Our Library Orientation and Lessons Choice Boards To Kick Off The Year!

We are in full swing at Van Meter, now in our second week of the new school year and things are picking up in our library program more and more every day.  

We have two things happening right now within our library program.  First, every year I visit all of the classrooms for 45 minutes or so to share our resources and help get things bookmarked on their Chromebooks and iPads.  I also show them around Destiny Discover, the databases, eBooks, and different digital tools and apps that we use throughout the year.  

It is a great way to start the year with our students and gives them the tools and tips they need to be successful at school and at home. 

This year I built the orientation in Google Slides to be used as a choice board, 

and also as a way to present goals, information, resources, events and more throughout the year. 

In fact, that is the second thing happening right now.  We have kicked off related arts with Library Rotation 1. The related arts rotations last four weeks and we have each class for a week at a time. 

The lessons for TK-5th are built in Google Slides as choice boards too. 

Let me show you what our library orientation and lesson plans look like...

Since I will be using these Google Slides as a way to bring our program and resources together in one spot, I looked at the 2020-21 Library Rotations Google Doc and worked on the scope of work throughout the year tying in the library and technology curriculum and goals. 

I will share with the students in the beginning of each, what the goals and learning targets will be. 

To make it even more fun and interactive, I added Pear Deck to the library orientation and Rotation 1.  You can find out more about Pear Deck here. 

In this interactive Pear Deck drawing slide, students drew and wrote what they read over the summer.

I included the weekly events slide so they know what to look for with our events throughout the week each year.  We are participating in these together at school, and our at-home learners are too.

I included a slide to explain their own personal Van Meter Library and Makerspace To-Go card they will all get to take home.

This will help the students and their families locate everything they need. You will find more information out about this here in this post. 

Next, I included a slide for our Elementary Symbaloo.  By using Pear Deck, I am able to include a link to the Symbaloo which will allow them to bookmark the site and to....

...Our Virtual Makerspace. By having these two places, along with our library site, bookmarked on their Chromebooks we can make sure they will find everything they need throughout the year.

Now, we get to the lesson plans for TK-5th grade for Rotation 1.

On this slide, they can click on the circles to get to their grade level.

I added each slide as an individual link to their grade level Symbaloo and called it Library Class.  When they click on that, it will take them to just their slide that they can bookmark too. This slide will change with each rotation.

For the littles during our first rotation, I focused around beginning skills such as finding a book in the library and online, filling out our BOOKHUB forms to get a book from the library, being safe online, using their iPads with an app called Quiver and Dot Day, which is September 15.  They will be creating dots with Quiver and also on a paper coaster to hang in a school wide display.

On Fridays, all classes will explore creative site and experiences during Maker Friday.

As our TK and kindergarteners learn about how to login to Capstone Interactive and PebbleGo, I made a slide with a QR code so they can scan it with their iPads.  They are our only grade that uses iPads instead of Chromebooks throughout the day. 

Our first graders and second graders did a similar plan...

...and we added a digital citizenship lesson on Tuesday where they will use PebbleGo after a book and conversation around being safe online. 

This is where I also started to show them how to use Destiny to find and reserve books online, and how to find and read eBooks and listen to audio book.  

The big difference with third, fourth and fifth is adding Typing.com to their schedule.  They have all used this last year, so we just need to get them into the right group so they can start practicing at school and home again.

Ohhhhh and we also added a fun activity on Monday....our virtual StickTogether board that our kids LOVED!  You can read all about this here and get a code for a FREE one too.

I always like to include a Flipgrid so when they finish up their work, they can add to a fun Flipgrid we have together as a school community.  The first Flipgrid this year will ask what they have been reading and we will keep this going all year long.

I hope you are having a fun time kicking off the year in person or virtually with your students.  I am really looking forward to this year and can't wait to continue to share our library plans for each rotation. 

You will find a copy of the library orientation and lessons for Rotation 1 here. Please feel free to use this for your school community too.