Score 1 for the Harry Potter Fan Club!! :)

Last week, I encouraged my 4th and 5th graders to try new books and used Harry Potter as an example:

"If all I'd ever read was Harry Potter, you know what I'd walk around calling people who weren't magical? ... Muggles. And I'd also try to cast spells on people. 'Wingardium leviosa! Expelliarmus!'"

Well, it became apparent that I love the Harry Potter books (probably because I said, "Y'all. I LOVE Harry Potter!!!") and today, my 5th graders nearly cleaned me out of them!! I was so excited!! Not necessarily because they were getting into HP, but because they were listening and taking my suggestions! We had to have a "guess a number between 1 and 100" moment for one book that I recommended (I only have one copy!), and there were at least 6 students who wanted in on it. Another girl actually waited for me to look up the author of one of the books that I recently read that's one of the Bluebonnet Award nominees. I'd recommended it to her and before she left, she was already in chapter 2 and said, "Miss Jordan! You're right! This book is really good!!"

Digital Citizenship and First Checkouts!

Last week was a great success! Still have some work to do on the classroom management of some classes, but it will get better.

Yesterday it was totally my fault. I'm giving my six year olds too much credit. They were kinders just last year!! So today we spent much more time on procedures for how checking out books were going to work. A couple of my sweethearts didn't get to check out books today because they made some very bad choices that involved obscene gestures (big no-no!). We watched this adorable video about Sammy the Shelfmarker and it helped my littles remember how to use the shelf markers to avoid making a mess on the shelves! My kinders will watch it next week, too. I think they will love it. It really is super cute!!

This week our lesson is on digital citizenship. The things I'm harping on most are to never use the internet as a harmful tool (cyberbullying), and to neeeeeeever give your personal information to strangers (especially online where creepers hang out [says the blogger...]). It's not a very fun lesson, but it is incredibly important. Especially for students this young. Start their training early!

My favorite part of this week so far has been seeing how excited my kids are about checking out books!! They're constantly asking for specific titles and get sad when they're already checked out. Not that them being sad makes me happy...it's their zeal that does! :) And I almost forgot!! I convinced a girl to try Nancy Drew!! She'd never read any of them and said that she liked mysteries, so I got her to check out the very first one: The Secret of the Old Clock! Makes my heart sing!

Anyway, on to the next day!!