A Choice Board To Learn About The 1621 Harvest Celebrate and Thanksgiving Using Capstone Connect

               

With the holiday coming up this week, I have created a choice board for our students and teachers to learn about the 1621 Harvest Celebration and Thanksgiving. 

I used our Capstone Connect to find two PebbleGo articles and eBooks to include in the choice board. 

In Capstone Connect, I searched Thanksgiving and 1621 Harvest Celebration. 

I then grabbed the link and attached it to a screen shot of the PebbleGo articles and eBooks...

...within the Google Slide of the choice board. 

I also included Turkey Trouble from Storyline Online. Our students love these read aloud by the Screen Actors Guild. 

Once all of the links to PebbleGo articles, eBooks and the video are added, I go to File and down to Publish to the Web. 

This will give you the option to Publish to the Web by clicking Publish. 

This is the link that you will share with your students. 

If you would like to make this for your students, make a copy of this Google Slide here and add links from your PebbleGo articles, eBooks and other resources. 

Check Out These NEW Downloadables That Pair With The Upcoming Capstone Spring 2025 Books!

 

Our friends at Capstone are getting ready for the Spring 2025 New Books and I couldn't be more excited to see all of these upcoming titles! 

As Capstone shared on the site, 

Dive into reading some of the books we’re most excited about for spring! Tour Sandy Shorts, an underwater town full of weirdly wonderful and friendly sea creatures in Axolotls!, and learn about cultural and religious holidays and celebrations in the new companion series to the beloved Yasmin stories in Holidays and Celebrations with Yasmin. 

Among our new picture books include two exploring and celebrating beauty—through honoring the Indigenous nations, cultures, and ancestral lands in I Am on Indigenous Land, and showcasing the stunning variation of beauty norms around the world in The Glam World Tour. Take a sneak peek at highlights of Capstone’s Spring 2025 titles before they hit the shelves.

You can get your sneak peek here, friends. 

They also created lots of amazing new downloadables for several of the new books. 

You will find all of these downloadables, and more, here on the Capstone site.  

There are perfect to pair up with these amazing new books in the library, classroom and other subjects like art and STEM. 

A Titlewave Tip...Did You Know You Can Find SLJ and Other Full-Text Book Reviews In Titlewave?

I use Titlewave for so many things throughout the month.  It's filled with so many helpful resources as we work on collection development for our libraries and classrooms. 

Did you know that you can find School Library Journal and other review journals full-text book reviews in Titlewave? 

This is such a helpful tool to use as we are discovering books and building lists. 

Watch this short video on where to find the full-text book reviews in Titlewave.

I think this Titlewave Tip will help you too! 

You can sign up for your FREE Titlewave Account from Follett Content Solutions here, friends.

The December 2024 Capstone Holiday Calendar Is Filled With Special Books and Events, Friends! You Will Find It Here.

 

It's almost December and time for a new set of books on the December Capstone Holiday Calendar.  I love using these calendars to highlight books each month from our collection. 

It's a great way to celebrate and learn about topics that tie into our curriculum including important historical events, and other special events that our kids love to learn and read about throughout the year. 

You will find the Capstone December Holiday Calendar here, along with the other months too. 

You will find all of these books at CapstonePub.com. 

When the Capstone Holiday Calendar comes out each year, I go through and mark the books we have in our library collection, and add the books to my list that I'd like to order for my collection each month too.

You can read all about the 2024-25 Capstone Holiday Calendar Poster here, friends. 

Here Is A Collection Of The 2024 Best Books Lists, Friends. Find The Link To This Collection & Learn How To Create One Too.

I love this time of year when all of the Best Books lists are announced.  I always bring them together in a Collection by Destiny and started the 2024 Best Books Collection today.  You can find it here. I will continue to add to it as I find more and more of the Best Books lists. 

Let me show you how I made the Collection by Destiny.  You will find Collections up at the top of the page in your Destiny Discover. 

After clicking on Collections, click on Private and Create Collection, which is shown in the image above. 

You will put in the Title and Description of the Collection.  I made this Collection Public because I want anyone to be able to view and use this one. 

This is also the window where you can add an Image and Color. 

I create the images for my Collections in Canva.  If you create the size 600px x 400px it will fit perfectly. 

This is also where you can share by click on...

..that little share button to Share the Collection. For this one, I want anyone with the link to view the Collection. I can grab the link here and also share in Google Classroom or by email.  I can also add specific People to view and edit too. 

There are two ways to add resources to your Collections. You can click on the little + sign in the right hand corner. 

You can also add the Bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar. This makes it so easy to add any URL to any of your collections. 

You will see in the image above how I found another list, clicked on Collections in my bookmark toolbar and added it to the growing Collection. 

Collections by Destiny are such a helpful way to curate and share resources for your students, teachers and professionally too. 

You've Been Book'd For Hour of Code Week, December 9-15, 2024! Check Out My Special Titlewave List.

We are getting ready to celebrate Hour of Code Week, December 9-15, 2024. We will be collaborating on coding projects, bringing exciting activities to our students, and sharing lots of books and eBooks with coding topics and stories. 

In fact, one of the best parts of special days like this is sharing these books with all of our students and teachers within the library, classrooms and even at home. There are so many special ones that will inspire our kids, while bringing them ideas and fun. 

I brought together a list of 14 coding books that we have in our library collection. I also created a choice board with these books and linked them to our Destiny Discover so our students can find and read these special books from our library. 

Let me show you how I set up this choice board for my school community. 

First, I created the choice board in a Google Slide.  I added the covers of the 14 books I included in the list.

Second, I went to our Destiny Discover and grabbed the links to each book. 

This is easy to do.  You just search for the book, click on the three little dots in the entry, 

and the drop down menu shown in the image above will appear. 

Click on Share and the link to the book will pop up. That is the url to share in the choice boards. 

I love how I can also download the QR Code.  Isn't that cool? 

Take the copied link and add it to the book cover.  

When every book cover is linked, you are ready to share the choice board. 

Go to File and down to Publish to the web.  

This will give you a link to share with the students and teachers.  

When they click on that published link, the You've Been Book'd For Hour of Code Week, December 9-15, 2024 choice board will pop up. They can then click on each book cover to find them in our Destiny where they can read more about the book, find them in our library and even put them on reserve. 

I am excited about this list of 14 special new books I put together in Titlewave.  In this choice board, you can click on any book cover to view in Titlewave and find the full book list there too. 

If you want to make a copy to add your own Destiny Discover links from your library, click here. 

Our students and teachers will love these coding books that are part of our You've Been Book'd program.  And I love how we can keep this program going all year long!  It brings so much to our readers each and every month.

The NEW December PebbleGo & PebbleGo Monthly Holiday Calendar Is Here! Turn It Into An Interactive Research Choice Board For Your Students & Teachers!

 

The NEW December 2024 PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next Monthly Holiday Calendar that our friends at Capstone create for us each month is here! 

In this post, I share more about the PebbleGo Monthly Calendars. 

I love making paper copies of these to share with our teachers and kids. 

They hang them up in their classrooms and hang them in our library too. I also share them online through social media and as an image in Google Classroom or Seesaw. 

The teachers even use the PebbleGo Calendars for mini research opportunities throughout each week. The students use PebbleGo Create to share what they learn throughout the month with the calendars. 

Here is the PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next December 2024 Holidays Calendar. 

Last year, when I was sharing the calendars with teachers and students, I thought....Hey, this would be really fun in a choice board! 

So, I opened up a Google Slide, uploaded the PebbleGo December 2024 Holidays Calendar, and added a little chalk board with text over the top.  

Then I went through the calendar and found every special day in PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next.  

For example, Christmas is on December 25, so they have the Christmas PebbleGo article featured. I went to PebbleGo and found the article about Christmas in PebbleGo.

 I grabbed the link, as shown in the image above. 

I took that link and added a linked text box around each special date. 

Now, when the kids click on a holiday, it will take them directly to that PebbleGo article.  

If you want to use the template to create your own, you will find the Google Slide here to make a copy and add links to the PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next articles. 

And to make it a choice board, just Publish to the web, as shown in this image above. 

You will share that Published Link with your students.  

I love sharing these interactive PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next Holiday Calendars with our students and teachers. They love learning all about these special days that are highlighted each month too.

I am excited to have the December 2024 PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next ready to go for the month. I hope you will find ways to use it with your students and teachers this month, and all throughout the school year too. 

Join Us This Thursday For Our NEW Demco Webinar, 5 Ways To Make Nonfiction a STAR in Your School! You Can Register Here, Friends.

                

We are excited to invite you to our upcoming Demco webinar this week on November 21, 2024 at 4:00pm CST.

This one is the third in our special series and is called 5 Ways To Make Nonfiction a STAR in Your School. 

As shared on the Demco site,

Join us to find out how to make nonfiction books a standout attraction in your learning spaces. Teachers, librarians, and educational professionals will walk away with impactful strategies that will help transform how students engage with nonfiction.

In this webinar, participants will discover:

1. 5 ways to make nonfiction a STAR in your library and classroom  
2. How to bring these ideas to your broader school community 
3. Shannon’s NEW nonfiction book selections

All webinars are archived and available for viewing within a week of the original presentation date. 

You can register today for our webinar, friends. We hope to see you there.