Library Services Newsletter
November, 2017 Paralibrarian Edition
Native American Heritage Month
My Denver Card and DPL Databases
Did you know there is a partnership between Denver Public Schools, Denver Public Library and Denver Parks & Recreation called the MY Denver Card? The card allows them free access to recreation centers, pools, the Skyline Park Ice rink, and nine of the City's cultural partners. The MY Denver card also serves as a Denver Public Library card until they turn 18. This student data sharing agreement should help facilitate access to DPL's online databases. In fact, we have information in the overviews below on how to create online accounts for students that missed the 'opt in' deadline for DPS schools in the fall (students can still get a MY Denver card all year, they just won't automatically get a DPL card created for online use).
Read more details in the overviews below. Make sure you distribute the correct information to the appropriate audience because the one for library staff and teachers tells you how to create Denver Public Library generic accounts which DPL has graciously allowed us for our staff but not for students or families. It violates their terms of agreements to spread that information beyond teaching staff.
Info for students and parents
Please let us know if you have questions at libraryhelpdesk.dpsk12.org or reply to this flyer!
Library Spotlight
This month we are turning the spotlight on Erika Cleven, para-librarian at Marrama Elementary. Erika has been very helpful in being our “go-to” mentor for newly hired staff in the far northeast area. It’s been such a tremendous help to us knowing that we can always count on her support. Erika has been at Marrama for 4 years and is committed to providing her students with fun opportunities to love libraries and books.
As you can see from the photo below, Erika enjoys creating fun, eye-catching book displays and bulletin boards and she welcomes any opportunity to be creative. One of the things that Erika loves most about being in the library is when she suggests books to kids…and they end up loving the books that she suggests! She commented that, “It feels good to know that I am in touch with the kids and the books.” Let’s hear it for successful readers advisory! Erika tries to find time to sponsor a book club every year and she has observed that the students really do enjoy reading the same books as their friends. She has also done Readers Theater Club during lunch time providing more opportunities for students to love being in the library and expand their reading proficiency. She’s a trooper when it comes to providing book fairs – she does three a year!
When asked about what advice she would share with other para-librarians, Erika said that she believes that putting a lot of thought and time into creating a comprehensive book order is something that is important to your total school community. She loves reading Mo Willems books during story time because they are so much fun. (We agree!) She also provides the opportunity for her younger students to have “buddy reading” time with a stuffed friend – which they thoroughly enjoy. Congratulations to Erika Cleven for “PUTTING KIDS FIRST” in the Marrama library!
Deb Romero - Library Services
Makerspace Hub
Library Services is pleased to offer 12 new makerspace kits available for checkout from our central Classroom Library collection! There are kits for students as young as ECE. Our new kits are: Bloxels, Gears! Gears! Gears!, Green Screen & Stand, KEVA contraptions, KEVA structures, K’NEX Simple Machines, littleBits Arduino, littleBits STEAM Student Set, Osmo Classroom Kit + Coding, Q-BA-Maze, Playmags, and Rigamajig Junior. Find out how to check out and curriculum connections at our website: bit.ly/DPSMakes
Every month we will highlight a few of our kits.
BLOXELS
Bloxels is a hands-on platform for students to build, collaborate, and tell stories through video game creation. Students can build and animate original characters, develop villains, add in power-ups, and more – all done directly with the Bloxels Game Builder Kit and then activated with the FREE Bloxels Builder App. Each kit contains five boxed sets so that more students can build at a time. Each boxed set requires a compatible device and app and there are no devices included with the kit. Most activities are scalable in complexity but kit is recommended for Grades 3+.
GEARS! GEARS! GEARS!
This 150-piece super building set of colorful, spinning gears will put creativity, motor skills, and hands-on construction play to the test. Recommended for Grades ECE+.
GREEN SCREEN AND STAND
Help your students with their digital storytelling and media creation with this 6’ x 9’ ChromaKey green screen muslin backdrop and 8’ tall adjustable backdrop stand.
Computer Science Learning Opportunity
See their flyer for more information.
Ideas from your library colleagues at the Expo....
What's the one book you would recommend to kids?
What's the one digital tool you would recommend?
Check out the wordles below for your answers. The more responses were the same, the larger they are represented.
Books to Share in honor of Veteran's Day
The War that Saved my Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Grades 3-5 Ten-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada's twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn't waste a minute—she sneaks out to join him.
So begins a new adventure for Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read, and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan—and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. But in the end, will their bond be enough to hold them together through wartime? Or will Ada and her brother fall back into the cruel hands of their mother?
Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis
Grades 5-8 Meet Mare, a World War II veteran and a grandmother like no other. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less than perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American Battalion of the Women's Army Corps. Now she is driving her granddaughters—two willful teenagers in their own rite—on a cross-country road trip. The girls are initially skeptical of Mare's flippy wigs and stilettos, but they soon find themselves entranced by the story she has to tell, and readers will be too. Winner of the Coretta Scott King Award.
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Grades 9-12 Since its first publication, The Things They Carried has become an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul.
Library Services
Email: libraryhelpdesk@dpsk12.org
Website: http://etls.dpsk12.org/library_services
Location: 1617 S Acoma St, Denver, CO, United States
Phone: 720-423-1842