I’m writing this post during the first game of the season! Who dat?! I still love the atmosphere here in Louisiana post-Superbowl win. And even though Brett Farve is my fantasy football league quarterback, I’m loving the Brees tonight 🙂

It’s one of those crazy weeks where no one knows what day it is because of the Labor Day holiday. This week is also DIBELs testing at our school, and I’m on the DIBELs team. That means that Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week, there is a library sub while I test students all. day. long. If you’ve ever DIBELed, I know you’re jealous about the three solid days of DIBELing that I get to experience. I did get to teach this week’s lesson on Tuesday, though. And of course Monday classes missed it from the holiday. This also meant that the first week of book check-out won’t take place until next week. But ya do what ya gotta do.

I look at all of this as a positive — it’s another week to prepare our students and teach them routines. I created a fabulous video for library procedures, but I used pictures of students modeling the things we do, so I can’t share it. After watching the video, I show several books that have been damaged (colored in, pages torn, dog chewed the cover, dog-earred corners, juice spilled on pages) and we discuss how the damage happened and what we can do to prevent it.

Then we read “Going on a Book Hunt” by Pat Miller. This is a precious book that can lead to great discussion on library routines. Also, it’s very fun if you read each line and have the students echo your chant. They loved it!

Next, I had a bag with a bookmark, shelf marker, bookend, display stand, library folder, and scanner. I pulled out each item and we discussed how that item was important to the library.

Finally, students decorated bookmarks with an illustration on something they can do to help books stay neat. I’ve seen some cute pictures (and some interesting spelling renditions). We’ve got our routines and book care down, now we will be ready to put it into practice next week when we begin checking out books!

I want to send out an email in the morning with an activity that teachers can do with “The Man Who Walked Between the Towers” by Mordicai Gerstein in honor of September 11. I think this book is an excellent way to start a discussion about the 9/11 attacks, as it took place before most of our students were even born. Last year when I taught this lesson, I showed some photographs from google of Philippe Petite walking between the towers. Google it, the pictures are pretty incredible! When the kids find out that this is a true story, they go nuts. For kids who have no recollection of September 11, 2001, this is a good story to give them some background on the Twin Towers before discussing what actually happened on 9/11. I haven’t been able to find a good video to show 2nd & 3rd graders about the attacks, so if you know of one that could be appropriate, please let me know!