You may know Faith Erin Hicks from her graphic novels Friends with Boys (my favorite of her works) and Brain Camp. I love her single-page, autobiographical overview of her writing process. Rings pretty true … sneak peek below.
This Nonsense via kwout
Whew – MAME 37, the conference of the Michigan Association for Media in Education, has come to a close, and I need a nap!
By request, here are the presentation slides/handouts:
- ELEMENTARY ROUND-UP was a team of us presenting on different genres of books for elementary readers. Here’s my handout on graphic novels.
- REDEFINING THE SCHOOL LIBRARIAN IN THE 21ST CENTURY discusses different roles librarians can play in order to discover and further define their roles.
- CURRICULUM MAKEOVER: LIBRARY EDITION looked at three factors impacting school libraries: the inquiry focus of the Standards for the 21st-Century Learner, new building-specific initiatives and priorities, and the onset of the Common Core Standards, then asked participants to brainstorm a PD plan to take to their principal on Monday morning. If you didn’t get a copy of Cassandra Barnett’s table aligning the AASL Standards with the Framework of the Partnership of 21st Century Skills and the ISTE NETS, you can get it here (it’s part of AASL’s new Building-Level Toolkit!). The BPS alignment chart is available here. You can find the general statement on the Common Core Standards for ELA here.
I was also delighted at the contributions Elizabeth and Julie, two of our school library students at SI, made to Laura’s AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning preconference. Julie was back with her SI colleague Addie for Friday’s roundtables — they had big crowds!
A big thanks to MAME for awarding me the Margaret Grazier Award for Service to the Profession. I was deeply honored.
I’ve mentioned my fondness for TOON Books’ comics for emergent readers before herehere and here. They are doing terrific work making comics/graphic fiction that is age-apppropriate and suited to the reading levels of our youngest patrons. Their online work continues to grow, too. The Benny and Penny blog and the online full-text access that reads aloud to students in multiple languages give our students online destinations that meet students where they are.
Today I learned about TOON Books’ online CarTOON Maker, which lets kids create their own one-panel comics featuring characters from the TOON Books list. This could be a great way to help students create dialogue, use computers in elementary fixed schedule as literacy centers, or much more.
