The March Virtual Stickerboard Calendar Is Here and Filled With So Many New Stickerboards!

 

The March Virtual Stickerboard Calendar from our friends at StickTogether is here and filled with so many new Virtual Stickerboards! 

Every month, StickTogether creates a wonderful calendar that shows special events throughout the month. And the BEST part...they have created a monthly Virtual StickTogether Sticker Board Gallery to go along with these special events and celebrations!  

You will find the March Virtual Stickerboard Calendar here.

You will find out more about Virtual Stickerboards and how to use them with your students here.

Once you click on Create a Virtual Stickerboard, 

you will find the March 2023 Gallery.  

This gallery has all of the Virtual Stickerboards that correspond with the days on the new StickTogether Virtual Stickerboard Calendar. 

Check them out! 

The Virtual Stickerboards are FREE for everyone to use.  

Have fun using the March Virtual Stickerboards with your students and community too. 

A Special New Way To Celebrate All Readers During Read Across America Week!

 

As we celebrate Read Across America this week at our school, we wanted to do something special for all of our Van Meter Readers. 

It started out with our new I am a Van Meter Reader display to celebrate each class as readers. 

You can read all about this special display here where the Canva template for this sign can be found. 

It goes along with this super fun new way to celebrate our Van Meter staff members as readers too. 

You will find the directions and templates for this display here. 

After Natasha and I were done with these displays in the hallway right outside of our library, we decided to make the same image for all of our students. 

We started by having every student bring their favorite book to school on this special day. 

On Bring Your Favorite Book To School Day, we went around to each class and took their picture with their favorite book. 

We then used the same template in Canva that we used for our staff pictures. It is super easy to upload a class at a time and drag them into the template for each student. 

You will find the Canva template here.

Once they were complete in Canva, we downloaded the images and printed each on a quarter of a sheet of paper, laminated and cut them out. 

Each teacher got the stack of their students I am a Van Meter Reader pictures to hang on their lockers as we kicked off Read Across America Week. 

It was so fun to see our older students helping with this project. 

And we loved walking down the hallways on Monday to see all of our....

....Van Meter Readers! 

And our students loved finding them on their lockers too!  

This will be a wonderful way to celebrate all readers and what they love to read throughout the rest of the school year. 

Celebrate Day 2 Of Our "Reading Is For Everyone" Celebration...Let's Celebrate Our Favorite Books!

It's Day 2 of our "Reading Is For Everyone" celebration! 

We love celebrating Read Across America every year.  It is such a special way to celebrating reading and so many special books.  This year, it is on March 3, 2023.  You can learn more here on the NEA site. 

At our school, and at schools around the country, we celebrate Read Across America all week long by celebrating how Reading Is For Everyone. 

On February 27-March 3, we celebrate Reading Is For Everyone with special themed days each week. 

There is a fun activity for our kids tied to each day including dressing up in a favorite hat, in their favorite shirt, in their jammies and more. You can find the calendar above here.  Feel free to make a copy to change up for your school community. 

I also worked with my friends at Capstone to bring together 58 special Capstone Interactive eBooks for the Celebrate Reading Is For Everyone choice board collection. 

For each of the day, there are special books that go along with the daily theme. 

And today it is Let's Celebrate Our Favorite Books! 

There is something for every reader. 

You will find the link to share with students here.  If you want to make a copy, you will find it here.

We hope this will help make your special reading week extra special too. 

5 Steps To Bringing Kwame Alexander Bookfest To Your School!

 

One of my favorite parts of being a librarian is helping our students find and connect to books. This happens in the library, within classrooms, in the lunchroom, at after-school events, and even walking down the hallway. 

Discovery and connection can also happen through book clubs, a special way for teacher librarians to introduce students to new ideas, books, authors, and topics through reading, experiences, and wonderful conversations. 

This year, I used Kwame Alexander Bookfest from Follett.

Just as it outlines on the Bookfest site, student choice increases engagement and motivation. Bookfest is a unique book club, and the books are all chosen by Kwame, which ensures that students have plenty of opportunities to see themselves and others in the books. These books are so meaningful and aligned to what our students experience in their own varied cultures and lives! 

Personally, I have seen such excitement in students when we brought Bookfest to my school, Van Meter Elementary.

Let me tell you how I did this!  

You will find my new Follett blog, Five Ways for Bringing Kwame Alexander Bookfest to Your Library and School here. 

Join Our Upcoming Webinar On March 21st...Innovative Storytelling: Building Connections With Novel Effect and StickTogether!

 

On March 21, 2023 at 4:00pm CST, we would love to invite you to join us for the upcoming webinar hosted by StickTogether and Novel Effect. 

Join us for some magical read-alouds, a few soundscape surprises, & colorful burst of creativity from our friends StickTogether!

#WeStickTogether's mission is "to provide inclusive experiences that create a welcoming space for sharing, collaborating, & celebrating the simple joy of casual conversation & quality time together."

In this webinar, we'll share fabulous and inspiring ideas to innovate, create, and celebrate the beauty of stories using both StickTogether and Novel Effect!

You can register here today, friends.

Celebrate Day 1 Of Our "Reading Is For Everyone" Celebration...Let's Celebrate That Reading Is For Everyone!

It's Day 1 of our "Reading Is For Everyone" celebration! 

We love celebrating Read Across America every year.  It is such a special way to celebrating reading and so many special books.  This year, it is on March 3, 2023.  You can learn more here on the NEA site. 

At our school, and at schools around the country, we celebrate Read Across America all week long by celebrating how Reading Is For Everyone. 

On February 27-March 3, we celebrate Reading Is For Everyone with special themed days each week. 

There is a fun activity for our kids tied to each day including dressing up in a favorite hat, in their favorite shirt, in their jammies and more. You can find the calendar above here.  Feel free to make a copy to change up for your school community. 

I also worked with my friends at Capstone to bring together 58 special Capstone Interactive eBooks for the Celebrate Reading Is For Everyone choice board collection. 

For each of the day, there are special books that go along with the daily theme. 

And today it is Let's Celebrate Our Favorite Books! 

There is something for every reader. 

You will find the link to share with students here.  If you want to make a copy, you will find it here.

We hope this will help make your special reading week extra special too. 

Celebrate Read Across America With These Virtual Stickerboards! FREE For Everyone, Friends.

It's Read Across America Week and there are so many wonderful ways to celebrate. We are planning all kinds of special activities at our school including an author visit, dress up days, reading together, reading choice boards, and other fun events that celebrate reading. 

As we celebrate reading throughout our school, I just shared the Reading and Library themed Virtual Stickerboards from our friends at StickTogether with our teachers.  These will be super fun to do with our kids this week.  They will love working together to create beautiful images of reading, libraries, books and more. 

You will find these Virtual Stickerboards here on StickTogether's amazing new website.

Also, if Virtual Stickerboards are new to you, check out my blog post about how they work.  

We always have so much fun creating and collaborating on the Virtual Stickerboards. And one of the best parts...they are FREE for everyone. 

Have a fun week celebrating reading, friends.  

A Choice Board For St. Patrick's Day! You Can Find Two Different Choices Here.

                  

It's almost March and that means one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick's Day.  This one will join other special events in March including Women's History Month, Read Across America, National Crayon Day and the beginning of spring. 

As I put all of these together, I wanted to share the choice board for St. Patrick's Day. 

The one above includes the PebbleGo article about St. Patrick's Day. If you would like to make edits, you will find the link here.

I also put together one without PebbleGo. Your students can use this link and if you want to make changes you can make a copy here. 

The March Choice Board includes the St. Patrick's Day Choice Board. You will find it here, friends.

Let's Celebrate Women's History Month With This Choice Board, PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next!

                     

In March, we celebrate Women's History Month and the accomplishments of amazing women.  

As a teacher librarian, I love bringing together all of the books we have in our library about women in a special display for our teachers and students to read and discuss. I collaborate with the teachers to bring experiences to our students around Women's History Month.  I look for women to bring to our students through Zoom and Skype.  

And, one of my favorite things to do is to bring together online resources to give our students, teachers and families a place to celebrate Women's History Month as they learn, create, collaborate and explore great women throughout history. 

As I work on all of these resources and ideas, there are lots of places to look.  

I like to start with PebbleGo and...

...PebbleGo Next.  They are filled with amazing biographies about women our students will enjoy learning about and celebrating during Women's History Month. 

On the choice board I included images of PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next.   

You will find the Let's Celebrate Women's History Month Choice Board here to make changes and share with your students and teachers. 

I will be sharing more around Women's History Month soon, including ways to use PebbleGo Create and Capstone Connect. 

Let me know if there are other resources I should include here too. 

It's Time For Our March Choice Boards, Friends! You Will Find Everything You Need Here In This Post!

                

March is almost here and  I have put together Our March Choice Boards to share with all of you.  

March has a few special celebrations and events. I shared those in the March Choice Board too. 

Let's start with Our March Choice Board.  You will find it here to share with students.  If you want to make changes, you can make a copy here. 

Within the March Choice Board, there are several other choice boards.  I am going to include these in the list below. I hope this is helpful if you are wanting to change some things around or make additions. 

Let's start with the Learn about and celebrate special events in March column. 

Let's Celebrate National Crayon Day post here.

Let's Celebrate Women's History Month post here.

Let's Celebrate St. Patrick's Day post here. 

Celebrate Reading Is For Everyone for Read Across America post here. We are so excited about this program.

Take A Virtual Field Trip Around the World post here. 

And just as a reminder, remember to share it with your students by Publishing it to the web and sharing that link.  It will just show the slide when you share it that way. 

Please let me know if you have any questions or need help.  I am always happy to share and help you in any way.