Belmont Hills Media Center Blog

While most of us were enjoying our summer off, muralist Nancy Ballew has been hard at work giving the Belmont Hills Media Center a facelift. We could not be more pleased with the results, and we can’t wait to see the teachers’ and students’ reactions to the new artwork in the Media Center!

The end of the year is fast approaching — which means it’s time to start thinking about due dates for all library materials. Please see below for a list of important dates. After May 8, the media center will be closed for inventory and end-of-the-year procedures.

We’ve spent the last few months reading the picture book nominees for the 2008-2009 Georgia Book Awards, and now the time to vote for our favorite Georgia Book Award book is almost here! We will begin voting in the Media Center on Monday, April 13, and voting will run through Wednesday, April 22.

Whether your class has heard one book or 13 books, we hope you’ll sign up for the chance to vote. We will announce the winner of this year’s Georgia Book Award on Friday, April 24, and we will send our school’s winner to the University of Georgia, where the winner for the whole state of Georgia will be decided!

To schedule your class to vote, you will need to sign up for a 15-minute slot, during which we will review the nominated books, and each student will get to cast his or her vote online.

For a complete list of nominees and descriptions of the books, go directly to our blog post located here.

Happy voting!

We are so honored that Marilyn Valenzuela, the Belmont Hills Media Center Clerk, has been chosen as the Classified Employee of the Year for the 2008-2009 school year! Marilyn’s dedication shines through in everything she does, from making the Media Center a fun, interactive place for students to learn, to teaching the Family Literacy program to parents of Cobb County students … and all the while, she keeps a smile on her face!

Marilyn joined a list of outstanding nominees for Classified Employee of the Year, all of whom exhibit their passion and dedication to Belmont Hills every single day. Congratulations to all the wonderful nominees!

Monday, March 2, is Theodore S. Geisel’s birthday — or, as you know him, Dr. Seuss! It also happens to be Read Across America Day. We will be celebrating both events all day long in the Media Center. We will be holding a free book distribution so that every student will get to choose a free book in honor of Read Across America Day. In addition, we will run The Best of Dr. Seuss via closed circuit continuously throughout the day.

If you’re looking for additional ways to celebrate Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ birthday, please visit http://www.seussville.com/ for more great ideas and activities.

We’re please to announce the arrival of a variety of new library books that were purchased with the Laura Bush Foundation Grant we received in May. Among the new titles are fiction and nonfiction math books to meet K-2 math standards, nonfiction titles in Spanish, other teacher requests, and the Georgia Book Award picture books for 2008-2009. You can browse these books on the revolving New Book shelf near the circulation desk!

As always, if you have specific requests for books, please see Mrs. Launey or Ms. Valenzuela. Happy reading!

We’re very excited to announce the arrival of about 80 new videos to enhance your social studies, science, and health curriculum. These wonderful new resources cover topics such as American history, earth science, ecosystems, energy, weather, plant life, and more. Hopefully you will find these videos to be a wonderful complement to your lessons.

In the coming months, we will also be adding a wide array of new audio books and some new books that address your math standards. Stay tuned!

Here in the Belmont Hills Media Center, we’re very excited to announce a new program that Zoe (the Media Center pet) will be “leading” with our students this year. You may have heard of the “Sit, Stay, and Read” program featured recently on NBC (read about it below or go to http://www.sitstayread.org/About.aspx). This year, we will start a modified version of this program in the Belmont Hills Media Center.

Basically, I’m asking teachers in grades two through four to identify 2-3 students from their class who could use some extra reading practice. You can fill out the nomination form — available in the Media Center folder on the T drive or from Mrs. Launey directly — with each student’s name, his or her guided reading level, and some time frames during which the student could be pulled for 20-30 minutes to come to the Media Center to read to Zoe. I will be with the student and Zoe at all times, and we will work on guided reading strategies during our time together.

The number of times each student will get to “Sit, Stay, and Read” with Zoe will depend on the number of students you volunteer for this program. We’re hoping you will be as excited as we are to Sit, Stay, and Read, and that you’ll sign your students up for this program!

More information about the *official* Sit, Stay, and Read program
Reading aloud is a critical component of early childhood literacy. Children who have difficulty reading have an especially hard time reading aloud in front of peers and adults. This affects their self-esteem as they struggle with a skill their classmates’ easily master. SIT STAY READ! allows children to read aloud to specially trained and evaluated therapy dogs.

Programs like SIT STAY READ! are showing that children are more likely to interact with an animal than another person.

We’re On a Mission
Our mission is to improve literacy skills and foster a love of animals by partnering reading assistance dogs with children in our community.During their interaction with the SIT STAY READ! dogs, the children forget their limitations. In addition, even children who are already skilled at reading enjoy reading aloud to the dogs. Dogs provide rapt attention and children can read aloud without fear of criticism or interruption.

Children In Low-Income Families Especially at Risk
A report funded by the Packard and MacArthur Foundations found that the average child growing up in a middle class family has been exposed to 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading before entering school. The average child growing up in a low-income family has only been exposed to 25 hours of one-on-one reading aloud during this same time period.For this reason, we are especially committed to reaching children in low-income families.

Learning while having fun is what makes SIT STAY READ! successful.
(From http://www.sitstayread.org/About.aspx)

We media gals are very excited about starting the new school year. This year, the focus will be COLLABORATION, COLLABORATION, COLLABORATION. We hope that all of you will take advantage of the instructional activities and resources available to you and your students through the Belmont Hills Media Center. Here are some examples of the lessons and activities we offer:

• Learning to use Microsoft Word (Ex: to type a response to literature)

• Learning to use Microsoft PowerPoint (Ex: to create a presentation about something the class is studying)

• Learning to use Microsoft Publisher (Ex: to create a brochure)

• Learning to use MovieMaker/Adobe Premier Elements (Ex: to create and edit a video)

• Learning to use Kid Pix (Ex: to create pictures)

• Learning to use Inspiration (Ex: to create webs/Thinking Maps)

• Using the Media Center for research (atlas, encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus)

• Locating materials in the Media Center

• Using the Cobb Virtual Library (to research a topic)

• Using Destiny (to search for books and web sites)

• Learning about informational texts

• Reading the Book of the Month and complete accompanying activities

• Reading and voting for the Georgia Book Award Book (beginning in November)…

…and we are always open to new ideas and requests to ENGAGE your students in meaningful learning experiences!

We are so very, VERY pleased to announce that Belmont Hills has been chosen as a recipient of the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries grant. The grant was awarded in the amount of $6,000, specifically for the purpose of buying new library books. As the only Cobb County school chosen for this grant opportunity, we are so very fortunate to be granted this truly distinguished honor. The grant will go far in revitalizing and adding to our collection.

In the Fall of 2007, Mrs. Launey invited teachers to submit requests for books, and these requests were used to come up with a list of books we intend to purchase with the grant money. If you have additional requests for titles to add to our collection, please don’t hesitate to ask.