Library Scavenger Hunt

I’m feeling guilty for being a blog slacker, but it’s been crazy with state testing and finishing this semester of grad school.

So I do have something quick to share. Doing a library scavenger hunt seems like a requirement. I haven’t done one before because, well, it seemed boring. Then the other day I had a thought. I’m obsessed with my Go Animate avatar. She’s the cutest thing EVER. My kids love her too. So I incorporated her into our hunt! I hid 25 little Tiffs (all in different poses) around the library. Students raced to find all of the little librarians and describe each location. The kids loved it! Fun times 🙂

CMS Library’s Limited Time Offer!

This is the title of an email I sent to my teachers today. I’ve done an obscene amount of weeding in the fiction section and I’m trying to give away as many of the books as I can to classroom libraries. In hopes of enticing teachers to take books, I sent this infomercial style email. The teachers got a laugh out of it, so I thought I’d share it:

Teachers —
 
I know that you are all VERY excited about testing next week. Especially since you are going to have the incredible opportunity to spend some quality time with your homeroom students. Some of your students are going to have a nice chunk of time to do some reading after completing their tests. I would like to think that ALL of our precious darlings are going to have a library book that they are already engrossed in and can’t wait to read. Sadly, I know this won’t be the case. In fact, there may even be a child that gives you that deer-in-headlights stare when you ask where their book is.
 
THANKFULLY, I have the solution to this annoying little problem. I have plenty of give away books that you can have for those times when your students have somehow managed to not have a book on hand!
 
Now I know you are busy and the last think you are thinking about is running to the library to get some of these books. Lucky for you, I’m willing to deliver! Let me know about how many books you would like for your classroom library, and my workers will deliver them to you classroom. What a great deal, right?
 
If you respond to this email with the number of books you would like, you can expect your delivery within the next day or two. And if you’d like, I can even throw in a free set of encyclopedias!
 
Don’t delay! You won’t want to be faced with a lack-of-books situation next week!
 
Your librarian,
Tiff 🙂

I’m a Green Screen Machine!

First of all….OMG I got a new green screen!!! It came in last week and we are LOVING it! I reorganized my “office” – as if I have time to be in office, what a joke! – and transformed it into a filming studio. Check it out:

Pretty sweet, huh? And those big black cases are full of cameras! We have sets of both digital cameras (with video feature) AND a new set of Flip cameras, which rock my socks. Plus we have tripods and all that good stuff that makes life easier. Yes, I know how lucky I am.

I also know how lucky I am to work with such great teachers. They know that nothing makes me happier than having them come by and want to work with me to plan some awesome tech project with their classes. I had the chance to show a quick little example of how the green screen works at our faculty meeting last week, and now the ideas are flowing freely.

The reason that I decided to buy the green screen was for my 7th grade ELA’s poetry projects. Last week, they spent a good bit of time in the library researching a poet. They used the information gathered from their research and from analyzing their poets work to create a Fakebook page for their poet. This “Fakebook” is the best I’ve seen, and I learned about it on Kelly Tenkely’s AWESOME blog.

The next phase of their project was to create a music video relating to poetry concepts or the poet they chose to research. Enter the Mighty Little Librarian — green screen machine! Each group came to the library, did a little practicing, then we recorded their music video in our new “studio”! The following day, the whole class came in to the library computer lab to do their editing. I introduced the students to JayCut to use the chroma key effects. They did such a great job! You can check out my two favorite videos here. I did do some touching up in iMovie since these are the ones I decided to share…I just couldn’t help myself. Isn’t it great?? I could watch this over and over and still laugh every time. This is why middle schoolers are the best.

I put my favorites in the Friday video today, and now everyone wants to use the green screen! We are going to have some fun projects throughout the rest of this year!