A couple of years ago I wanted my 5th grade students to practice their Power Point skills. I was looking for a theme and thought, "Hey, let's do favorite authors! Students can choose their favorite, find some facts about the author, and then share those in a Power Point!" Simple, right? Wrong! I was surprised when students struggled to come up with an author they liked. I had been reading books to these kids for years. We had talked about authors - even completed author studies. Surely they knew authors they enjoyed reading. Nope. This got me to thinking about what more I could do to help students recognize authors, their work, and the characters they create. One way I am going to do this is to plan more author studies. I will be implementing this in my lessons this school year. Each grade will have at least one author study each school year. I will be highlighting authors more when we read their books. I will try to have photos of authors and some facts to share with students as we read books throughout the year. And finally, I have dedicated a book case to display an Author of the Month Spotlight. I created some signs to go in my display and I am using author posters that I found on The Book Bug blog. At the beginning of each month I will talk with students, across the grade levels, about the author in our spotlight. I will read the author poster to the students and we will look at some of the books written by that author. I will book talk some of these books in the hopes that students will check them out and give them a try. My first author spotlight, for October, was Gertrude Chandler Warner, author of The Boxcar Children mysteries. November's author spotlight will be Jan and Stan Berenstain. I know the kids are familiar with the Berenstain Bears, but I want them to be familiar with the Berenstain authors as well. I think I will try that favorite author Power Point assignment again in the future. Hopefully, the kids will have trouble choosing between all of their favorite authors!
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About me . . .Formerly a classroom teacher. Currently a School Library Media Coordinator. I loved being in the classroom, but now that I am in the library I can't imagine doing anything else! The library is my favorite place to be. From my rocking chair to my ABC rug to the smiling student faces checking out books, the library just can't be beat! Archives
March 2020
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Learning in the Library
I have a fixed schedule in my library which means I get to see all the students in my library classes each week. This blog highlights some of the things we are learning and some of the great things going on in our library!