Coming Soon: Iroquois Family STEM Night

Submitted by Caley and Aurelia, Guest Bloggers from the Iroquois Girls' STEM Leadership Group

On Tuesday, April 9^th, 2019, the Girls’ STEM Leadership Group is presenting the Iroquois Family STEM Night from 6:00 pm to 8:00pm, which is open to all Iroquois K-12 students and their families. This is the first ever district-wide Family STEM Night, and we would be grateful if you would come enjoy our STEM activities with us.  This event is made possible through a generous grant provided by The Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation.

  

We are so glad to have the Buffalo Museum of Science coming to our event. They will be bringing hands-on activities for everyone to enjoy. There will be live insects, experiments involving circuitry and electricity, and activities regarding Native American culture.

In addition to those activities, there will also be Family Feud Trivia, slime making, a robotics demonstration from the Nichols School, straw rocket launcher contests, flying drones, duct tape crafts, DIY “math” bath bombs, forensics fun, and robot finch coding--all run by the Girls STEM Leadership group. The event will also feature magic tricks, robot making, and coloring. There will also be a Pizza Amore food truck available to purchase food from.

There will be free gifts given to the first 100 families in attendance. The Girls’ STEM Leadership Group hopes you can join us for this fun event in the Iroquois Middle School Building!

We're hoping that Glow in the Dark Slime will be a huge hit!

These are the latest entries for the robot making contest.

Organizing robot kits.

Testing out duct tape crafts to use for STEM night.

Sorting event invitations to distribute to K-8 students.

The Girls' STEM Leadership Group hard at work!

Organizing signage for the STEM Night.

Foreign Language Authors

Hello! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ms. Ryan and I am the student teacher from UB currently working with Ms. Muhlbauer in the Iroquois Middle School Library. I will only be here for a short time, but I have already had so many wonderful experiences in this library! It has been a joy to come into a learning community where students are eager to engage with books and teachers are utilizing the space and resources in innovative ways.

One of the first projects I was lucky enough to be a part of was a foreign language lesson in the library. Ms. Marcinkowski and Ms. Gaske brought their 7th grade Spanish and French classes in to work on a project that would allow them to become foreign language authors using a website called Book Creator. The purpose of this lesson was to give students the opportunity to apply their new French and Spanish vocabulary in a creative and meaningful way by writing a children’s picture book in a foreign language.

This was my first time working with Book Creator and I was excited to share with students the tools that were available to them and explore the possibilities of this website together!

During students' first visit to the library they were able to choose the topic for their book from a list generated by their Spanish or French teachers. Possible topics included “numbers”, “colors”, “weather”, “emotions”, and “personal I.D.”.

Before students began working on their digital book, they created a rough draft using a storyboard. This let them visualize what each page of their book would look like including text and pictures. Just looking at their storyboards we could already tell these books were going to be great!

"Emotions" storyboard

Plans for a book about "Colors"

The students are such talented artists!

Another great storyboard

On Day Two in the library, students were able to log on to Book Creator and begin designing their digital books. Each page of their book was required to have one sentence or phrase in French or Spanish and a picture to match the text. Students were shown how to import images from a Google image search and import hand-drawn illustrations using their laptop cameras. There was lots of excited chatter in the library as students worked on this part of the project.

Learning all about Book Creator.

Students were so focused on this project! 

Ms. Marcinkowski instructing the Spanish students.

On our final day together, students had an opportunity to display their speaking skills by recording themselves reading their books in Spanish and French. A few students even volunteered to share their finished books with the rest of their class.

Making sure the Spanish is just right!

Sharing the finished books.

The completed books will be shared with the 6th grade students later this spring when they visit French and Spanish classes before choosing a language to study in 7th grade. We were so impressed with the books the students were able to make for this project. This was a fun way for students to showcase their foreign language skills. Thank you Ms. Marcinkowski and Ms. Gaske for bringing this project to the library! It was a pleasure to work with you and your students!

StarBOOKs Cafe

Mrs. Nicosia always comes into the library with great ideas to energize her sixth grade reading class.  She proposed the idea of turning our library into StarBOOKs cafe for a morning.  On February 15th, we made that happen!

Students were greeted in the library by friendly baristas, Ms. Santucci and Ms. Ryan (both student teachers completing their first placements at Iroquois Middle).  Our StarBOOKs cafe was complete with tables featuring new and exciting nonfiction selections available in the library.  Mrs. Nicosia had commented that her students were having some difficulty finding enjoyable nonfiction books.  Students spent time at six tables, previewing two books at each table.  As they moved from table to table, they kept track of books they potentially wanted to take home to read during the February break.

Students used an organizer to track their interest in books.

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Santucci were the baristas for our StarBOOKs activity.

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Santucci made their way around to each student to serve them hot chocolate (in Starbucks cups!).  We listened to jazz music while book browsing in order to add to the coffee shop vibe.

Students previewed a variety of nonfiction books.

Some selections sparked discussion.

Books included both nonfiction and biography selections.

Students enjoyed hot chocolate as they browsed through the books.

By the end of the class, students had a good idea of books they would like to bring home for over break.  Many students even decided to check out multiple titles!  StarBOOKs Cafe was a fun way to explore new books and introduce students to the available nonfiction selections.

Students posing with books they checked out.

Judging a Book by Its Quote

It's always wonderful to get sixth grade reading classes into the library for book checkout.  The sixth grade teachers are open to exploring new ways to get books in the hands of our students, and this has led to some creative book promotion lessons.  Last year, I explored the idea of a "book drive thru" type lesson with Mrs. Whalen, a sixth grade ELA teacher.  We had previously conducted large-scale genre tastings with her classes and were looking for a way to slightly pare down that activity.  The idea of a "book drive thru" was to give the students just a taste of many books to see what they would be interested in reading.

The lesson idea stayed on the shelf for awhile until Mrs. Reid decided she would like to bring in her reading class for the activity.  The books for the activity (approximately 50 titles) were scattered around the library.  Each book was accompanied by a laminated quote from the book and a response sheet.  Quotes from each book were located by using Goodreads and the quotes were made more colorful by using an online quote generator.

Each station contained a book, quote, and response sheet.

Students received a sheet where they could record the titles of books they encountered.  There were spaces provided so they could indicate if they definitely wanted to read the book, maybe wanted to read the book, or didn't want to read the book.  Students were also asked to leave a short response to the book's quote--it could be a word, phrase, or picture. 

Students kept track of the books they were interested in reading.

Once students had the instructions, they were free to move around the library and visit with books that looked appealing to them.  Students could work independently and at their own pace on the activity.

Students left plenty of great feedback on the response sheets!  It was really interesting to see how they interacted with the books' quotes through words and pictures.

Books for students to peruse were scattered all throughout the library.

Students visited books that looked interesting to them.

Each station had a book, quote, and response sheet.

Students used words and pictures to respond to a book's quote.

It was interesting to see students' feedback on each quote!

It was especially interesting to see how students used illustrations to create their feedback.

Students found new books of interest through this activity.

Mrs. Reid's class spent about 25 minutes visiting with the books.  I circulated through the room and talked to students about the titles from the activity that I had previously read and enjoyed.  Students were also eager to share book recommendations with their peers.  Hatchet was a book loved by many of the students.  One student had even left a detailed recommendation on the feedback sheet!

Students utilized the feedback sheet to recommend books to their classmates.

At the end of the activity, students were invited to check out a book (either from the activity or from the library itself).  Most students had a book in mind right away!  They were asked to keep their sheet from this activity as it might give them ideas for books they would be interested in reading next.

All in all, this activity successfully introduced students to new books of interest.  They enjoyed seeing a variety of titles, working at their own pace, and moving around the library.  For next time, I would change the feedback sheet to instruct students to leave recommendations for books they have already read.  I'd also encourage students to work in the vicinity of others--there was great discussion going on as students talked about books they loved!

Robot Finch Takeover!

November/December 2018 was an especially busy time in the Iroquois Middle School Library!  We were lucky to be awarded with 10 robot finches thanks to the loan program offered through BirdBrain Technologies, the company which manufactures the robot finches.

A robot finch is a hands-on tool which allows students to hone their computer coding skills.  The robot finch can be controlled with many programming languages (we chose to use Scratch because students had some familiarity with it).  The finch comes equipped with two wheel motors, LED lights, a temperature sensor, buzzer, and touch sensors.  These capabilities provided students with seemingly endless programming opportunities.  The hands-on nature of the robot finches also made it fun and easy for students to see their programming skills come to life!

Students were able to program the robot finches by using Scratch.

In order to maximize the amount of time students were able to spend with the robot finches, Mrs. Lambert and Mr. Kwietniewski were gracious enough to bring their STREAM classes into the library for a finch coding project.  Between both teachers, there are 24 sections of STREAM, meaning upwards of 400 students in grades six through eight enjoyed class time with the finches.  We decided that each group would have three class periods to explore the finches.

On the first day of the finch project, students received a brief introduction to the finches, including how to set up the finch on the student laptops, how to properly care for the finches, and which Scratch coding commands would be useful for their programs.  Students were then instructed to work in groups of 2-3 to complete a finch tutorial.  This packet, adapted from the finch education website, introduced students to finch features and some coding strategies.

Students worked on the finch tutorial before tackling challenges.

Some groups even named their finches!

Students enjoyed the hands-on coding experience with the finches.

Once students had completed the tutorial, they were invited to participate in a challenge of their choosing.  It took students varying amounts of time to complete the tutorials; some groups finished in one class period, while others needed multiple periods to finish.

There were five coding challenges the groups could choose from: traffic light, dance party, music maker, remote control, and drawbot.  Each of the challenges were adapted from beginner level Scratch lessons found on the finchrobot.com website.  Before starting each challenge, students were encouraged to do their best, as outstanding challenge outcomes would be video recorded for the Robot Finch Hall of Fame!  There were a number of groups that were able to tackle multiple challenges during their project time in the library.

Mr. K. observes his seventh grade students work on drawing shapes with the finches.

Students work to get the finch through a masking tape maze.

There were some truly remarkable coding projects created by our students!  Some of the best projects created came about by students who were committed to bringing an idea to life, or by those that took risks by exploring a variety of the finch's capabilities.  Many of these dedicated students visited the library during study hall to further perfect their coding projects.  All of the recorded projects can be found on the Iroquois Middle School Library website here.

Students worked on coding projects in order to be inducted into the hall of fame!

In the video above, students used the finch's buzzer feature to play the tune "Africa" by the band Toto.

Students from this video created a maze out of all of the Harry Potter books in the library.  They activated the finch's touch sensors in order for the finch to complete the book maze unassisted.

On the last day of the project, we invited all students to participate in a survey about their experience coding with the robot finches.  The feedback received will be helpful as we move forward with STEM/robotics-related activities and curriculum.  We will be able to incorporate student suggestions into these offerings.  Of the 381 survey respondents, 99 said they were interested in extra coding opportunities (and there were 160 students who said maybe)!

Overall, we were very pleased by the creativity and effort displayed by the STREAM students.  The robot finch project was a great way to celebrate #hourofcode and Computer Science in Education week.  A special thank you to Mr. Kwietniewski and Mrs. Lambert for making this possible!

Fiction Genrefication Project

Fall/Winter 2018 ushered in many changes to the organization of the Iroquois Middle School Library.  After genrefying the biography section last year, I now felt confident in tackling the larger task of genrefying the library's fiction section.

Genrefication is the process of moving a library's collection into topic/subject areas, rather than adhering to other traditional organization structures.  There are clear benefits to genrefication; namely, a genrefied library makes it easier for students to find the materials they are looking for.  Students frequently ask to be pointed in the direction of books about a particular subject or genre.  Now they will be able to target specific fiction sections that are of interest to them!

As with the biography genrefication, Paul Kloster and Christine Tempestoso, the librarians at Orchard Park Middle School, were a great source of knowledge and inspiration during the fiction genrefication process.  They were kind enough to share their planning documents and some helpful suggestions.  Patty Lebrenz from the Erie 1 BOCES Library Automation Team was instrumental in cataloging help.  We spent a full day together updating the fiction records in the library catalog!

Utilizing the suggestions from the Orchard Park librarians, I selected nine different genres for the fiction section.  They are:

• Adventure
• Animals (including fantasy and realistic stories that center around animals)
• Fantasy 
• Historical Fiction
• Horror
• Mystery
• Realistic Fiction
• Science Fiction
• Sports Fiction (realistic fiction centered upon sports)

Placing the books into the appropriate genres required a little legwork.  Instead of pulling all of the books from the shelves, I used Follett Destiny to download a spreadsheet of all of the fiction books in the library.  Utilizing the Destiny catalog, I was able to determine what fiction genre to place each title in.

This spreadsheet came in handy when Patty Lebrenz, Erie 1 BOCES library automation expert, came to the library to help with the cataloging.  We were able to update all of the fiction call numbers to reflect the new fiction genres.  In Destiny, we also added a location which displayed the book's genre as well.

Once the catalog was updated, new spine labels were created that displayed the book's genre as part of the call number.  To make the process of locating books even easier for the students, each genre was assigned a color.  The appropriate colored label protector was placed over each spine label. 

As these supplies are expensive, I was lucky enough to receive a generous $250.00 grant from The Iroquois Foundation to cover the cost of 3,500 new labels protectors!  This will keep the library genrefication efforts afloat for many years to come.

A generous grant from The Iroquois Foundation
funded the fiction genrefication project.

3,500 labels and 13 book stands were purchased with the grant.

We were now ready to utilize the spreadsheets and updated spine labels to make physical changes to the fiction books.  Working on one genre section at a time, Ms. Marcheson, Mrs. Ekstrum, and I pulled all of the fiction books and attached all of the new spine labels!  This project couldn't have happened without the hard work of Ms. Marcheson and Mrs. Ekstrum.

Each fiction book received a new spine label and color coded label protector.

With the sorting and labeling of books complete, our focus was now on the organization and signage accompanying the revamped fiction section.  New shelf labels were created, along with new signage to appear on the tops of each shelf.  This updated signage should make it more efficient for students to find the fiction books they are looking for.

The sports fiction books with yellow labels.

The realistic fiction books with light green labels.

The mystery books with blue labels.

The fantasy books with purple labels.

The adventure books with pink labels.

The science fiction books with orange labels.

The historical fiction books with dark green labels.

The animal fiction books with brown labels.

Since the genrefication and reorganization of the fiction section, students seem to find the books they want quicker and with more ease.  Students are especially excited that all of the horror and sports books are in separate sections, as there is a high demand for both of these topics.

Another benefit to genrefication is that I am able to see which sections do not contain many books.  This will help to target collection development efforts in the areas that need more attention.

Special thanks to The Iroquois Foundation for making this possible!