Lego and Pegboard Walls

I have been wanting a Lego wall ever since I saw Diana Rendina post about it on the Renovated Learning blog. My problem was I had no available walls in my open concept library. Most of my walls are shelves and I had one wall that had a row of computers on it. 

          

This year I was given a cart of chromebooks so I decided to get rid of my wall of computers and finally put up a Lego wall!  But why stop there? I had also been dying for a peg board wall since seeing this picture from the Oak Brook Public Library.

So I set out to make this happen.  I pretty much followed the instructions that Diana posted for the Lego wall. 

The pegboard wall took a little more thought.  While the board for the lego wall came in 4'x8', the pegboards did not.  They were 4'x2' so I need to figure out how to put 4 of them together. I knew I could put wood along the top and the bottom to attach the pegboard, but it made the middle of the boards wobbly.  I decided to glue 2 in blocks of styrofoam to the back of the pegboards to make them more stable. 

I left a 2 in. border around the top, bottom and sides of the whole board so I could attach it to the 2"x2" boards I had screwed to the wall for the frame. 

Once both boards were attached and sat over the weekend, it was time to let the creativity begin!  

A Book Holder

A fox

A flower, Among Us Imposters, and different shapes

Genre Tasting at the Library Cafe

Today I transformed my library teaching area into the "Library Cafe"  - the place to taste a variety of books!  I have seen book tastings all over the place, but have never tried it myself. I had a 4th grade teacher willing to try it so the tables were set.  

We gave the students a menu that had each of the genres and a little bit about each one and then space for their thoughts as they tasted each one.  Each table was set with books from the same genre but we didn't tell the kids what the genre was. They had to figure it out by looking at the cover and reading the summary. We gave them 5 minutes at each table to sample one book. 

The kids were super into it. Some were using Italian or French accents when they were talking. Kids at the same table were discussing what genre they thought the books were. We loved serving up these delicious treats.

When we finished tasting all 9 courses, we talked about how some books can fit into more than one genre and if they found any books they might want to check out or genres they might want to try. The kids thought the books were "delicious" and gave the Library Cafe 5 stars! 

Odd One Out

Do you remember the song from Sesame Street called "One of These Things?" 

I had forgotten about it until I had some training on Lead4Ward strategies. These are instructional strategies that are designed to engage students, encourage interaction and allow the teacher to see and hear the thinking of the students.  One of the strategies is called Odd One Out  and is basically one of these things is not like the other. 

Basically, you give students 4 visuals, words or texts to determine which one is the odd one out and justify their thinking. 

I recently used this for my Library Orientation with 1st and 2nd graders.  I showed them 4 pictures relating to books, reading or book care and asked them to turn and talk to decide which one didn't belong. Then we shared with the group.  The conversations were spot on and super engaging for the students and some of their thinking really surprised me.  For example when I showed them these pictures 

I was looking for you can read in all the places EXCEPT the bathtub, which most groups came up with. But I did have one group say the couch was the wrong one because the book was green (which I didn't even notice until they said it lol) and another group say the car was wrong because the book would fall off of that.  Maybe those were not the right answers, but the students were able to justify their thinking so I call that a win!  

I plan to use this more often in the future. The only problem I have found is that I usually end up singing the "One of These Things is Not Like the Other" song for the rest of the day.