Hello Garner Gators! I am Jenahlee Chamberlain. I am so excited to be your new teacher librarian this year! We are off to a great start in the library and I am so excited to see what this year brings. While I am new to Garner, I am not new to the library. This is my TENTH year as a librarian in the ICCSD. I started my career at Hills Elementary and I have spent the last 8 years in the library at Kirkwood Elementary.

If you have peeked in the library you will have noticed that a lot of things have changed. We have added some new furniture, the shelves are moved around, all the books have new locations and both teaching spaces have been combined into one. If you have not had a chance to check out, I hope you will consider visiting us the next time you are in!

All K-2 Students Celebrated International Dot Day in September which was inspired by Peter Reynold's book The Dot. They created some amazing collaborative dots!

Kindergarten: Kindergarten started off the year learning how to checkout and take care of library books at home. We have been reading our way through this year's Iowa Goldfinch Award books while also talking about the parts of the book and the roles of the author and illustrator. Later this year they will get to vote on their favorite! Next up we will dive into fiction vs. nonfiction and we will dig deeper in the the jobs of an author and illustrator by becoming them ourselves!

1st Grade: First grade started the year reviewing how we check out and sharing with me what they already knew about taking care of books since they are now first grade experts! First grade also started exploring this year's Goldfinch award books, but we will be taking a break from that to focus on learning about our upcoming visiting author/illustrator Bryan Collier!

2nd Grade: After a reviewing library and checkout expectations we quickly moved on to exploring the Goldfinch Books as well. One of our favorites was The Invisible Boy which we read during Kindness Week. We had a great discussion about how ONE person can make a difference in someone's day, and continued the conversation shared during Kindness week about being Bucket Fillers every day! 2nd grade will also be learning about our visiting author/illustrator Bryan Collier and we could not be more excited!

All of 3rd-6th grade go through Library Orientation, learning about my expectations in the library, where everything is, checkout expectations and a little about my philosophy and goals for the library this year!

3rd Grade: Third grade is working towards becoming independent users of the library. They hunted for Pokemon that were hidden in the different sections of the library to help them become familiar with where the different sections are. We moved on to learning about call numbers and how those help us locate books on the shelf. We also logged into Buncee for the first time in preparation for using it with Global Read Aloud to communicate with other kids all over the world.

4th Grade: Fourth grade also hunted Pokemon hidden in the sections of the library to get acquainted with the new layout of the library. We spent time viewing Book Trailers for this year's Iowa Children's Choice books. Any student that listens to or reads at least two of the books on the list will get to vote later this year! We recently began learning about Destiny Discover, the new version of our library catalog that students can use to find books in the library. We also learned about MackinVia where students can access ebooks and audiobooks from anywhere using their student accounts!

All of 3rd-6th grade go through Library Orientation, learning about my expectations in the library, where everything is, checkout expectations and a little about my philosophy and goals for the library this year!

5th Grade/6th Grade: Fifth & Sixth grade reviewed how to find books with a little game I like to call Book Jenga. Students had to work in teams to search for books determined by the block they pulled from the Jenga game. Once they located the call number in the catalog and found the book on the shelf they had to build a book tower. I was really impressed by their teamwork and I also loved seeing how different teams approached the game in various ways. We also spent time celebrating Banned Books Week, which celebrates a student's right to read. They were all amazed by some of the reason books have been banned throughout history and were glad to know that none of the books were banned in their library!

• 5th grade is also learning about Buncee which they will use to create digital postcards for Global Read Aloud.
  
• 6th grade has been critiquing the book trailers for Iowa Children's Choice in preparation for creating their own book trailers in the upcoming weeks.

Bryan Collier is a 4 time Caldecott Honor and 7 time Corretta Scott Kind Award and Honor winning illustrator and author. He will visit 1st and 2nd grade at Garner on November 7, 2018. We are so excited for him to come!

I love sharing the story of what we are doing in the library! Please follow along on Instagram! (Click the link below!)

Students can search for Garner elementary and login using their Google student accounts!