April Displays

 It's hard to believe that there will be only one more set of library displays to figure out before the school year is over.  The ease provided by only having to transition details around our school mascot  is something I'll continue to appreciate in the years to come for the board behind the circulation desk:

Should I ever get to replace the black pocket chart with a staple board, I think I'd enjoy anchoring the space with biographical info and photos of authors and illustrators.  For now, it looks like this:

One of my favorite areas to work with this year has been the wood and glass display case, and students of all ages enjoy examining it too.  With dimensional details and inviting books on display, I end up having to clean the glass at least once a week.  As April is National Poetry Month (and Library Month!), I've selected some books of poetry from my own personal collection and continued with the "reading with our peeps" theme for April.  Sweet and cheery, hopefully library visits will be a respite from the stresses of state testing this month.

I haven't photographed the hallway bulletin board because it's not yet finished.  Wanting to add vocabulary to accompany six examples of poems written about our planet (yes, I'm trying to include Earth Day content as well), I went the easy route and downloaded a set of poetry slides from TPT that I didn't examine closely before printing.  Discovering incorrect grammar, lack of punctuation, and frankly very repetitious graphics on several pages made me see the error of my quick-and-easy decision, so this weekend I'm creating my own slides to print and add on Monday.  Live and learn, right?

I'll also be pulling a lot of poetry books as well as stories full of rhyme for displays and checkout, and my next goal is to choose a section of the library to evaluate for weeding, as I'd like to whittle down enough space over time that I can establish at least one bookcase per section for dynamic shelving, which I read about in this post from Kelsey Bogan at her wonderful blog, Don't Shush Me! This year it quickly became apparent that front-facing books on display, read alouds, and titles that I booktalked were the items most circulated after graphic novels and the Weird But True series, so increasing the visual appeal of the books we have is one of my goals for next year. 

First-time tasks that are fast approaching include inventorying the entirety of our library, shelf reading every bookcase, making my first large-ish book order to replace books lost this year (many more books were lost the two years prior, but I wasn't allowed to include their replacement costs in my quote) and putting the library to sleep for the summer after getting as many books returned as possible. May will be here before I know it.