Top 10 Reasons
to visit the Richmond Hill Elementary School Library in 2018
Let's make 2018 the best year yet!
- We traveled to 7 different countries, 4 continents, and thousands of miles during virtual field trips, author visits, and Mystery Skypes.
- We collaborated on research projects, STEM challenges, and dove head first into our MakerSpace challenges.
- We celebrated World Read Aloud Day by Skyping with authors around the world and Read Across America by hosting the athletic teams from Richmond Hill High School.
- We rewarded our top readers of Book BINGO with laser tag and started our zen coloring station for students and staff.
- We celebrated our summer reading program by hosting a breakfast for all the students who completed their choice in summer reading as well as partnering with Midnight Star Pottery for students to make their own star reader pottery and a new book.
- We genrefied our fiction and nonfiction selections to help motivate our reluctant readers and expose students to different types of reading materials. We began diversifying our collection.
- We added 30 iPads and collaborative stations thanks to our amazing PTSO which we have been using to teach information literacy skills, hosting the Hour of Code, app smashing with Flipgrid, and giving students a voice in their library.
- This isn’t even all the amazing day to day, heart to heart activities, talks, learning experiences, and readers advisory that went on with our students and staff. I’m looking forward to an amazing 2018!!
Check out the top 10 reasons you should visit the Richmond Hill Elementary School Library and to work with your library media specialist in 2018. Our goal is to help enhance what you're doing in the classroom and help students become empowered learners and creators. Bring your students and let's have an awesome year!
Reason #10: Sphero
Reason #9: Ebooks
Reason #8: Our MakerSpace
We also have an online MakerSpace you can access from the classroom on Chromebooks or desktops. Visit it here:
Reason #7: Instructional Partnerships
Reason #6: Monthly STEAM Challenges
Reason #5: Bloxels
Reason #4: Professional Development
Reason #3: Virtual Field Trips and Mystery Skypes
Reason #2: Author Visits and Literary Connections
Reason #1: Reading
THE BOOKS, of course!!! The primary purpose of the library STILL remains THE BOOKS! All of our books are now genrefied and we've added over 400 new books this school year already!
If you haven't read Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer yet, do yourself a favor and read it. Here are a couple of important quotes from The Book Whisperer:
“Readers are made, not born. Few students spring out of the ground fully formed as readers. They need help, and we cannot assume that they will get it from home, but they should always get it from us, their teachers.”
“By middle school, students have an image of themselves as readers or nonreaders. Students who do not read see reading as a talent that they do not have rather than as an attainable skill.”
"Students will read if we give them the books, the time, and the enthusiastic encouragement to do so. If we make them wait for the one unit a year in which they are allowed to choose their own books and become readers, they may never read at all. To keep our students reading, we have to let them."
Martha Bongiorno, library media specialist
I hold a Bachelor of Science in Middle Grades Education, a Master of Science in Learning, Design, and Technology from the University of Georgia, and my Ed.S. in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia.
Email: mbongiorno@bryan.k12.ga.us
Website: http://discoveringtheremarkable.weebly.com/
Twitter: @Mrs_Bongi