BreakoutEDU? The Reviews are POSITIVE!

Yesterday was a great day.  So great that I couldn't sleep last night (hence the pre-5:00 AM get-out-of-bed) thinking about what today might bring.

In between raindrops, I took a leap outside with a first grade class in front of the tree

that was planted by NYS Department of Environmental Conservation in 2013 in honor of my daughter winning a statewide poster contest.  Every 6th of the month this class and I will go outside and leap. It will be great to see the changes on the ground, on the tree and the faces of these adorable students.

But I think what I really wanted to share was how me, this inexperienced #BreakoutEDU librarian, managed to pull off a successful (I'm not making that up--ask the kids) "mystery bag" activity in the library with 62 fifth graders.

We began whole group in our Common Area outside the library.

I asked the kids if any of them have ever done the Mystery Room before at the mall.  Many have wanted to, but never did, because "it was too expensive."  "Well, guess what, " I said. "You can do it here with me and it's FREE!"  I know they didn't expect it to be as fun as it was and would be rating it a "10" at the end and yet they did!

One advantage of knowing the kids is that I was able to pre-assign groups without a problem.  I had 13 teams of 4-5 kids.  They had 30 minutes to answer four clues and break into their double locked bags.  The clues were fairly straight forward--go onto Destiny Quest and use keywords from my clues to get a call number for a book.

Find the book on the shelf and move on to the next clue.  Kids forgot where chapter books were located.  They didn't write down full call numbers for the Dewey books.  It was a good review of the library. Finally, with a little addition or subtraction, the call number on the Dewey Section book would give the combination.  With only seconds to spare, every group "broke out."

Feedback when we got together as whole group? "That was fun!" "It was awesome!"  Most of the ratings were a 10, with nothing lower than a 7. They liked finding the clues and working as a team. Oh yeah, and they did like the candy in the bags, too. :-) I couldn't have said it better, though--AND the teachers thought it went well, too! One teacher even said it would be "Lemoncello Approved!" I'd say success!

What's up with the Popcorn Bags?

This is my attempt this year to save some books from being damaged in the backpacks by either water or just shoving books inside in between one another. Every student in my building is going to get one and I'm instructing them to keep the bag INSIDE the backpack and just take library books inside and out of the bags. We'll see how it goes.  I've had too many water bottle, sunscreen, yogurt incidences over the years that I thought I would try something.

Examples of some of my clues:

So I'm definitely not an expert, but I have to say if you are considering doing something like this--take the leap and do it! It is worth it! And if I can do it, you can do it!  I bought all the supplies myself at the Dollar Store and used Aldi bags so it cost me less than $30.  The bags worked great! I'm going to try it again with fourth graders tomorrow! Stay tuned!