Last Wednesday and Saturday we had our parent conferences, without students, due to Covid regulations. It is always fun for me to chat with the parents, I really enjoy it. I love sharing news of their child and the books they love, as well as recommending books to parents. On Saturday I thought it would be fun to have the parents participate in our estimating competition that we’ve been running all of March. Parents were impressed with the improvement they saw in children’s estimating skills and so I convinced them to have a go too. I knew the students would get a kick out of seeing their parents having a turn at something so many of them have been doing every day. We’ve been doing this for all of March and as the kids have enjoyed it so much, we will continue through April
Well done to 2FJ Jamie’s mum for guessing the closest number without going over it. I hope you like the prize Jamie chose for you.
Additionally, thank you to the parents who volunteered to help us shelve the books on Wednesday and Saturday, and sorry Saturday folks, I was too busy supervising Edward’s Dad Allen with the painting to take photos of your hard work.
We had our last virtual visit with Who Would Win author Jerry Pallotta this week. Monday’s hour with 5th grade meant that Jerry has spoken with all of our Elementary students. While there is nothing like meeting someone in person, we did the next best thing and now have a relationship with Jerry where we can chat back and forth and he is always happy to answer students questions and see the wonderful books and book covers the students continue to create.
Hooray
The Month we’ve all been waiting for….drumroll please…it’s nearly April, or, as we like to call it in the library, Books to Eat Month!
This April we also have Battle of the Books for 31 5th graders, and our Cardboard Challenge, so it will be a little more wonderful than normal.
Firstly, if you type in books to eat in the search at the top right corner of the page, you can scroll through the last 8 years of Books to Eat. Even though Covid kept us out of the library last year, it did not keep us out of our creative kitchens, and we had plenty of entries from all over the world. Some of the links may have changed, but there are still plenty of videos and photos to scroll through once you’ve done that search on my blog.
If you have access to You Tube, here are two long compilations with many many ideas for you.
If you have access to Youku, here is a video for you of Books to Eat 2019 Sorry about the ads.
Some people call it March Madness, I’m choosing to find the Magic in the Madness. We have so much fun in the library every day, so many kids actually run into the space with excitement, it is wonderful. I know some of our parents really miss it, and we sure miss you too. We are really excited to see many of you this Wednesday and Saturday, please be sure to stop by.
It has indeed been a busy month, we are barely half way through; here are some of the highlights.
Jerry Pallotta Virtual Visit
We’ve had Jerry Pallotta, the author of the very popular Who Would Win series visiting with our students. So far he has seen every grade except 5th, and he will meet with them on the morning of March 29th. Ask your child if they’ve read a Who Would Win book, or one of Jerry’s alphabet books. In a writing career that didn’t start til he was 32, Jerry has published over 100 books; only one of them is fiction. Jerry really engaged the students with his stories of travel in Africa and Antarctica and kept their interest sharing some wonderful footage of his trips. He has been a great resource to inspire our students that ideas come from everywhere, keep your eyes open, and stay curious. He shared that he does much of his research through books glorious books, as well as on the ground travel and experiences.
How many books checked in today competition
We’ve been keeping track of how many books are checked in each day since November, well, we always know, due to our destiny database, but we’ve been SHARING how many, and sorting them in to categories each morning with the students. It has been AMAZING. Seriously. The kids have been SO engaged, and learned so much without even realizing it. So for the month of March, we’ve been getting the students to guess how many books they think will be checked in today. 2nd grade have been really improving and this week we even had our first 1st grader guess the EXACT amount. Woo hoo
Before I morphed into being a librarian, I was a 5th grade home room teacher for 7 years. Prior to that I was a High School Drama and English teacher for 12 years.
Deciding to get my Masters as a Library Media Specialist was one of the best professional decisions I’ve made. Every week I get to combine my love for Drama, Reading and Children as I enjoy 22 classes for 30-40 minute check out sessions where we start with a mini-lesson then move on to browse and borrow.
The mini-lesson is generally a read aloud, book talk or database tutorial. We might go over how to use our library catalog ‘destiny’, how to find our favourite books via Sora (Overdrive), how to work our old school ipads and ipod nano’s which are loaded with digital books and audiobooks, or how to navigate a NON touch-screen kindle “it’s not working, it’s not working.”
Sometimes at the start of a class I might model pulling up a chair in front of a non-fiction shelf and browsing; kids need help knowing how to do this well; shelf markers and clear guidelines help a lot. It drives me CRAZY when they hold their books, or worse, drink bottles, in their hands while they’re browsing shelves. I’m like “put everything down, roll up those sleeves, take a deep breath, we are here to find a great book, now let’s go shopping!”
For my interview to attain the ES Librarian position, I wrote a poem, I Love a Buzzing Library. This week, as the library buzzes larger than life, I am reminded that this is exactly what I wanted.
From November to February, we kept data on how many books were checked in each morning, and sorted them into categories based on their area in the library such as picture books, non fiction and graphic novels etc. After displaying the data daily for months, we thought we’d see how good the students were at estimating how many books would be returned each day, with the cut off being 9 am.
It’s been fun seeing their guesses, ranging from 0 (never going to happen) to 1,000 (it’s possible, our biggest check in so far was 807 books on one day). On some mornings we’ve had almost 1/3 of the students make a guess, that certainly creates some library buzz. Congratulations to the students who guessed the closest numbers without going over the total, David 2SE, Bryan and Roy 3NM, Chloe 3ED, Sophia X 4BW, Jion, Olivia, Titian, Monique 4BW, Sophie 5DN, Ellie and Alex 5MR and Michelle from 5SJ. Each child will receive a brand new book, often signed by the author.
Take a look at some of our activities in the library this week.
We are getting ready to celebrate International Women’s Day and have put a LOT of purple books out on display. Every day we hear “why are there so many purple books?” Hey, who knew? Turns out we DO have a lot of purple books!
Today I get the chance to talk to Pre K about Heroes and Villains. These kiddos are only 3 and 4 years old, and delightful, I’m looking forward to some fun anecdotes about who THEY consider a hero and a villain. I’m expecting most of the usual suspects; every check out time is filled with (mostly) girls wanting princess books and (mostly) boys wanting Ultraman, no matter how many other gems I share with them.
So I’ve collected a few different books to share with them showing heroes don’t always wear capes. Thanks to Kamala Harris I have a great place to start with her 2019 book, Heroes are Everywhere. This book shows us that heroes are all around us, in our family, our neighbourhoods, our schools and all over our communities. Kamala shares the attributes of what makes a person a hero, and acknowledges that if you have those attributes, you can be someones hero.
Another book I’ll share is Stephen Savage’s Supertruck, which I’m sure the students will love. Right now, in America, with severe storms raging in places like Texas, a snowplough is certainly fulfilling the role of hero. This book teaches us not to judge something by their appearance, or just one of their functions, as it is the humble garbage truck that saves the day in the end.
You’ve probably heard the saying “Choose a Job You Love, and You Will Never Have To Work a Day in Your Life” which is widely attributed to Confucius.
Sometimes when my alarm goes off at 5.30, I might disagree with the above quote, however, most of the time, from 7.30 am when I see the first students roll in, I feel fortunate to have a job I consider a vocation.
Some of the reasons I love my job include the wealth of resources at my disposal, human, digital, and physical. Our Shanghai American School Pudong Elementary School Library caters for students from PreK 3 – 5th grade. I am the sole librarian, and I am lucky enough to have two full time assistants. We have been a team of 3 for nearly 9 years now and have become stronger and smarter with our practice. Currently we have about 350 students, in 22 classes, so, if you’ve done the maths, you’ll see that our class sizes are relatively small, and if you are ready for more mathematical fun, we have well over 25,000 print books which is well above any recommended library quotas I’ve ever seen. Add to that a solid collection of Ipod nano’s (now considered vintage!), Ipads and kindles stocked with e and audio books that students can check out, and you can see we also have a robust digital collection. Oh, and we are spoiled with a growing collection of over 7,000 digital books in our Overdrive collection. I know I know, I am one very lucky librarian.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsJob of the day…and I use that term loosely…read these picture books to children. #score #kidlit #saslibrary pic.twitter.com/E2SUiO8orm
— Barefoot Librarian (@kimbrap) October 16, 2017
Here are some of the wonderful books I’ve been reading and sharing this week.
My name is Kimbra Power and this is my 17th year at SAS. Ms Joji, Ms Stella and I are your library team, and this is our 10th year together. My husband Simon and I have two daughters, Hannah and Mimi, and they both started PreK at SAS. My older daughter Hannah is now in her 2nd year of university in Melbourne, and my younger daughter Mimi starts High School this year.
Library Catalog To access your school library account, follow these instructions and before you begin, know your school ID number.
For students, this will be a 7-digit number, beginning with 235 following the letter P (for patron) You do NOT need to put the letter P in. That 7-digit number is your username AND password to access our school library catalog.
For parents, this will be a 6-digit number, following the letter P (for patron) You do NOT need to put the letter P in. That 6-digit number is your username AND password to access our school library catalog.
*Go to https://destiny.saschina.org/
*Under Elementary Libraries on the left of the screen, click on Shanghai American School Pudong Elementary. You MUST do this before you click on ‘login’, otherwise the site won’t recognize your ID number.
You are now looking at the PD ES catalog, and can search for books from here, in any of our 4 libraries, just by typing their name in to the search bar, where it says ‘Find’
*Click on Log in at the top right of the screen. Once you are logged in, you can put books on hold, renew books as long as you have nothing overdue, click on ‘My Info’, see your check out history and more.
Overdrive/Sora We use the Sora App to access our digital library, Overdrive.
*Download the Sora App.
*Open it and find your school by searching for Shanghai American School (even though it says the Puxi campus address, click on that, it is correct)
*Every student from grade 3-12 has their own Sora Account (with their school ID) If your child is 2nd grade or below, use YOUR ID number as a parent.
*Your ID number is your username and password, type those in, and you are good to go.
Elementary Databases Linked is a wonderful resource for you to bookmark regarding the huge amount of incredible digital resources you have access to. Details on how to log in to them can be found linked in the LibGuide. https://libguides.saschina.org/c.php?g=930560
While you’re looking at our LibGuides, check out this one showing some of our wonderful staff, volunteers, parents and students. https://libguides.saschina.org/c.php?g=922977
If you have any questions, you can reach me by e mail kimbra.power@saschina.org
Be well and have a terrific school year.
This year is our 8th year of running Books to Eat, and it will be a little different. No one will have to queue up and fight over making sure they get to eat THEIR creation at the end of the day, this year, that pleasure will be ALL YOURS!
While we won’t get to smell the scent of sugar through our library for days at a time, you can enjoy the wonderful aromas of whatever you make it in your home.
We would like as many families as possible to make the effort, and take the time, to engage in this wonderful opportunity to create something together.
The concept is simple and is essentially-make something edible to go with a book. You could go about this a number of ways.
You could think about something you know how to bake/cook, something you like to bake, or want to bake, and THEN look for a book that MATCHES your edible dish.
or
Perhaps you have a favorite book that you like to read with your child, and so you look at the book through a new lens, thinking of something edible you could match it with. It could be that you bake a cake that looks like the cover of the book, or a character or scene in the book. It might be that you make something that is mentioned or shown IN the book.
I am sharing a couple of videos here, one via Youku so everyone in China can access it, and two via Youtube for those that have a VPN.
Here is a link to the Youku clip sharing Books to Eat entries from 2019. There are ads at the beginning, be patient. This link will work in China.
Search books to eat on the top right corner of this page to see many many other posts about the even over the years, including many wonderful photos.
Click here to see the Books to Eat Fact Sheet that provides a good timeline for running the event during regular times.
Yours in Creativity
Please use the #books2eat2020 when posting on social media and I’d love to be tagged too so I can see as many entries as possible.
Kimbra
the barefoot librarian 