Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Maker Space Fun

During the past month, the VH Maker Space has been in full swing in the Media Center!

Thanks to grants from the Van Hoosen PTSA and the PTSA Council's STEAM grant, I was able to purchase some great materials to get our Maker Space started!

Our Maker Space consists of:


  • Makey Makey
  • Legos
  • Lego Boards
  • Cardboard Creation Materials
  • Origami Papers and Books
  • K'nex
  • Snap Circuits
  • Little Bits Circuit Kits
The Maker Space is open in the morning before school and during all open lunches. 

To see pictures and a video of our Maker Space, check out the  Media Center webpage

It has been so much fun to see all of the creations that kids have created and the awesome team work and innovative ideas when using the MakeyMakey and the circuits! If you haven't checked it out yet, make sure you do! It's a lot of creative fun!

If you have any items that you would like to donate to our Make Space, please let Mrs. Mele know. Donations of items like legos, K'nex, or other building materials are greatly appreciated.




Monday, October 27, 2014

We Are Off to a Great Start!

It's hard to believe it is almost November already!

The VH Media Center has been a busy place this fall! We've already had over 500 student visits during lunch time, over 2,000 library materials checked out, and hundreds of student visitors have been to the Media Center in the mornings before school. It is great to see that so many students have been making great use of the Media Center!

I've enjoyed getting the opportunity to meet our new 6th grade students and having great conversations about what it means to be a digital citizen during our two day lesson on digital citizenship. If you are interested in learning more about digital citizenship, Common Sense Media has great information! I've also had fun teaching different grades/classes about topics like research, plagiarism, how to find a good book, Google Apps, coding, how to create online presentations, and how to build a website. I look forward to spending time with even more classes in the upcoming months!

We also had our first book fair in October. It was a huge success! We were so lucky to have so many wonderful parent volunteers who came in and helped with set up, moving the fair, selling books, and tear down. The fair would not have been possible without these volunteers- so thank you, thank you, thank you! Our next fair will take place in March to wrap up our fun March is Reading Month events!

We have also have had great success running our live news broadcast show, VH Today, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you would like to check out our broadcasts at home, you can find them on the Van Hoosen website. Our 1st semester crew of 16 7th and 8th grade students are doing a great job writing and producing the news show! They put a lot of work into making sure that Van Hoosen stays up to date with the news!

There are also some exciting new developments that will be happening in the Media Center. I will be sharing more about that in the future!

I hope everyone has had a great start to the school year! Be sure to keep visiting the Media Center to check out books, research, work on homework, and explore!




Mrs. Mele


Sunday, August 24, 2014

2014-2015 School Year

Welcome to the 2014-2015 school year! 

I'm looking forward to seeing all of the visitors to the Media Center at 7:10 on the first day. It's always an active place! I hope that everyone has had a restful summer. This school year will be filled with many fun adventures. I hope that you continue to use the Media Center often this year as a place to find information, work with your peers, learn, explore, and have fun.

This year we have many fun and exciting things to look forward to in the Media Center! VH Today will be busy each morning preparing to bring you the news every day. There will be contests, prizes, and reading challenges throughout the year. Your teachers are able to check out the iPad cart to bring you lessons that are hands-on, interactive, and engaging. We have the Overdrive library available so you can check out books on your e-reader or computer, and there are Nooks that are also available for check out too! You can also start preparing for our great Author in April event by checking out books from this year's author, Nora Raleigh Baskin. As always, our Media Center books are continuously being updated, so keep an eye out for new books! If you ever have any book suggestions, come let me know or fill out the form on the right hand side of this page.

The Media Center is open every morning from 7:10-7:30 and most lunches. Check the door or circulation desk for the lunch schedule. If you would like to come in after you have eaten lunch to work on homework, read, or use a computer, just be sure to check out a lunch pass in the morning.

Please be sure to let me know if I can help you with anything. I hope you all have a great start to the school year!



Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Spring Book Fair!




Be sure to check out our Spring Book Fair at Barnes & Noble on Saturday, March 29!

Friday, January 17, 2014

Great Educational Tools

Check out this article for great websites for teachers/students!

http://learningonlineinfo.org/most-useful-educational-tools-every-teacher-should-try/

Visit with Author/Illustrator Bryan Collier

According to the RHPL website:
 
Author/Illustrator Bryan Collier will be giving a presentation in the multipurpose room of the Rochester Hills Public Library on January 20 at 7 pm. You can attend this event by calling the RHPL and reserving a spot. He is the illustrator of several titles, including Martin's Big Words and I, Too, Am America, and will share with us a presentation on his work during this special Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event. Online registration is necessary.

 

 
Here is an article from the School Library Journal

 

The Power of Pictures: A Visit with Bryan Collier
 

By Rocco Staino on May 1, 2013 1 Comment

The prolific and award-winning illustrator and author Bryan Collier is known for his unique style of artwork that combines watercolors with detailed collage, featured in such titles as Rosa (Holt, 2005) by Nikki Giovanni, for which he was awarded a Coretta Scott King (CSK) Illustrator Award and a Caldecott Honor;  Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave (Little, Brown, 2010), for which he also was awarded both the CSK and a Caldecott Honor; and Uptown (Holt, 2000), the first book that he authored and illustrated, for which he was awarded both the CSK and an Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award.

On the heels of being named the recipient of the CSK Award yet again for his latest book, I, Too, Am America (S & S, 2012), Collier invited School Library Journal  into his home and studio in Hudson Valley, NY—where CSK Award-winning illustrators James Ransome and Charles Smith also live—for a tour and interview about his life, his art, and the creative process.

You’re known for using detailed collages in your illustrations. Are you a collector of various items that you can use for this purpose?
Well, I am always on the lookout, but mostly I just use old fashion magazines for their patterns and inspiration for creating mood or light. I will see a pattern on a dress and also see the color schemes. I incorporate the collage in my work; there is no real rhyme or reason on how. There isn’t more watercolor than collage or collage than watercolor.  It just has to feel right.

Do you storyboard your books before beginning to create the artwork?
I do a quick storyboard [but] I drive editors crazy because when I bring in the original artwork it doesn’t look like the storyboard. Something else happens in the process of making the art and the collage. New ideas come into play that seem to be more important to me or more profound to the text. I follow that. The storyboard just gives me a semblance of where I think I am going but I really never know until I start putting it together. I leave that door open to make sure it happens.  I don’t want to be steadfast to any ideas I had a month ago. I want to see what happens on the fly.

You have used the lives of real historical figures as the basis for some of your books.  What type of research do you conduct before creating your artwork?
For Dave the Potter, I was so intrigued by this brand new history that I went to the plantation in Edgefield, SC. I needed to go there because there really wasn’t much on the Internet or the libraries about Dave. I wanted to see the ground that Dave walked on and the sky he walked under and I wanted to be in his presence and I wanted to hold the pots that he had signed and did poetry on. I had to figure out, Where do I go? How do I get there? Who do I talk to? You feel your way through. I just started to talk to people and the story started coming through.

When I do a book it will embody a distinct light that would be reflective and be a character as well. Dave the Potter shows the earthiness of Dave and the pottery. It has a gritty feel about it. It is put into a historical context of new and exciting history. It is a celebration that history is alive.


Can you tell us more about the important role that poetry plays in many of your books?

I have had the good fortune to do books with both Nikki Grimes and Nikki Giovanni. It was like getting a graduate degree. My work feels lyrical. In many ways, it feels like music. It picks up a flow, rhythm, and a staccato. All that stuff that is in poetry, it speaks in my work as well.

When I do a project that combines the two. It gives the artwork language and words that are readily accessible. There is a visual storyline that happens separate from the text and runs parallel with the words instead on mimicking the text.

Which of your books was the most challenging to create?
John’s Secret Dreams (Hyperion, 2004) about John Lennon, was the most challenging because I really wasn’t a Beatles fan. I was too young to really know the Beatles. I did not follow Lennon’s music. There was a lot of footage on this guy and I could talk to people who knew John.  What I found was that he was rich and famous and had a lot of power—but he was alone, empty and broken as a person. These are two stark contrasts that were happening at once.

I often talk to young people on the road about wanting to be famous. I tell them there is a price. I tell them that I did this book about John Lennon and we talk about it. We talk about John trying to find his clarity and peace of mind. He was protesting things outside his persona with his music. That is a decision we all have to make, what is the most important part of life. That was the entrée for me to getting to know John through his lyrics.

You have won several Coretta Scott King Awards over the years for your work. What does the award mean to you?
In the big picture, it means that I am part of a group of people who have been recognized for the work that we do in books on a grand scale. The CSK says that the artists of color are equal to anything that is being made anywhere. If you take that away, we may not get recognized.

That is a very real and sobering reality. If the CSK award wasn’t in existence, many artists would be overlooked. It has a hand in cultivating new talent.

I grew up without books with people like me in them. Ezra Jack Keats’s books are branded in my psyche. My very first book Uptown is an ode to Peter, Keats, and The Snowy Day. It was a very profound moment to get that book and to come full circle with that seed that was planted, to see it come and bloom and continue to bare fruit. They are all significant moments that say who I am right now.


Can you tell us about your upcoming book, Knock, Knock (Little, Brown; 2013)?
The author is Daniel Beaty, a New York actor. He did a monologue on HBO on Russell Simmons Deff Poetry. I saw it and said , ‘that is a book.’  I called Daniel and met him when he was doing a production at Riverside Theater. It was a one-man show and I was asked to do artwork for the production. He and I started talking about fatherhood and what happens to a kid when his father does not show up one day. I took it over to Little Brown, they loved it and the rest is history.

What is in the works for you right now?
I am doing sketches for the childhood of Quincy Jones. I am also working on a story for Henry Holt called My Country Tis of Thee. It is about how they used that song through history for different causes, such as women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and the George Washington to Barack Obama inaugurations. They changed the words throughout history, but it was all based on the same cadence and melody.

In addition to your renowned book illustrations, you also create stand-alone works of art. Can you tell us more about that?
I have been making art since age 15. That is, when I said I want to be an artist, I don’t have a plan B, and this is it.  Eventually I got a scholarship to Pratt.  I went to school with James Ransome and Robert Sabuda.  I make art and do things that are in my world.