Bluebonnet Selection Committee

Hi Eagles. Did you miss me? I missed you! I'll be back on Monday.

For the past few days, I've been hard at work in a conference room with my fellow Texas Bluebonnet Award Selection Committee members to choose the very best 20 books for next year's list. I've been taking lots of photos, but the only one I can reveal for now is my place card.

We've been reading hundreds of books in the past months to narrow it down to the most interesting, high-quality, fun books for 3rd-6th graders to read for pleasure. I have asked dozens of our students for their opinions on various books and topics, and I used all of it to vote for the ones I thought best.

We didn't always agree, but I definitely feel lucky to work with such a talented, smart group of librarians. Our list is amazing! I am so excited to reveal our choices at the Texas Book Festival here in Austin, October 27-28, 2012, downtown at the Capitol. It's going to be awesome, and I can't wait to see some famous authors, hear some great people speak about children's books, and most of all, hear the reactions when our celebrity announcers reveal next year's 20 nominees! See you there, Eagles, and until then, mum's the word. Trust me, though- you're going to love it!

Peyton, Fournier & Associates, LLC

Mrs. Peyton, Counselor, and I are excited to announce our new book club- Peyton, Fournier & Associates LLC (Lifelong Learners Club). Mrs. Peyton and I have recently read an amazing book called Wonder (R.J. Palacio) that we thought would be the perfect way to discuss ways that some of our students could work on reading and social skills. 

Mrs. Peyton, 8 of our coolest 5th grade students, and I are working together to read this book between meetings, and at our meetings, discuss the characters, plot and other features of the book and how it relates to our life. We're so excited as we start our journey together!

 Our first meeting was today during lunch. Students received a specially wrapped copy of the book (for keeps!), a small notebook and pencil to jot down their ideas, and we all wore a special sticker badge to celebrate our membership.

Texas Bluebonnet Award

The Forest North Library is excited to announce that the 2012-2013 Bluebonnet program has officially started! All 3rd-5th classes had orientations to the program last week, and every single book has already been checked out. Many quizzes have already been passed to boot! Students are motivated to earn their Bluebonnet dog tags, qualify to attend the voting Wii party, VIP Bluebonnet Breakfast, or the coveted position of Battle of the Bluebonnets competitor! Students only need to read 5 books to qualify to vote for their favorite. To come to the Wii party, 3rd graders read 5, 4th graders read 8, and 5th graders read 10. Some highly dedicated students who read all 20 get to wear crowns to the Bluebonnet voting party- check out the photo to see last year's champions! Classroom teachers are allowed to read one of the books allowed to their classes. Parents, mentors, family friends, etc., are allowed to read an unlimited amount of books aloud to their student. Students are NOT required to read the books independently, so feel free to help your student achieve their reading goals.  The library and FNE community work really hard to raise extra funds for additional titles of these books, but because of extremely high circulation rates, students may feel free to check out  Bluebonnet books from the public library, borrow one from a friend, or buy one at their local bookstore. Information about the nominated titles this year and recommended resources for each title are available on the TBA Website.

See you at the Wii party, Eagles, and keep reading!

Fournier's Friends Recruitment Video

Thanks again to the amazing 2011-2012 Fournier's Friends student volunteer crew for their awesome job in this video! I couldn't have asked for a more talented, witty, sharp, fun group of kids! Miss you, buddies.

2012-2013 Fournier's Friends Selected!

I'm so excited to announce that we have a fresh, new crew of Fournier's Friends ready to work in the library this school year.  We had many applicants, and it was a very difficult decision to choose which students would get one of the spots. I considered whether the application was turned in on time, and whether or not the students answered the questions correctly on the application. I wanted to choose students who were already familiar with finding books in the library on a certain subject, how to put a hold on a book, and the sections of the library. After that, I looked at whether students were already involved in a lot of other activities, whether they have a history of being responsible with their library books, and what their teacher recommendation indicated.

Thanks so much for applying, and congratulations to my new crew of Fournier's Friends. Mrs. Dickinson and I are excited to see you at our first meeting!

In other volunteering news, thanks so much to Dondi Bradley, Steve Howland and Brittany Gonzales, three parents who have already logged multiple hours shelving books. We have had a staggering increase in circulation this month compared to previous years, and while this is great for our library statistics, it means we have even more books to get back on the shelves for our students. Thanks to these three parents, hundreds of titles are already ready for another student to read. I really appreciate your help, parents! This frees me up to be able to teach your students lessons about Language Arts, library skills & technology skills they need to be successful.

Future Librarian? Apply to be a Student Volunteer!

This will be the second year that the Forest North Library will participate in Fournier's Friends- a group of 3rd-5th students who work in the library to keep things running smoothly. Last year's participants had a lot of fun!

We anticipate many applicants, so apply early and make sure you get your materials in on time - the deadline is September 10th and 3:00 PM.  Turn in 3 items: an application filled out by the student, a teacher recommendation, and a parent permission form.

I can't wait to hire some new library helpers and train them to be book ninjas!

Welcome back, Eagles!

Hello, Eagles! I'm Mrs. Fournier, your Librarian. I am halfway through orienting all of our students to the library this year, and have a few exciting things to tell you about!

First off, let's tallk books! Checkout limits will be the same this year as they have been in years past:

PreK-K : 1 book
1st-2nd : 2 books
3rd-5th : 3 books

Books are checked out for 2 weeks. There are no overdue fees. I try to send home overdue notices once a week to let you know if a book is late.  If you lose a book, please send a check or cash in the amount listed on the overdue notice so I can buy a replacement copy for our library.  Last year, we had an amazing group of 350 students and 50 staff members because EVERY single book and person had an account in good standing when we left for the summer. Because of this, high student circulation rates, and Mrs. Fournier & Mrs. Lajaunie's tireless work in cataloging new books and weeding out old books to move up the average collection publication date from 1997 to 1999, we earned an award of $4,238 for new books this year! How amazing is that? Thank you staff, students, and especially to Mrs. Lajaunie for helping me achieve this goal! Thank you also to the Library Services Department for helping me make a big difference in our collection. We RRISD Librarians are so lucky to have an amazing administrative staff.

This year, I am excited to announce my new library assistant is Jacque Dickinson. Jacque started this week and has already learned a hundred things about running a library. I'm thrilled to have her working afternoons in here with me, and we're already becoming an awesome team!

This is my fourth year as the Forest North Librarian and I am always tweaking things to improve. In the past, our library always had a fixed schedule. Every class came at the same time on the same day every week, and we had a lesson, and we did checkout, and it was great. The problem is, the whole schedule was full of these classes already, and now we've gone from 16 to 21 classes! There aren't enough hours in the week to fit everyone in anymore. So, to fix that, we're moving to a flexible schedule. Flexible Schedules are highly recommended by the American Library Association because they require higher levels of collaboration between teachers and librarians. Check out their position statement on flexible scheduling. Here's my favorite paragraph:

"The integrated library program philosophy requires an open schedule. Classes need to be flexibly scheduled into the library on an as needed basis to facilitate research, training, and utilization of technology with the guidance of the subject specialist, the teacher, and the process specialist, the librarian. Regularly scheduled classes in the school library to provide teacher release or preparation time prohibit this best practice. Students and teachers must be able to come to the library throughout the day to use information sources, to read for pleasure, and to meet and work with other students and teachers."

I'm really excited to move to this flexible schedule, so that I'll have more time during the school day to catalog new books, keep improving our collection, plan my lessons and activities with teachers, help students get books every day, and work on my programming so kids have fun in the library! Stay tuned for our first programs of the year- the 2nd grade Rainbow Reading Challenge, the school-wide Library Bookmark contest, Texas Bluebonnet Award for 3rd-5th, and the K-2 Armadillo Readers Choice Award kickoff. It's going to be another great year in the Forest North Library!