Finally, accessible ebooks for our students!

A fantastic email came through my box a few days ago: Overdrive is up and running for Thompson School District. I love it! Last year I piloted an ebook "shelf" from Follet and while the interest was great, the application was clumsy and could only be used on Apple products.

Since last year the percentage of our kids who have e readers and tablets has sky rocketed. Love it! Getting the kids to bring both their library card AND device to me so I can help them download from the library has been a challenge...usually one or the other makes it, or the Kindle app has not been previously downloaded and there goes our 15 minutes of time.

This is a perfect fit! FREE, QUALITY titles available to our students with their login info. Right now the collection has 300 titles but I expect that to grow.

Even if I wasn't at a STEM school I would be thrilled with this support from our district. Simply, this is where our kids are going and I love that we are meeting them with such great options.

Leprechaun Traps arriving in Library!

Every year, we have the same problem in March: pesky Leprechauns turn the library upside down with their mischief and pranks. Some days entire book shelves are upended, our shelfmarkers have been misplaced, and once or twice fiction books have been in non fiction! (#library problems, right?)

2nd grade used to do an entire unit planning and designing Leprechaun Traps and the library would be full of intricate cages and ladders. This year 2nd grade had a PBL that zapped most of their time but I still wanted to have the Leprechaun magic over here. Next year they come back as older, wiser 3rd graders who just give me The Look.

We have been researching the little elves and even though they are sneaky and private, we have found that they enjoy gold and sweet treats. We wonder if that is the key to getting their attention. I will keep you updated on what we find, I LOVE the traps the kids are doing on their own and bringing.

Anatomy of a Library PBL

It was the most organic PBL I have seen: we had a genuine problem and the students were charged with fixing it. Our school became a STEM school this year and we needed a way to identify the change. I frontloaded the kids with logo lessons and started the discussion about what we wanted our logo to say about us.

Should we keep our school colors of blue and gold? What about our mascot, the Stallion? Does every element of STEM need to be represented? I called in the Professionals and was thrilled when Wes Stobbe, a designer with Pearl Izumi agreed to come speak to our kids.

Wes brought an impressive selection of his work, on cool sports gear, print, and electronic mediums. The kids were engaged and full of questions. One of the most important things Wes did was help the kids think through the message graphic design sends.

Our art teacher was next, and she led the students in designing a logo that was to be put before The Panel. The Panel consisted of our Art Teacher, our Principal, the owners of Top Shelf Printing Company and Wes Stobbe.

These are two of our finalists, as drawn by the students. The Panel met and chose the winner. The Printing company was able to digitally recreate the logo for us and we then sold t shirts and hoodies with our new logo.

The best part of the PBL? It solved our problem! The students LOVE the new logo, as much as they LOVE that it was created by a 3rd grade student in our school. The kids designed, discussed and weighed in on this entire process. I would have to say they owned it from start to finish.