Slime Time

The library makerspace has been busier than usual this week.  By student request, it was slime making week!  It's possible I may be banned from the supply room for excessive glue usage....

Thank you to the 6th graders who suggested this idea and also helped me adjust the slime recipe.  My first try at slime failed and the slime experts helped me fix the recipe.

HOW TO MAKE SLIME

Supplies:
Elmer’s Glue (a small handful)
2 pinches baking soda
1 squirt contact lens solution
glitter or food coloring

Instructions:

1. Pour out Elmer’s Glue into a bowl. 
2. Add color/glitter and mix.
3. Add 2 pinches of baking soda and mix quickly.
4. As your mixture starts to get sticky, add a squirt of contact lens solution.
5. Mix until slime forms.If it’s too sticky, add a bit more contact lens solution.
6. Wash the bowl and spoon. Take your slime home.

Buddy Reading- MS/ES

We celebrated Picture Book Month in the MS/HS Library by inviting our ES friends up to read with us.  Buddy reading is our most requested library activity (by both MS and ES students!)  Fun times were had by all.

Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices

Our juniors, seniors, and teachers were graciously invited to an author event, Unbound: Celebrating Women's Voices, at the Indian High Commission, in collaboration with the Dhaka Lit Fest.  Some of our students kicked off the evening by reading poetry.  Of course, they were awesome! 
Thank you to the Indian High Commission for a lovely evening and to Ms. Jahan for organizing the trip.

Mitali Perkins Visit

Grades 4-8 attended a wonderful presentation with Mitali Perkins this morning.  We are thankful to the PTA for sponsoring a visit to the school.  Her presentation entitled Stories on the Fire Escape  was about growing up and writing "between cultures" and the power of stories to keep us balanced.  It was very relevant for our diverse student population.  Thank you Ms. Perkins for taking the time to visit us!
If you missed seeing Mitali Perkins today or want to learn more, see her again tomorrow at the Dhaka Lit Fest!

Being in Grade 7 was hard!

The first books...11 years apart!

Rickshaw Girl is becoming a movie and was published in Bangla today!

Thank you PTA for sponsoring the visit!

Dhaka Lit Fest

Don't forget to attend the Dhaka Lit Fest this weekend.  It is always a fun event and there is much to do for all ages.
You can see another presentation with our visiting author, Mitali Perkins, who will be speaking there after visiting us.  Also, our own Ms. Jahan will be interviewing some of the authors attending the Lit Fest.
It's free to attend but you must register ahead of time. Register and find the program at the link below.

https://www.dhakalitfest.com/index.html

Signed Books!

A big THANK YOU to Ms. H for donating signed copies of the biographies of the Malaysian prime minister and his wife to the MS/HS Library.  Stop by the library to have a look at these facinating donations.

Library Lunch Hour

We made a big change this school year that I have been thinking about doing for awhile...

Food is now allowed in the library!

A few reasons we did this:

• Students were sneaking food anyway.  The constant monitoring to see if someone was eating a bag of popcorn or an apple was a time-sucker. In thinking about it, I really don't care if they are eating a bag of popcorn while they study.
• The cafeteria is very full at lunch.  Some students prefer to hang out here to relax and/or play games. Some were skipping lunch to be here.

We added extra trash-cans around the library and students have been doing well at picking up after themselves.  They were told at the start of the year that I have a fear of roaches and if I start seeing them crawl across the library the food privilege would go away.

Here's a few pictures of the library lunch hour:

Talking and eating with friends

These two have lunches from home on the seats beside them.

The video gaming crew

Collaborating on homework over lunch

Banned Books Week- it's here!

Middle School had many discussions this week about why books may be challenged.  Checkouts and holds of challenged materials soared, which always happens during Banned Books Week!

Our most requested hold this week...Thirteen Reasons Why.  Students were surprised to hear that the book is over 10 years old and the "movie factor" increased challenges of this book.

Find all the books below (and many more) in our libraries!

(ALA.org)

Banned Books Week 2018

We are busy getting ready for Banned Books Week September 23-29.  Stop into the library to learn about, and check out, challenged books.

A huge THANK YOU to Mr. Shoyab and Ms. Shuborna for taking the lead on the awesome Banned Books Week displays.

Summer Reading Bingo!

PTA is sponsoring Summer Reading BINGO for middle school students.  Complete the bingo board over the summer and win prizes!  Pick up your BINGO card in the library or download and print below.  Happy Summer Reading!

Prizes:

For 3 BINGOs (three lines): 

1 Chatime Drink

For 6 BINGOs (six lines): 

Pizza Party Invite

For Full BINGO card: 

Entry into a drawing for a $50 Gift Card from Amazon

Emoji Book Reviews

Thank you to the team at NIST in Bangkok for sharing this great idea for Emoji Book Reviews.  I was wondering what to do to get students to review more books (because I can't keep my review shelf full all by myself) and this idea is really taking off.  Students love it!

I used many ideas from this NIST blog post.  The NIST bookmarks are beautiful; I wish our colors were green and blue but we went with Tiger orange to show our school spirt.

Here are a few photos from our review shelf:

Her Stories

The creators of Her Stories are coming for a visit! 

"Told over the span of 1000 years, HerStories explores the lives of 21 outstanding women of Bengal and present day Bangladesh. Educationalists, poets, athletes, artists and activists, the heroines of HerStories are home-grown role models for future generations."

-Her Stories Website

See the newsletter or one of the librarians for visit details.  And, enjoy this Her Stories book trailer:

  

Buddy Reading in the MS/HS Library

This week our middle school students are buddy reading with our elementary students.  This is one of our most requested library activities by students and teachers at all grade levels.  We enjoyed several great picture books and Grade 7 even read the tall tales they wrote to Grade 1 students. Over the 2 years we've been doing this, I've seen the read-aloud skills of our middle school students improve a great deal!

Rise of the Wolf by Curtis Jobling

Amazon.com

Drew grows up on a small farm, which I learned from Mr. Jobling was based off a fantasy version of the US.  (Previously, I had a European map in my mind!)
One evening he and his mother are attacked by a werecreature and for the first time, Drew changes and becomes a werewolf.  After running from home when his father returns and mistakenly believes he killed his mother, the first book in the series follows Drew's adventure through the kingdom as he discovers how to use his ability to transform and learns his rightful place as king of the werelords.  There are six books in the Wereworld series.  A great read!

Find the entire Wereworld series in our library at: FANTASY F JOB

Author Visit: Curtis Jobling

We just finished a fantastic author visit with Curtis Jobling, author of several picture books, the YA series of Wereworld and Max Helsing and the creator of Bob the Builder!  Mr. Jobling worked with students PreK-Grade 12 in homeroom classes, art classes and Humanities/English classes.
A big takeaway...."Keep your hobby! You never know where it will lead you."  A valuable thing for students and parents to hear. Below are a few pics of his work with MS/HS students:

ES Librarian and me with Mr. Jobling

A fun-filled MS lesson on writing short stories.

Getting my caricature drawn in MS/HS art workshop

High School English writing workshop

Book Speed Dating

Book Speed Dating has been a hit in the library this week.  Students had four "dates" with different books and then ranked their dates using an emoji rating system.  Many students left with 2-3 new books, which is great for our upcoming discovery week.  No devices allowed, but books are!

Credit to Jessica Drinks; I used her slides on SlideShare as a guide in creating this presentation.

Happy Holidays!

(Vicious-Speed, Creative Commons CC0 1.0)

Come craft in the library this week!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will have craft stations set up in our classroom area.  Come create something for yourself or a friend during breaks or before/after school.

Our crafting stations:

• Cut paper tree
• Beaded ornaments
• Snowflakes
• Holiday cards

While you're here, check out a book to read over the winter break...

 📗👍  

Happy Holidays from your library!

Winter Break Hours

The ES and MS/HS libraries are open during winter break from 10:00-2:00 on the following days:

December 17-21

January 3-4

Regular hours resume on Sunday, January 7.

What to do with the weeded books?

During our secondary library weed, the ES librarian and I decided to weed our professional library as well.  We now had several thousand weeded books.  What to do with all those books?  A few ideas below....

BOOK ART

The middle school art class made these amazing creations which are now on display in our library.

	We keep all our thicker books in a box in the back room so art students can practice carving as they work towards a final creation.

BOOK TEA
We hosted a book tea for teachers and staff.  We worried we would be challenged for giving away so many "good" books.  But, teachers were grateful.  Students also took books.  Once Chinese student came by and took every book on China we had weeded.  Some staff members shopped for Christmas for their families.  The book "Too Cool to Get Married" was put in a teachers' mailbox by a fellow staff member and is still circulating around the school as a joke.

Other things we did with our books:

1. Our high school Service Learning groups took boxes of books for their organizations (orphanages, schools, etc.)
2. A parent working for an international aid organization took many of our fiction books for libraries she is helping to set up throughout the country.
3. One of our secretaries has parents who run a school and she took several boxes of books
4. Last Resort: Once we gave away everything we could, whatever was left went to our general services office.  They sell them in bulk at an auction where they are then resold or recycled.