them with your students....and please share the ones you create too!
Future Ready Librarians, I have something I want to share with you.
The Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning from Project Tomorrow wants to hear from us as part of Speak Up 2017. They have a special survey, created with input from Future Ready, just for librarians.
The following is from Project Tomorrow,
Your participation ensures that we will be able to produce materials that will help you “make your case” for technology change and resources at the local level. Speak Up shares data on trends in the technology views of librarians (in addition to students, parents and teachers) nationwide, and we want to be sure your views are included!
Speak Up is looking your feedback and experience on questions like these:
What challenges do you face when helping teachers integrate digital content into their lessons?
What digital citizenship skills are important for students to learn?
As librarians are increasingly on the front lines of supporting teachers in their use of digital content, how are your roles or responsibilities changing?
As part of Speak Up 2016, we learned:
Librarians and media specialists said the top benefit of using digital content within instruction at school is that it increases student engagement in school and learning (77%).
The top two challenges librarians and media specialists faced when helping teachers integrate digital content into their lessons (besides time) were lack of funding to purchase digital content (53%) and helping teachers move from sporadic to sustained usage (52%).
Twenty-two percent (22%) of librarians and media specialists said their school(s) provide a dedicated maker space for student and teacher usage as part of our library/media center.
Share your views!
Go to https://speakup.tomorrow.org/, click the “Begin Survey” button, select Educators from the dropdown list, select Teacher, Librarian or Media Specialist, find your school and then Select the Librarian or Media Specialist survey. The survey will only take you 15-20 minutes to complete.
I hope that everyone takes part in this important survey. Remember that surveys close on January 19.
Skype in the Classroom and Buncee have joined forces to celebrate World Read Aloud Day with a global literacy peace project for your library, classroom and community!
It is called the Skype + Buncee Literacy Project! It is our brand new Buncee Buddies project to kick off 2018.
Students will be collaborating, creating and sharing Buncee's to answer this question.... How Do I Model Peace In My Community?
Words have the power to change our world. Reading & writing have the power to build bridges, foster understanding, and spark ideas. For World Read Aloud Day 2018, Skype in the Classroom and Buncee are asking you to join classrooms from all around to celebrate literacy by coming together to read, write, and spread peace.
With the focus on Peace, I have created a Padlet of Books Filled With Peace.
On the Padlet, you will find books for all ages. Please share the books you love about peace on the Padlet too.
You will find the Books Filled With Peace Padlet here.
We hope you join us for this amazing global project.
There is nothing better than hearing what our students love to read. That was the top priority for me when selecting and recommending books to my readers in the library.
We did book talks at lunch time, had a giant chalk board to write down book recommendations, displayed books and student recommendations inside the library and around the school, used Flipgrid to virtually share the books we loved with each other and so much more.
Well, I have three awesome student picked book lists for 2017 to share with you today!
They are the Follett Students' Choice for 2017.
As shared today on Follett Learning's Facebook, the Students' Choice Lists are the ones that are most circulated in school libraries so we can see exactly what our students around the world are reading.
As theyshared,
Follett Students' Choice is the only list that tells you what students are really ready. It is the only list that is compiled from circulation statistics that come straight from school libraries through information continuously updated and gathered from Destiny Library Manager.
I even added the three levels of Follett Students' Choice to the Notable Books of 2017 Collection.
As you can see, there are lots of other fantastic books and lists from 2017 in this special Collection too!
The Follett Students' Choice are a great way for your to determine how to build, maintain and grow your collections with materials that students want to read. Check them out today and share them with your students too.
We now can share Buncee Boards between students and teachers too! It is super easy and quick to do.
Let me show you how!
There are a couple things you need to know.
First, when you are in a Buncee Board you will now see Share in the right hand corner.
When you click on that...
the Share window comes up, which allows you to Share With Friends in a variety of ways and...
the other tab lets you Share With Students.
You can select who you Share With within the classes and which students. You can Select All or just click on the little box next to the students name.
The second place this new Buncee addition is seen is within our Buncee Boards.
Now you will see two tabs. One for My Boards and one for Shared With Me.
Under this new tab, you will find all of the Buncee's that students share with you, as the teacher.
If you have more questions, please see this article in the Buncee Help Center.
Thank you Buncee for making it so easy to share with Buncee!
Have you seen all of the wonderful Spanish Materials Follett has for supporting the ESL, ELL, bilingual and dual language needs of students, libraries and classrooms?
They offer the largest K-6 selection of high-quality Spanish materials to help us build the content knowledge and interest needs of our students.
I'd love to give you a peak inside of the Spanish Materials Catalog so you can see all of these hand-selected K-6 titles to meet your needs.
You will find....
Popular Fiction,
Leveled Readers,
Picture Books,
Graphic Novels,
Biographies,
High-Interest Nonfiction,
Authentic Spanish.
Science, STEM, Social Studies, Math,
Spanish Bilingual and more.
Follett also offers special bundles that supplement your core curriculum in engaging and unique ways.
These include Lightbox, which is an interactive eBook platform with videos, primary source documents, Google Maps, audio, slideshows and quizzes (You can read more about Lightbox in this post I wrote on my blog);
Follett Science and Literacy Connections Program, which is a research-based program to build literacy skills and content knowledge;
and Learning Alive, which is an augmented reality program designed to build competence in sentence building, sight words and sound recognition.
You have seen that Follett works with wonderful publishers to bring the best materials to our libraries and students.
You will find several featured in the back of the catalog including....
Capstone,
Bearport,
DK and more.
You can find the FollettSpanish Materials cataloghere.
As you can see, Follett has just what we need for supporting all students, libraries and school communities.
I have a very special event to share with all of you. It is from my friend and colleague Scott Bedley.
Scott shared the above post on Facebook. He would love to see all of us join him and others around the world for Global School Play Dayon February 7, 2018.
According to his post, Global Play Day is a grassroots effort promoting unstructured play on February 7 and throughout the year.
One of my favorite new wintery books is A Loud Winter's Nap from our friends at Capstone.
This sweet new book is by the wonderfully talented author and illustrator Katy Hudson,
who also brought us Too Many Carrots.
As you peak inside the front cover you will find,
Tortoise is set in his ways. He doesn't like change, and he doesn't want to change. But in this witty follow up to Katy Judson's best-selling Too Many Carrots, Tortoise is forced to try something new. Will winter fun and caring friends change Tortoise's view of winter?
I love this story that features the fun activities winter brings as caring friends convince Tortoise to stay awake so he can be part of the wintery memories they are making.
As you can see, not only does A Loud Winter's Nap follow tortoise on a journey of change with his friends, it is also a visual treat of exploration through Katy's beautiful illustrations.
You will love the book trailer too. It is a great way to introduce A Loud Winter's Nap to your readers.
