The Daring Librarian

This is reading promotion idea that's inexpensive, low-tech, includes student voice, and I totally nabbed it from the amazing Librarian Tiff five years ago and I still love it! It's kind of what you can call an oldie but a goodie. I don't put this display out at the beginning of the school year. I've found that it's good to bring it out mid-year or connected to a reading promotion lesson activity like Speed Dating with Books to generate interest. Shockingly, it seems that my middle schoolers respond to "new" things, so I bring this out in the lull between Winter and Spring break. But this can work at any time in a school library or ELA classroom. It's kinda like a low-tech YELP review for books! I was inspired by Librarian tiff because she also does this in her school library and created this amazing graphic below, made it Creative Commons, and gave it out to the world! I love beautiful signage that I don't have to make myself! Beca...

Because you asked. I occasionally get emails from followers, readers, and conference audience members asking for advice. It's lovely! And flattering! And OK, a lot of work sometimes. But, I always try to answer and help. Recently, I spent so much time answering, linking to past posts, and giving paragraphs and paragraphs of advice I thought - Hey! This would be a good blog post! Some of these topics, I've blogged about before. I'm kind of passionate about being a passionate teacher, being positive, and just choosing one NEW thing at a time to try. So, though it's taken me a better part of a week to write this, and I warn you -- it's LONG. It's what they call nowdays a "deep dive" or a "long read" and that's OK! I thought... or hoped, it could be helpful to some new Educators, Admins, Teachers and Teacher Librarians! My Usual Disclaimer: These are my humble opinions and to quote the great Dalton, played with great gravitas by lat...