Bagels with a side of Pomp and Circumstance

Today was a day of celebrating moving on.  First we had our annual "Thank You Dewey Duty Breakfast."  I rushed over to Brueggers and bought 4 dozen bagels for my 4th and 5th grade helpers.  Thankfully, a handful of kids from each grade contributed snacks--chocolate chip muffins, corn muffins, munchkins, other donuts, even healthy orange slices (Thank you, Alayna!).  I do appreciate all they do, even though at times I question whether it is a good thing.  It really is!  The shelves aren't in perfect order, but the books are in the right area enough if we are searching for a book, most likely we will find it.  Then, thanks to an idea I grabbed from Andy Plemmons, I pulled up a blank note page on the iPad and pulled names out of a hat.  When your name was called you were given the chance to tell me what book you would like me to buy for the library.  I have some extra money leftover from Northshire Bookstore and I thought this would be a great way to spend it.  They seemed really into it.  Finally, we jumped.

Here I am with the 4th graders:

Nothing like a true action shot at 8:30 in the morning!

I remembered to take photos of the buffet AND the kids with the 5th graders.

 

And here is the tweet with our jumping sequence:

And the @CastletonES 5th grade Dewey duty jumping pictures! pic.twitter.com/1NRDgfagju

— Ms.Rattner (@C_ESLibrary) June 18, 2015

Today was Thursday and every Thursday since early Fall I've been working with 4th grade in ELA.  It has been an awesome experience.  We went from looking up the word GENRE in the dictionary to learning about music genres and literary genres to comparing and contrasting many different Cinderella stories (who knew there were so many out there?!) to finishing up with story elements, including theme and character traits.  It was a blast and it really felt good to co-teach with Ms. Malone, the ELA teacher, all year long.  Since we called it "Detective" training, I wore pink every Thursday, and would play the Pink Panther theme as they entered the library.  I kept a pair of pink flip flops in the back room and pulled them out even on the coldest days.  Fun.  So today was our "graduation" from Detective Training.  Ms. Malone made up diploma certificates; I created a review Jeopardy game and we had a great last day.  It was really a lot of fun to hand out the diplomas while "Pomp and Circumstance" was blaring.  Here are the pictures of the day:

The Detectives from Ms. Malone's class

The Detectives in Mr. Charlebois's class (note the Jeopardy game in the background!)

The graduates from Mrs. Hirschoff's class

Tomorrow will be another exciting day with a visit from the Castleton Public Library Youth Services librarian with Mrs. Kosinski's class and then chaperoning the 7th grade trip to Rochester to meet Salva Dut and to Walk for Sudan.

Oh, and did you know?!  Of course, you did but just in case you forgot, one week from today EST I will be way on my way to San Francisco!!!!