My puzzles are coming back to me with positive comments.  Now the clean up.  When the puzzles come back I have to either put another piece of tape over the sticky tape or scrape the tape off the puzzle pieces.  I have chosen to scrape the tape off, less finicky, and it's fairly easy to scrape the tape off laminated card stock.  I have to make sure all 20 pieces are there.  I found a box in the school that I can use for storing them flat. I could use the same puzzles again next year, changing the series of questions, just by giving each teacher a different puzzle.

My hope was that the kids would not only enjoy figuring out what book they had but that they would learn a little bit about survival skills as well.


I am looking at doing something with a cube next year. When I figure it out I'll post it, but I can use any input you may have to offer.

I'm not looking at doing any more contests this year.

I Love to Read Canadian contest didn't go as well as I had hoped.  I had hoped the students would have read enough books to complete a flag on the bulletin board (in strips). They did have 6 weeks to read and we have over 600 students in the school..... We ended up putting the strips on the board to create the bulletin board and then have the students sign the strips right on the board itself.  It was much more appealing to look at this way and we did have quite a few add their data to the strips after the board was completed.  My volunteers made a great maple leaf in the center of the flag with the strips.  I went to dollar tree and got some hats, gloves and socks with the maple leaf on them for l.25 each.  Students don't need to know how much we paid for them.  We drew 10 names of students to receive their prizes.  I guess I should count the entries before I dispose of them.  Stats are important...... after all.

March bulletin board
Frustrating, I planned my September /  October reading push yet didn't have a bulletin board for March created yet.  I spent a couple hours yesterday looking for an idea and came up with the minions. "Don't be a Minion, Be a Reader and a Leader" .  It will be quick and easy to create and put up, as well the students will relate to it.  for the second bulletin board  I am going to use the scene where the main character is reading to the girls at the end of the movie.  banner will read -- "Being a Reader could result in Becoming a Writer"

Now I have to come up with one for April (May's has been in the works for a month already)

Thank Goodness for Pinterest.

Friday my Teacher Librarian was showing a grade 7 class how to use Museum in a box and an idea came to me.  see below.  I can no longer hang bats or butterflies from our ceiling due to restrictions by our division so I had to come up with a new idea for our push on reading in Sept. and Oct.

I have my Teacher Librarians OK and the Vice Principal's OK (I had to go to her for the ok from workplace health and safety).  She was excited to see that I am not only promoting literacy but numeracy as well and suggested using even more shapes.  the items in italics are additional thoughts that I haven't decided upon yet.

for this project I got the cube shape off the internet and everything just fell in to place.

Each student who reads a book is to fill in 1 square of the cube with their name and the book they have read.  Should they rate the book on a scale of 1 to 5?

One student should NOT complete the entire cube.

 When the cube is complete it will be folded and shaped by the library volunteers.

Cubes could be stored in  laundry baskets or basket of some sort for students to sort 

through for recommendations to read.

Cubes could be used to build a shape, such as a cube, in the library. Boys will love building things with the cubes.

At the end of October all of the cubes will be put into a large container and 1 cube will be drawn with all 6 students winning a prize.  We could do a draw at the end of September as well.

Prize could be all the same (i.e. $10.00 Chapters or movie gift card card) or there could be 6 different prizes and the first student to show up gets to choose first, etc. We could do a second cube draw and each winner could get their choice of a chocolate bar.

We could print75 pages of the cube to start giving us 450 books read and print more as needed.  OR   We could print 100 pages of the cube to start giving us 600 books read and print more as needed.  Should we print on cardstock or bond paper?

Students would see the pile of cubes (or shape) growing which would encourage students to read so they can get an entry in the contest.

Students may want to read a book that someone has already recorded and recommended.

Survival Canada Puzzle

The Survival Canada Puzzle I created for I Love to Read month went over very well.  Staff and students both enjoyed it and hopefully learned a little about survival.

I did make a mistake when I put survival questions in Thursday's announcements when we don't do advisors on Thursdays.  I did make a listing of corrections/comments but this was the only negative that came back.

CREATING SURVIVAL CANADA

This is a lot of work so don’t attempt to do it at the last minute.

1.      Choose the number of book covers you need.  You could do this by classroom or advisor.  I had 35 advisors which meet every morning.  Our homeroom teachers don’t see their homeroom classes every day.

2.     Decide whether you will celebrate Canadian authors or all authors.  I chose to do Canadian authors as we were celebrating I Love To Read Canadian.

[This could be done with sports books (fiction and non-fiction) and use Olympics or sports trivia ].

3.     In power point enlarge your chosen book covers to full page size. When printed this will leave a ½ inch border completely around the cover.

4.     Print the covers on cardstock; bond paper will not give the support needed.     

5.     I was lucky enough to have an Ellison machine and puzzle die cut to create the puzzles from these covers.  If you don’t you can create a puzzle schematic and print it on the reverse (sample  included) and manually cut the pieces out.  The number of pieces could co-ordinate with the number of days you will be running the competition.

6.     Don’t have the puzzle pieces go completely to the paper edge so you have a frame for the puzzle pieces to go into.  The frame can also give clues as to where the puzzle piece belong.   i.e. you can go into the edge varying degrees giving more white space on some pieces than others.

7.     Once the puzzle pieces are cut out it leaves a very flimsy frame so you need to glue that frame to a second piece of cardstock.  Make sure you label the back of this frame with the same number allocated to the envelope of pieces.

8.     You may want to number your puzzle pieces according to each puzzle.  I did 35 puzzles and each one was A thru Z, then AB thru AJ  Each piece was then numbered  1 thru 20.  i.e.  A-1, X-5, and AB-14, placing an underscore under the numbers so they were not read incorrectly.  Place the 20 puzzle pieces into an envelope labelled with the same number.

9.     After cutting, numbering, and gluing -- have everything laminated. This will allow the puzzles to be re-used multiple times. i.e. I could use these same puzzles next year with a different quiz by placing the puzzles in different advisor groups.

10.                        Then the task of cutting out the laminating.  Yes, this takes a long time but my volunteers could have done this for me as they would not know or recognize the covers selected.

11.                        Don’t laminate the enlarged book covers prior to cutting as the laminate may not stick to the pieces after they are cut apart.  It also makes it difficult to number the puzzle pieces after the fact.  Since I had 1 week to create 10 additional cover puzzles I did this and had to use cut up labels to number the pieces and using the Ellison machine was difficult.

12.                        When everything is cut out again and separated by puzzle you need to add some 2-sided tape (just a small piece) to the back of each piece.  This will allow the students to fasten the puzzle piece onto the puzzle frame.

13.                        Each group to receive the puzzle frame may mount it on a bulletin board or wall for easy access. 

14.                        I located some survival trivia online and chose a question per school day and placed the question in the daily announcements.  Each advisor group has their own puzzle and pieces (and answer sheet) so they can have a discussion and come to a consensus on the answer.  Once answered they may designate 1 person to remove a puzzle piece and everyone can help figure out where it goes in the puzzle.  Depending on the piece they pull they may / may not have difficulty placing the first piece or two.

15.                        Once they figure out the book title and author they can come to the Library with their answer.

16.                        The first advisor group to correctly determine their book cover and author would receive a prize.  i.e. ours will receive popcorn for the advisor.

17.                        Make sure you give explicit directions to the staff involved in each group prior to beginning the competition.