Spring Online Book Fair is Live!

The in-school book fair starts this coming Monday, April 13th, but you don’t have to wait until then to get started on your shopping!  Visit the online fair at http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/homepage/annapolismiddleschool1 and shop the entire Scholastic catalog.  Orders placed online will be shipped to the school before May 5th and distributed through student homerooms.

 

Spring Book Fair Volunteers

Volunteers are needed for the Spring book fair from April 13-17 between 7:45 AM and 3:15 PM.  Our busiest times of day will be from 7:45-8:15 in the morning and 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM during lunches, but classes will also be visiting throughout the day on Monday-Thursday.  Sign up here: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0b4ca5ac2babfc1-spring, or email Ms. Buck at mhbuck@aacps.org.

 

Our Fall book fair was a huge success, putting over 500 books in students’ hands and raising over $3,000 in Scholastic dollars to support our library program.  We have a slew of great new books in the library, and were also able to purchase much-needed new rugs for our cozy seating area!  The Spring book fair promises to be just as successful with some great titles for sale.  Because of the success of the fall Fair, we’ll also be receiving more books to sell so we will have an even wider selection!  That means parent volunteers’ help will be even more vital.  We were extremely fortunate to have a wonderful group of parents help out with the fall Fair, and we thank you in advance for once again donating your time and energy.

Happy New Year!

The holidays have come and gone in a whirlwind, and we’re gearing up for some serious research in the winter months!  The book fair in November was a rousing success, with over $3,000 in Scholastic dollars generated to purchase additional library materials.  We’re looking forward to the spring book fair in April, which may coincide with our second annual Read-A-Thon!  More on that later, though!

This month we’re working with eighth graders as they research societal issues.  We’re also talking to 6th graders about sources of information about their community, in the context of their Project Citizen research.  Later, we’ll also do a lesson on evaluating online sources of information – an all-important topic in the digital age.  Spanish classes learned about the Epiphany celebration in the library.  We’re also super excited to see what the 8th graders have come up with during the National History Day expo next week!

Meanwhile, I’m working on bringing useful information from the library’s resources over to the website, and finalizing this year’s book orders.  We have a lot of great new fiction on the way, including a lot of books students have requested like the Monster High and Sisters Grimm series (and yes, TP, I ordered the sequel to Joseph!).  We’re also purchasing new technology and poetry books, as well as some non-fiction that will support common core standards, and some badly needed new picture books.  All that means a lot of sorting through reviews as I work to squeeze as many books as we can out of the library budget!  Students can look forward to shipments of new books arriving in February and March – just in time for Dr. Seuss’ birthday and Read Across America.

Speaking of reading, here’s a great article about the role of school libraries in today’s changing information landscape!  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yohuru-williams/sense-and-sensibility-why_b_6409076.html 

It’s time for the Book Fair!!

As you may have heard, the Scholastic book fair is next week at the AMS library!  We’ll be setting up this Friday (oh my gosh, that’s tomorrow!) and classes will visit on 11/17-11/20.  The 21st is a free day for any students who didn’t get a chance to purchase books to come back.

Teachers can stop by on the 14th during planning to create wish lists so that families can donate books!

We will also be running an online fair from 11/9 to 11/29.  Anything sold there will benefit the AMS library and add to our book fair sales total.  Our goal this year is 535 books!  Go to http://www.scholastic.com/fair to locate our school’s book fair homepage and shop online.

We have some amazing titles coming in this year by authors like Suzanne Collins, Jonathan Stroud, Katie Alender, David Baldacci, and many, many more.  We’re really looking forward to the Scholastic book fair!