Maker Clubs Finish Strong! Spooky Creations

Today we wrapped up the first session of our maker clubs and it was incredible to hear our students share what they learned from this experience. As parents began to enter the library for our presentation, there was a flurry of activity. The students were creating until the very last minute!

We had a full house, and the students were excited to show their creations! The maker club had created a haunted house, a graveyard with rotating tombstones, a spider and a scorpion. One of our Curtis parents, Dr. Keith Emmert worked with this group and the students really enjoyed having him lead their group. The green screen club had used those items, created a script, uploaded images and, using the Do Ink green screen app,  created a haunted movie. 

It was very impressive how eloquently the students explained what they did and what they learned. One student shared how even though what they were doing was "hard, really hard!" it made them want to do more and try harder.

Each student had the opportunity to speak, and I was so proud of their courage! They not only took ownership of their clubs, they took ownership of this presentation. I loved how one student talked about how they weren't always successful, that there were definite failures during the learning process. They talked about working together, not giving up, getting better at what they were doing, and thanked Dr. Keith a lot! 

After everyone spoke who wanted to, we showed their green screen creations, which highlighted the maker club's creations! There were a few giggles as they saw their haunted movies on the big screen. There was even requests to watch their "bloopers"! We will upload the creations to our YouTube channel so that students can see them again.

Here are some pictures of our time together. We met one day a week for five weeks. Some students came in during recess to work on their projects. 



The first session of the maker clubs was a success in everyone's eyes! Parents were proud, students were proud, and there was a very proud librarian! I can't wait to see what our next group accomplishes! Our next session will be basic programming using the Sphero robotics ball. Students are really excited about it!

Library Make-Over

Our school was freshened up over the summer. This meant that EVERYTHING had to be packed up and moved to the gym at the end of last school year. The library is upstairs and the gym is downstairs. You can imagine that this was quite the ordeal. Eventually, EVERYTHING would have to be moved back upstairs! Books, equipment, technology, and more books! May was a hard month, and August was going to be just as hard! The only difference was that in August, I would be moving everything in to a brighter space with new carpet & fresh paint! Honestly, NOW I am so excited about our new library learning space, I just smile whenever I walk around in it! I can't say that I was as excited when I first saw our library on August 15th. It looked like this:

We have over 20 different shelving units in the library, 9 heavy wooden tables, 60 heavy wooden chairs, and all of this was stacked in the middle of the library! I was overwhelmed to say the least! I couldn't even reach the top chair to begin taking apart our mountain of furniture. So I did what any normal person would: I left and went to buy fabric to cover some old benches! 

They turned out really cute, and I was able to stay sane while our district maintenance department pulled some of the furniture mountain down. On Monday, I had a few librarians come over to help and we moved all of the shelves into place. Thank goodness for those handy moving pads! I can't even begin to thank Debbie for all of her help on this day!! It was a long, hard day!  When I left that day, the library looked like this:

Keep in mind that at this point, no boxes or books had been brought up from the gym. We had packed a lot of the books on library book carts, so Monday night we started bringing those up. Thankfully, on Tuesday, my dear librarian colleagues from the district came to my rescue! By the end of the day, all the Everybody & Non-Fiction sections were put on shelves! They were also instrumental in helping with the flow of the library! We rearranged shelves & sections until it felt right! I could not have done this without them!!   Tuesday night, all of the boxes were brought up by our maintenance department and some volunteers. 

By Wednesday, the library was again a complete disaster! And again, I had some wonderful volunteers, including one of our sweet 5th graders and some previous Curtis students, come to my rescue! At one point, I even had a school board member knocking off items on my to-do list! It takes a village to put a library back together! Thank you to Denise, Kari Ann, Jaylee, Kelly, Emily & Dalyn for all of your help!

Thanks to WISD school board member, Jeff Geyer, my desk was fixed, as well as my new mobile checkout station!

There is no need to give you day by day pictures from this point because it was a slow process. Since I had requested my huge circulation desk be removed, I had to figure out where to put all of the things I stored in there! I also had removed part of my office desk, so I again lost storage. What I was trying to do was create more usable space for our students. By removing the circulation desk, I was able to free up some space which allowed us to set up our green screen permanently. Teachers & students are already dreaming of ways to use this new tool! 

With our redesigned space, we also now have some reading & meeting areas for student use.

There is a whole group story area for our young readers and a whole group instructional area for our older students. Both of these areas have a large screen with a computer for Skypes, GHOs and project shares.

And the makerspace is still there! We are making some improvements in there also, with some Donors Choose projects that were funded recently, but I'll post that later. 

My hope for this year is that this new and improved environment is constantly in use by teachers, classes, small groups, and individual visitors to our library & learning center! I want students to come in to collaborate, create & connect with others as often as possible! With this in mind, we will offer green screen and makerspace orientation for classes, so that students are able to come to the library when there is a project to complete or time for exploration, and know exactly how to use these spaces. 

Stay tuned for how our students use their new space! And please share if you are a librarian and have a great space for your students! I searched many blogs, websites, etc to try to find ideas and would love to see what others have done, with limited funds & older furniture. :)