As you move on to eighth grade, I, too, am moving on. I recently was offered a position as the teacher librarian at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach. As you know, I am passionate about the role of school libraries in fostering reading, research, information literacy, and technology skills, and am I therefore very excited to be returning to a library position. At the same time, I am so sad to be leaving Lindero. I had hoped to see all of you on campus this year and to get reports on how you are enjoying eighth grade. Since I won’t get to see you as planned, I do very much hope that you will keep me posted about your progress by email. My new school email is jlofton@mbusd.org. Please write to me! Or, you can leave a comment here. Remember, too, that you can continue adding postings to your blogs if you like. Please be sure to let me know if you are doing that, so I can follow you. You are also welcome to follow my new library blog.
It was a great pleasure and privilege spending the last year with all of you, and I wish you the very, very best this year and in the future.
Hunger Games fans out there will enjoy this trailer for Mockingjay:
If you haven’t yet gotten into Suzanne Collin’s riveting trilogy, here’s a chance to listen to Hunger Games, the first book. Starting today, you have a week to download the audio book for free from Sync, the at this link. I’m looking forward to enjoying the book again in audio form.
I hope that everyone is enjoying a relaxing vacation. As part of your summer break, be sure to read, and also consider listening to some great books. Sync, a site devoted to young adult audiobooks, is offering free downloads of two audiobooks each week this summer. Every week, the offerings will include one current book and one classic. Right now, I am enjoying listening to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, which I downloaded from the site, while I walk each morning. Here’s a video about the program:
Below are wallwisher.com walls on which students shared recommendations for a recent book. There is a wall for each language arts class. Please check these out for summer reading ideas. To see each wall in full-screen mode, click the “Post a Sticky” button on the wall. You can also move sticky notes around to view any hidden behind each other. Don’t forget to also check our booktalk blog for summer reading ideas.
A lot of today was taken up with yearbook assemblies, but we did finish the last of the student films about The Giver, we shared some favorite blog postings and booktalks from our Lindero Loves Books blog, and played the vocabulary game on freerice.com.
I also showed this fun film, “The Top 100 Children’s Novels,” featuring 100 top children’s/young adult books, to some of the classes. Click this link to check it out.
Tomorrow, I will be on the Golf ‘n Stuff field trip, along with many of my students. Those who are here on campus will be visiting Mrs. Porter’s class.
Here are a couple of photos of students with their yearbooks:
Here’s a student playing the freerice.com game using our SMART Interactive Board:
Today, we watched more student films. Here’s another example of the many entertaining student films we saw:
Tomorrow, don’t forget to bring any books you still owe and portfolio items if you haven’t already. The yearbooks will be distributed tomorrow, but any students with outstanding books, library overdues or fines, or gym charges will need to clear those before they can receive them.
Today we collected textbooks and portfolio items before watching more student films. If you have any books that you did not return today, be sure to do so tomorrow. You need to return all your books and clear all library overdues and fines in order to receive your yearbook. Also, don’t forget to bring your portfolio items tomorrow if you didn’t today.
Today students showed their movies about one of the rules in The Giver to the rest of the class. We will plan to finish showing all the movies tomorrow and the next day. Here’s just one example of some of the great films students created. This one, produced by a team of Period 3 students, is about the rule that restricts parents to two children, with one girl and one boy:
For homework tonight:
Finish your final blog posting.
Bring in two or three items for your portfolio.
Bring in your literature textbook. Also bring in your English Workshop if you borrowed a copy rather than purchasing it.
Bring in any class library books you have borrowed and finished.
All the Seventh Grade students were participating in Olde World Faire today, so we didn’t have Language Arts classes. I enjoyed the opportunity to see most of my students at the event. Olde World Faire is the culmination of their Social Studies research about a medieval culture and trade. They all created wonderful booths and had terrific costumes and barter items appropriate for their culture and trade. Here’s a slide show of a few students I was able to catch for photo ops.
Students, please leave a comment sharing something about your Olde World Faire experience.
