old Connections ESC Region 11 Fall Library Conference 2024

Get REAL LIVE Folks in your space! Simple, no hassle, techniques and management program ideas to get LIVE presenters to your kids, right in your libraries.  

Based on ideas from Melissa Stewart's Five Kinds of Nonfiction, I'll share mini-lesson and co-teaching ideas centered around students classifying the best nonfiction resources for a given research task, creating their own anchor charts, ranking the books, and sharing their reasoning. I will share things that worked well (collaboration!) and that didn't (never enough time). We used a "wicked good" nonfiction theme as we did this unit around Halloween...but any theme could apply! Students came away with a better understanding of how to find and use text features in nonfiction books in research. I hope to share more ideas on ways to share nonfiction titles with students and extend these teaching ideas to digital resources.

A book battle is a great way to bring together your "book nerds" to compete for the school while at the same time bringing together librarians from around the region. The North Texas High School Book Battle has been successfully running for almost a decade. We have ranged from 13 to 20 schools competing throughout the years. In this session, we will go over what we know works, doesn't work, and everything in between.

As co-librarians new to our high school we decided to focus on staff relationships and student engagement. We emphasized the phrase “The Library is for Everyone” to guide the creation of library monthly themes which inspired book displays, special events, and staff and student programming. In this session we will highlight the resources we have used, examples of our book and STEAM-related activities, and plans for the future. This will include reading challenges and book clubs, strategies for staff survey engagement, 3D printing activities for students and staff, lunch and learn sessions, and more!

Come learn how to collaborate with teachers and create curriculum-based learning stations for elementary grades that are hosted in the Library. Come ready to experience and explore different stations as examples of what you can do in your own elementary Library.

Come learn about a series of various workshops on topics that are brought to life by teachers. The librarian connected with teachers to help them teach one of their passions to students. These workshops could be taught during the day or before or after school. The librarian helped with scheduling and creating an Amazon Wishlist for the supplies needed.