Just Another Week Full of Fun

Monday and Tuesday of this week were my last days of Book Fair so that I could get all the classes in. I have to tell you, after a full week of it last week, I was kind of over it but those kids needed to get the same treatment everyone else did so I mustered it up. Tuesday I didn't wear my referee costume because my daughter won an art award and had a ceremony that morning so I needed to be dressed like a grown-up. I didn't think the kids would care or notice but they did. Every single group that came through that day said something about it. It just goes to show you that a costume can go a long way and have more of an impact than you'd think.

Wednesday we packed up the Book Fair, did the final reports and found out that it was the highest grossing Book Fair in school history. I was thrilled! Especially since I recently cleaned out my account for the Kwame visit. I also had a really interesting phone conference with two people at Follett who wanted to talk to me about what I've used Collections with and what I plan on using it with. We ended up talking about all kinds of cool stuff and they gave me some great ideas! They seemed interested in doing some work with me. I hope that comes to fruition because they were super awesome. If nothing else, I got some awesome ideas to use with our staff. I also got to spend the afternoon with the always amazing Sherri Smith-Dodgson, my Follett rep, and my absolutely fantastic District Media Resource person, Trish Ely. We worked on our presentation for the upcoming FAME conference that's in November. I'm really excited about it!

Thursday was my favorite day. I got to have Rae Burch's Science classes in the Media Center. They did a self-paced Nearpod lesson and then when they finished, they were tasked with building various Elements using some of our building materials for Maker Space. I put out our Magnatiles, Lego Architecture, Keva Blocks, Brain Flakes, Strawbees, and pipe cleaners and pony beads. Rae made instructions and cards with the elements on them. The kids had to have the proper number of protons, neutrons, and electrons for each Element they built. I pulled some books that might help them should they need some support and helped them build. We had some great stuff built! One group did such a great job with a challenge I gave them with Strawbees. I kept their project and put it up on display in front of the Media Center. It was AWESOME!

Thursday we also had our first ever Title 1 Night and we had Fine Arts night. I got to help with the Family Night  and then our Fine Arts department is always so gracious and allows me some time to speak to all the parents about our 20 Book Challenge, why it is important, and how they can support their students. The tech failed for my slideshow with all the pretty graphs but I spoke from my heart and I hope it was impactful.

Friday was another fun day! The Friday before Halloween every year our teachers dress up in costumes and the kids can vote on their favorite costumes by placing spare change in the buckets for those teachers. The money raised helps buy Thanksgiving meals for families in need. There were some incredible costumes. My friend Lara dressed as Mary Poppins and it was so perfect! She even pulled a lamp out of her bag during our faculty meeting. Fine Arts killed it! They were stick people. I dressed up as Library Lady: fighting book resistance one student at a time...lol.

Lara's classes were with me Friday and they've been working on a unit on persistence so we read For Everyone by Jason Reynolds and then they checked out books and read. We had a Project Lit meeting the last mod of the day and discussed The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora and First Rule of Punk. Those kiddos are going with Lara's ESOL class next week to see Pablo at Hoover Middle School. I'm so excited for them!

It was a busy week. I keep waiting for one that's slow and "normal" where I can catch my breath but I'm starting to wonder if that's ever going to happen. It's exhausting to keep up this fast pace but these kids are so excited and so are the teachers. It's hard to make the decision to crush the momentum to give myself some time to breathe. I guess I"ll rest up when Thanksgiving break gets here.

Not Just a Book Fair: It's a Life Event

This past week I've been running my Scholastic Book Fair and I have two more days of it this week. When Book Fair comes, I go ALL out.

Why? People ask me that question all the time. It's a lot of work and it takes a lot of energy and a lot of time.

Why not? Mostly though, I do it because it is SO very hard to get middle school kids to care. You have to give them something to be excited about. Our kiddos look forward to the Book Fair each year and really get into it.

For Book Fair I decorate like crazy based on the theme, set up Maker Space stations tied to the theme, play music, tag the books for teacher recommendations and for which categories the books count towards in our 20 Book Challenge, and I dress in costume every single day.

When I first started doing Book Fairs, I didn't have stations but I was doing all the other stuff. We set up the stations for a family night and then no one came. We were so bummed that we kept them up for the classes coming in the next day and the kids LOVED it! From then on, stations became necessary. It doesn't hurt that it helps my sales and helps teachers feel better about bringing their classes to me for the Book Fair.

Sometimes Scholastic has great themes and sometimes, the themes either aren't suited well for our population, for middle school, or for our school in general. Last fall the theme was Southwestern. Well, my whole school is decorated like that and our kids wouldn't have cared about that theme so I chose a fiesta theme from a few years back. This fall their theme was unicorns and fairies and while that is super cute for elementary school, I didn't know if my middle schoolers would go for it. I polled them during orientation to see how they felt about it and they were not into it. Instead, I went with a sports theme for this year's Book Fair and the kids are LOVING it!

I always decorate the circulation desk in a big way (pirate ship, giant tent, enormous taco filled with books, and now a concession stand). We also have a headless baby who always comes to the Book Fair. We used her to be a pirate the first year and the kids loved her so much that I just dress her up and put her out each year. She's also been a fisherman girl, a fiesta girl, and now she's a tball player. I hang decorations from the ceiling in the actual fair part, put decorations on the tables with the books, and then I try to put decorations on the walls of the media center where I can.

The stations are a mix of standards-based Maker Space activities, writing activities, and things that are just plain fun. In the past we've had building challenges, color sheets, puzzles, games such as tic-tac-toss, friendship bracelet making stations, story building stations, etc. Last year the hit of the Book Fair was making paper bag ponchos out of grocery bags from Publix. This year my stations are a Lego building challenge to build something sports related, a structure building challenge to build a structure that supports a basketball, tailgate toss (corn hole), jersey design station, and pin the football on the goal (a version of pin the tail on the donkey), and an Athletes Give Back station to decorate a whale for the Vineyard Vines #whalesforacause campaign. It's been awesome to help my students participate in some community service.

I schedule all the classes to come in with their Language Arts class and if they are in Intensive Reading they come with those classes as well. I schedule a class for the first half of the class period and another class for the last half of the same class period. On early release days I schedule only one class because there just isn't enough time. We also keep the Book Fair open before school and during all the lunches. Everyone has an opportunity come as many times as they want or need to.

Book Fair takes a lot out of me but it's such a good thing for our school and our kids. I'm sure there are other ways to do Book Fairs and I know a lot of schools (elementary schools especially) who make a lot more than I do during their Book Fair without all the fuss but I pride myself on giving my best to these kids and this is my best so that's what I do. I hope this post gives you some good ideas for things you can try at your Book Fair if you are looking for a way to change things up.

Dead Author: Murder Mystery in the Media Center

DISCLAIMER: No authors were actually harmed in this activity. 😂 They weren't really at our school.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday was one of our Gifted seminar days and I'm so thankful our GAPP team lets me be part of these seminar days. They are SO much fun!

Many of the rotations were CSI-type activities. I didn't feel very confident in my ability to do something like that successfully but I started poking around the internet and found several murder/mysteries for schools or Language Arts classes.

My Scholastic Book Fair got delivered Thursday and I wanted to go ahead and have it set up so it would be ready for next week and so I wouldn't need to spend the weekend at school preparing. How do you do a murder/mystery in the Media Center in the middle of a Book Fair?

You make your own story around the Book Fair!

Our students are really into books and love when I talk to them about the authors so this was perfect.

On Tuesday, I was doing the Emoji story starter activity with Amanda Ross's classes (which is super fun and hilarious and teaches great writing skills if you set the activity up right) and I was telling her what I was planning for the GAPP day but I had to work out the details of the story. She got so excited and grabbed it and started working. I taught her classes and she wrote our murder/mystery. I helped her with details and specifics about the authors and their personalities. She did such a great job! After we finished, I took it to our School Resource Officer and told him what I was doing. I had him look at it and he loved it! I went around to our other staff members who were written in as suspects to make sure they knew about it. Our Head Custodian (who is TOO good to me!) gave me some supplies to use in my crime scene. Our Digital Arts teacher, Chris Young, volunteered to be my dead body and let me tape off his shape on the floor near the Book Fair. I'm so thankful for all the people who constantly help me! Team work really does make the dream work! Just setting it up was exciting!

Because we had 27-29 kids in each rotation, I put them into 11 groups. Each group represented a character in the plot. They had just the information they needed about who they were. They had to go around to the other groups and ask/answer questions and fill in their handout to help them keep track of all the information. Once they had everything they needed to know, they had to get together as a group and decide who the killer was based on the facts. Each group had to tell us which character they were, present their claim of who they thought did it and why, and then I told them who the real killer was. It was SO interesting to see their thought process, watch them work through the clues, argue with each other, and use the evidence and clues. Out of all the kids all day, only one group thought it was me. I kept asking all day why no one thought I did it and they all said that I'd never kill an author because I like them too much. That clearly, I was framed. 💗 I love that they have my back, even if it is a fake murder.

I've put our script below. If you are really loving this activity, that's awesome! I'm glad to share to help inspire you but PLEASE create your own or ask permission before you just take this. I didn't write most of it, my wonderful friend and Reading teacher did. I'm sharing the details so you can see how we did it and how it worked.

The kids got the background information, their character info, and the tracking sheet. That's it. They did go examine the crime scene, but honestly, there wasn't anything there that wasn't in their information they were given. It was fun to have one though. The kids spent a lot of time really studying the scene and the evidence there. I was impressed.

I've deleted the solution because I want to know who YOU think did it! Drop it in the comments below or comment on my social media post. I want to know what you think!

Background Information:

During the setup for the Book Fair Grand Opening a scream was heard coming from the media center. It’s 8:30 am. A few minutes later the dead body of Jason Reynolds, the award winning author of Long Way Down, All American Boys  and Ghost, was found under a fallen bookshelf. Also found were a number of items that may lead us to the killer, a sharpie for signing books with the initials K.A. on them,  a copy of Dear Martin by Nic Stone autographed for Mrs. Friday, a photo of Jason with Mrs. Friday. At the moment these are the main suspects but everyone who was at Southwest to help with the book fair and saw or spoke to Jason Reynolds needs to be questioned.

Solution:

Jason Reynolds and Nic Stone have known each other from various authors conferences. Nic was a little jealous that Jason’s books always seem to be apart of the book fair, and Ghost was chosen as a SSYRA book this year, and her books were not apart of the book fair that came to Southwest. She knew the kids at The Great Southwest liked her book, but it was apparent that Jason’s books and Kwame’s books were checked out more recently.

Your name is: Nic Stone - Author of Dear Martin & Odd One Out Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are excited to be at Southwest for this book fair to talk to kids that have read your book. You are especially happy that your BFF Tiffany Jackson is here with you. You are sporting your favorite green lip stick, even though you are a little upset that your book is not being sold at this year’s book fair (WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT IS TOO MATURE?!?!?! IT ISN'T!) and that all of the other authors here have books at the book fair. You kept looking at all the books, when the custodian turned off the lights in the media center. You tried to conjure your patronus but it obviously didn’t work.   Last time you saw Jason: You passed by him as he was walking into the media center, alone, and you were on your way out to do an interview with Summer Sanders.

Your name is: Kwame Alexander - Author of Swing, The Crossover & many others Your role and feelings about the book fair: This is now your second visit to Southwest and you can’t wait to see how many kids have finished reading your book Swing. You were just here recently and feel like a VIP. You know all these students love your books and you are glad to be here to help Mrs. Friday out. You’ve known Jason for a long time and you are really proud to call him a friend. You talk to each other often and even had him on one of your episodes of Bookish. Last time you saw Jason: Mrs. Friday had just asked you to come and sign a few more copies of Swing, as you wondered around the school to find your favorite sharpie, you walked past Jason as he just finished up an interview with Summer Sanders.

Your name is: Brendan Kiely - co author of All American Boys; author of Tradition Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are a little tired because you have been going around the country doing book talks with Jason about All American Boys, you like Jason’s company for the most part but after so many cities and so many airplanes it is starting to get to you and you wish you could take a break, but Jason is so eager to visit as many schools as possible and your publisher is really pushing you to go along with his ideas. Last time you saw Jason: You arrived at the school together, but you went to the nurse’s clinic, that is attached to the media center, alone, to lay down on one of the cotts to catch up on some sleep. You told everyone you woke up to the sound of Jason’s scream and a loud thud and came running to the dark media center and bumped into some of the bookcases that began to topple.

Your name is: Mrs. Friday - Media specialist Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are beyond excited and super stressed. It is amazing that you got so many awesome authors to agree to come to Southwest for the book fair, but it causes stress because you have so much to manage. Some of the authors have picky taste and tight schedules to work with. You are worried the kids will say something they shouldn’t. Teachers are cranky the kids are missing class again for your events. There are so many things for you to keep up with that you are stressed to the breaking point. You are managing to get all of the authors to sign a few copies of books to auction off at the book fair and to get a picture with each of the authors for your wall. You haven’t seen Brendan Kiely since he arrived at school, and he missed his scheduled book signing and interview with Jason. Last time you saw Jason: He was in the cafeteria doing a book signing and you saw him walk over to get interviewed with Summer, you then left the cafeteria to find Kwame for his book signing

Your name is: Ally Carter - Author of Not if I Save you First & Embassy Row series Your role and feelings about the book fair: This book fair is very exciting for you to be invited to. You are just so thrilled that you are going to get to meet kids who have read your books and help promote your newest book Not if I Save you First, a very suspenseful novel. You are a little shy and keep to yourself, making it to all of your scheduled events on time, you really like Mrs. Friday’s energy and are trying to help this day go as smoothly as possible. As you walked through the book fair set up you noticed some of the book cases were not as stable as others, but you didn't want to worry Mrs. Friday with this, so you kept it to yourself. Last time you saw Jason: Most of these authors publish books about social injustices and your books tend to deal with lighter-hearted subjects. You are thrilled to be here but feel a little out of place. You think that you may have seen Jason walking over to the media center, where you think you saw the shadow of another person, but then you were taken by surprise when Kwame bumped into you looking for his sharpie.

Your name is: Leo - Head custodian of Southwest Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are very busy helping Mrs. Friday set up all of the book fair cases. As you put them together you noticed that a few had loose parts, but you have too much to do so you are not worried about it. You know this is a big deal for the school but you had to be here early and stay late on Thursday to help with the set up, and now you are here extra early again, so your attention to detail isn’t the best. Last time you saw Jason: There is so much to be done you have no idea who has walked past you or not. When you left the media center last, you turned off all the lights when you noticed there was a nice looking lady with green lipstick thumbing through all of the books on the shelf.

Your name is: Veronica Roth - Author of the Divergent series and Carve the Mark Your role and feelings about the book fair: This is a nice quaint book fair that you are attending as a favor to your publisher, in order to help promote your new book: THE END AND OTHER BEGINNINGS: Stories from the Future. You know you are the only one here that has had your books turned into a movie but you don’t understand why everyone assumes you are so snobby. Your books have been out for so long that  you don’t seem to be as excited as some of these other authors who have books that have recently jumped on the NYT Best-Seller list. Last time you saw Jason: This morning all the authors met in the cafeteria for introductions and to get their itenary for the day. That was the first and the last time you saw Jason, because you were too busy touring the school campus with the principal.

Your name is: Tiffany Jackson - Author of Allegedly & Monday’s Not Coming Your role and feelings about the book fair: This is a very exciting event for you. You are here with your BFF Nic Stone celebrating books and kids and kids reading books! You have had to talk to Nic about not being so upset about her book not being sold at the book fair this year (Your books aren’t either--they keep insisting your books are too mature for middle school. Whatever! Mrs. Friday knows what's up and has your books even if the book fair company didn't send any). You encourage her that she will have her time. You are excited to get acquainted with Jason and his co-author Brendan though you are a little worried that they don’t seem to be as in-synced as they usually are, and then Brendan disappears. Sounds like something out of one of your books! Last time you saw Jason: You were talking with Jason on his way out of the cafeteria, asking about where Nic and Brendan were. Brendan missed his interview and Nic was next but nowhere in sight.

Your name is: Gordon Korman - Author of Restart and many others Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are feeling a little intimidated by all these new young and hip authors. You can tell that the kids at Southwest definitely have a liking for Kwame and Jason because the lines at their book signing tables are way longer than the line at yours. You try to use the fact that both you and Jason have SSYRA books this year to try and start a conversation with him. You are a best-selling author of lots of books too! You can tell he seems like a nice person but he brushes you off and it seems like he has a lot on his mind or is looking for someone. Last time you saw Jason: exiting the cafeteria with Tiffany Jackson chatting his ear off.

Your name is: Mr. Shaw - Principal of Southwest Your role and feelings about the book fair: You know Mrs. Friday is so excited for this, you are just worried about making sure all the kids stay safe and nothing bad happens. You are caught off guard when Veronica Roth asks you to give her a tour of the school. You don’t want to seem rude and want you show off your school so you abandon your post outside the Media center to walk with her and show her the other parts of the school. People constantly say you have a serious look on your face so Mrs. Friday put you in front of the doors greeting people to help you practice smiling. You are worried you just look mad. Last time you saw Jason: You met him this morning, but then you had to stand guard outside of the media center to keep track of who was going in and out, talk to the Media, and to make sure no books were stolen.

Your name is: Summer Sanders - News interviewer Your role and feelings about the book fair: You are so thrilled to get to interview so many big name authors all at once. You have read all of their books in preparation, as a news anchor who sees a lot of crazy stories, you really liked Tiffany Jackson and her thriller/suspense type books. But you were extremely excited to interview Nic Stone because you heard she was such an electric person but she never showed up to her interview before all the mayhem began. Last time you saw Jason: He was the last person you interviewed, in the cafeteria, you could tell he was upset because Brendan never showed up.

Name	Motive	Alibi	Clue
Nic Stone
Kwame Alexander
Brendan Kieley
Mrs. Friday
Veronica Roth
Leo Rangel
Ally Carter
Tiffany Jackson
Gordon Korman
Mr. Shaw
Summer Sanders