Mrs. Schultz-Suggs is very excited about participating in the second year of Model Teaching Week @ the Creek! She is working with some of our best and brightest teachers to develop the conceptual curriculum which will be used during the 2009-2010 school year. She is also working on developing a year-long theme for grades K-5 that is consistent with the school's theme. So happy to be here!
Thanks to all the students and teachers who have been working hard to find all their books and materials and return them. We appreciate getting those things back on time.
Thanks also to all the wonderful parent (and grandparent!) volunteers we have had working in the Library all year long, and especially those who came to last week's Library Clean Up Day. We have weeded and fixed call numbers on all our non-fiction books through the 600s, and we're almost ready to conduct our annual inventory!
Finally, Mrs. Schultz-Suggs has been working hard on a little side project. Click below to see the Cobb County School District Precision Book Cart Drill Team: Cart Blanche!
Download Drill Team webstream
January brings in the fifth graders who are conducting research on Famous Americans. Each fifth grade student is assigned an American to research, and they must write a report and prepare a speech about their person's life. In addition, they must prepare a display including a picture of their person and other significant item. Research on the project is conducted entirely at school, in the Library, the classroom, and the computer lab. Their reception (the culmination of all their hard work) will be on Friday, February 27th. See the sidebar on the right for access to some of the online resources they have been using.
I am so excited to start the new school year! We have lots of interesting things going on in the Library this year. Please tune back in later this week and early next week for some highlights, as well as the posting of our volunteer schedule and information about the daily broadcast of our morning announcements.
Welcome back and remember: We Are What We Learn!
November will be wonderful in the Library! We have brand new computers throughout the school, thanks to our SPLOST project, and we are about to receive 71 new laser printers in the building. We have a double Birthday Book Club coming up on November 15th, so if you have abirthday in the months of October or November, stop by the Library to select a new book and be the first to check it out! contact the BIrthday Book Club rep from PTA for more information, or stop by the Library.
On Monday, November 5th, Mrs. Schultz-Suggs will be presenting to the Elementary Media Specialists in Cobb County as part of our Library Media In-Service. She will be sharing with other Elementary School Media Specialists the kinds of lessons and activities she has developed over the past few years for use with our Sope Creek students. Other Media Specialists are presenting as well, so Mrs. Schultz-Suggs will be able to bring back lots of new ideas!
On October 31st, the First Grade participated in the annual I Love A Book Parade, and Mrs. Schultz-Suggs took part. That bulge in her belly is nothing more than the fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and horse that she swallowed! (Just kidding-- that bulge is actually a little boy who should be making his arrival early in March!).
Speaking of loving books, our first Book Club meeting will be held this Friday, November 2nd during 4th and 5th grade recess blocks. Any 4th or 5th graders interested in reading the Georgia Book Award Nominees and participating in the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl should stop by the Library during their recess on Friday to find out more information.
We are heading into the second round of shows for our four SCNN crews-- each of them have had their first show, and round two is in full swing. tunein on Friday mornings for the latest stories of what's going on at The Creek, as well as our "Not Quite Patriotic Song" of the week!
At the end of the month, Mrs. Schultz-Suggs will be joining the 5th graders on their Jekyll Island trip and will be out of the Library for three days.
We are Soaring Into Knowledge and ready to start another wonderful year in the Sope Creek Elementary Library Media Center!
We are prepaing to welcome all our students after Labor Day , and will be training our parent volunteers in the next few weeks.
The school (indeed, the whole County) is undergoing a Refresh of Obselete Workstations (ROWS) project which requires the location and replacement of all computers purchased prior to 2003. With 112 laptops on wireless carts and 240 computers tucked away in classrooms, closets and trailers, this is quite an undertaking. We will be in great shape once the project is finished, but it does require a great deal of effort at the onset-- which unfortunately translates into a later start date for the Library.
Keep checking back for updates-- the dates of the Volunteer Training will be posted shortly, as will orientation and deadlines for SCNN applications and such. We're looking forward to a great year!
The end of the year is fast approaching (can you believe it?!) and the Library is getting ready to close up for the summer. We are asking your help in keeping with the following schedule:
Friday, April 27th -- Last Day for Student Check Out
Friday, May 4th -- All Student Books Due Back to the Library
Monday, May 7th -- Overdue Notices Distributed
Thursday, May 10th -- Library Clean Up & Inventory Day (with help from our fabulous parent volunteers!)
Friday, May 11th -- Last Day for Instruction or Storytime in the Library (also, Career Day)
Monday, May 14th -- Lost Book Letters Distributed (with request for payment)
Thank you for understanding our end-of-the-year schedule and for helping us to make the close of this school year go smoothly!
We would like to congratulate the members of the Sope Creek Book Club for a competition well-played! Saturday, February 3rd was the 1st Annual Cobb County Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl, held at Osborne High School. The team (seven 5th grade students and two 4th graders) came in second place with 150 points. This makes the second year in a row that Sope Creek's team will be competing in the Regional Reading Bowl!
The team will continue on to the Regional Bowl on Saturday, March 3rd at West Georgia University. For more information on the history of the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl, click here.
The Book Club members are asked to read novels from the list of twenty Georgia Book Award Nominees and be prepared to answer questions about the texts. One of our members read all twenty books, and several others have read over half!
Congratulations again to the members of the book club, and good luck in preparing for the Regional competition!
We have successfully made it past the Friday the 13th deadline, and have completed all the necessary reports to switch automation systems.
We have exported all of our collection to the Follett Company who will translate it into the new Destiny automation system for us. What does this mean for students, teachers, and parents in the community? It means that our collection will remain static until after Thanksgiving when we begin using Destiny. Mrs. Schultz-Suggs is unable to make any changes to the collection while teh information transfer is going on-- no new books can be added, no old books can be deleted, no changes can be made to the collection at all. Birthday Book Club might be affected a little bit, but all that means is a slightly longer wait between book selection in November and the start of Destiny circulation in December.
Mrs. Schultz-Suggs has just met with the 4th grade team during their all-day planning (thank you to our PTA for funding substitutes for this very important planning day!), and will be working with many of the 4th grade teachers on an upcoming project. This unit will involve the new Georgia Performance Standards on explorers and will incorporate information literacy skills as well as the elements of the Big 6 research model. The 4th grade students worked on a Big 6 project last year on Habitats in conjunction with the Library, so they are familiar with the model. If you are interested in seeing the final products of the 3rd grade Habitat project, click here. Check back at this site in a few weeks to see examples of the 4th grade projects!
NEWSFLASH! The Curriculum tab on the Library Media webpage is up and running with information about the Library Program at all grade levels!
Welcome back to school! The Library is up and running for teachers and will be open for student check-out beginning Monday, August 28th. We are busily helping classroom teachers get their equipment set up and submitting both work orders and surplus orders to fix up and clear out!
If you haven't had a chance to stop by our office, we've gotten our own mini-renovation with a newly faux-painted wall and framed artwork (thank you to both Nancy Condron and the PTA Reading & Literacy committee for the artwork!)
Though the beginning of the school year will be fairly straightforward this year, toward the Thanksgiving Holiday we'll be changing circulation systems from Athena to Destiny. The circulation system is the computer program we use to check in and out all of our books and catalog our collection. Thsi changeover requires that all student and teacher materials checked out from the Library be returned before the Thanksgiving break. Circulation will begin again one week after Thanksgiving and will continue, uninterrupted, until the end of the school year. We thank you in advance for your patience and understanding.
