Sunday, December 12, 2010

Quick Picks


During a recent visit to Discovery College, Hong Kong, Dianne McKenzie introduced me to the brilliant idea of "Quick Picks". She has boxes carrying the respective label on her shelves, in which she places recommended titles. This helps students who are in a hurry to find a good book. I really liked the idea because when upper elementary students visit the library with their teachers, we usually reserve most of our time for unit-of-inquiry-related tasks, often having little time left for book check out. Students often ask me for recommendations and I have started to set up baskets with recommended titles for particular genres. Last week I wanted to give it a special touch, also with the intend (I have to admit) to get some great titles that often seem to get overlooked, into the hands of our students. I packed the books into brown paper bags and closed them. The only information available for students were some keywords about the book, arranged in form of a Wordle. All bags were gone within moments and students have asked me to prepare more for the up-coming week. In order to be able to re-use the bags and labels, I plan on having a set of simple bags made out of beautiful Ghanaian fabric to which I will attach the laminated Wordle cards. I hope that this will also encourage our reluctant readers to get more excited about checking out books from the library.


6 comments:

  1. Love the idea of the bag and wordle! Isn't it great that better ideas can come out of simple ones- I will be taking your idea now ;-)

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  2. Super - and thanks so much for adding a comment to my blog. Not much happening on here yet... I am so grateful for all the great ideas you shared with us during the workshop. Another idea of yours which I used with much success was that activity around plagiarism, crossing out the name on someone else's paper etc. Students were first speechless, then furious - what a great way to initiate a session on how to avoid plagiarism and why resource citation is so important. Thanks again!

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  3. I love this idea and would love to use it in a classroom. Everyone loves a lucky dip! Also a good idea to use reusable bags. I know the idea originated at a workshop and thanks for sharing your learning from that. Too often teachers attend great PD and the knowledge/ideas gained remains isolated to either themselves or team members. Thanks again.

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  4. Thanks for your comment, Simone. I also shared with my colleagues directly from the workshop through Twitter and a wiki that I had set up just for this workshop. That also made it easy for me to manage resources I wanted to share at the workshop and save new resources I discovered during the workshop.
    Feel free to have a look at it:
    http://hkworkshop.wikispaces.com
    I would definitely do this again for the next workshop I attend because often it can be challenging to find a good opportunity to share the learned with everyone once back at school. There is always so much to do.
    Tanja

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  5. I loved the idea and shared it with Fiona @fionanbir, our library head. Simone, blogging really means we can share great learning from workshops and other PD (and anywhere!!) with the whole world. No more need for the ideas to remain isolated in the team.

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  6. Blogging is such a great way of learning and sharing, especially when you don't have a chance to meet other professionals outside your school at workshops or conferences regularly. It makes me feel connected. Unfortunately, I never seem to have enough time to post regularly - unless I am on break like right now :)

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