Edgemont Teachers Love to Read!

I always enjoy browsing through bookstores that have "staff recommendation" tabs placed on various books.  I have a certain curiosity in knowing what others are reading and why they like particular books.  I thought that perhaps this same concept would work well in our library.  My hope was that by having "teacher recommendations", students would be more apt to check out a variety of books that they may not have tried otherwise. 

The teachers loved the idea and were eager to participate.  When the project was finally complete and in place, I was thrilled with the response from the students.  They were so excited to read the suggested books from both their current and past teachers.  The display has been in our library for a couple of months now and I still have students checking the board each week for ideas.

I couldn't fit the entire wall in a picture, but this will give you an idea of what it looks like.

 

 

I placed all of the recommended books in one area of the library so that students could easily find them.  It is difficult to keep those shelves full...so many of the books are checked out each week!

 

 

 

 

April is National Poetry Month

April is Poetry Month at Bella Vista! We celebrated by reading five different poems about dogs from different poetry books and the students voted on which ones they liked. Their favorite poem was "Mr. Beefy" from Once I ate a Pie. The second favorite poem was the book, Dogku. These poems were shared during story time to help me complete a district media module assignment. 

Before the book, Dogku was read to the students they were taught what a haiku is. They held their fingers up for the syllables in each line: 5,7,5 as the haikus from Dogku were read to them. Third through fifth grade students had the opportunity to write their own animal haikus in class and return them to the library when done. A teacher commented on this optional activity being very refreshing for the students to be creative and write and color. She said it was a nice fifteen minute break from testing. The haikus have been hanging up on the library windows through the month of April.

To see what else is going on at Bella Vista click the link to the Bella Vista Booklovers Blog! bvbooklovers.blogspot.com