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To celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympics, my library classes are shifting gears into our own version of the games: the Keyboard Olympics. This event starts next week to coincide with the official Olympic schedule, and it is always a highlight for the students.

We have five different keyboarding activities where students “compete” to show off their skills. It isn’t just about being the fastest in the room; students spend the unit documenting their own speeds and trying to beat their personal bests. I double-check and record their progress as they work through each event.

At the end of the unit, we will crown a gold, silver, and bronze winner for each grade level. It is a great way to acknowledge the hard work our “Olympians” put into mastering the keyboard while keeping the energy high and the learning fun.

If you want to run this event in your own library or classroom, I have the full lesson available in my TPT store. It includes fully editable Google Slides so you can customize the activities and goals for your specific grade levels.

I’m looking forward to seeing how much the kids improve over the next few weeks!

As the semester wrapped up this week I wanted to send my middle schoolers off to their next elective with more than just a free day. My goal was simple. I wanted to get them into the stacks, get them reading, and get them talking.

I decided to try an activity I called the Best First Sentence Challenge.

The Mission

Students had exactly 15 minutes to scour the library shelves. Their goal was to find one opening sentence so gripping or hilarious that it would beat out every other book in the room.

The Process

• The Search: Armed with shelf markers to keep our stacks tidy, students dove into different genres.
• The Tech: Once they found the one they liked, they posted it to a shared Padlet through Google Classroom.
• The Format: I had them put the Book Title as the header and the Sentence in the body. This turned our Padlet into a great recommendation list for the rest of the class to see.

The Showdown

After the timer buzzed I projected the Padlet onto the whiteboard. We read them aloud and voted by eliminating choices until only one winner remained. It went so well that we actually had time for two rounds.

Why It Worked

As a librarian there is nothing better than seeing a room full of students pulling books and actually talking about them. They were not just staring at covers. They were evaluating the writing.

If you need a quick and fun activity to keep students engaged give this a try. It reminded my kids that a great adventure is often just one sentence away.

One of my absolute favorite units to teach is the Mock Caldecott, and this year with my 4th through 6th graders was so much fun.

I picked out 12 books that I thought were strong contenders, and the students got to act like real judges. They read through them and reviewed each one based on the same criteria the real Caldecott committee uses. It was such a great way to get the older kids reading picture books again. They really loved looking at all the beautiful illustrations.

The best part was seeing how close we were to the real thing. This year, our winner was Fireworks, and you should have seen how excited the kids were when they found out it actually won the real medal! It was such a cool moment for them to see their picks match up with the experts.

I also had my formal observation during one of these classes. You would think that after 33 years of teaching I wouldn’t get the jitters anymore, but I still get a bit nervous for an observation! Luckily, the kids were so into the activity and the books that it went great. I just love this unit because it brings together library skills and a real love for reading. I am already thinking about what books to use for next year!

It has been a busy, high-energy week in the library! We’ve been blending traditional research with some hands-on Google Slides practice, and it’s been so fun to see the students get creative with their new tech skills.

2nd Grade: Australian Adventures

After reading the classic Wombat Stew, our 2nd graders dived into Google Slides. They practiced finding images of animals from Australia and learned how to “click and drag” to resize them. The big “magic trick” this week? Learning how to use the send to back feature so their animals stayed where they belonged in the scene!

3rd Grade: Arctic Explorers

3rd grade has been hard at work researching Arctic animals using a slide template. They’ve been watching short videos and picking out three interesting facts to share. We are working on turning those facts into bulleted lists and adding matching images. We definitely had to pause for some spelling help here and there, but their focus was incredible!

4th Grade: Birds, Bats, and Stellaluna

Our 4th graders read Stellaluna and used the story to dig into story elements and characters. They even tackled a Venn diagram to compare the differences between birds and bats. To wrap it all up, they’re creating their own research slides by building text boxes from scratch and adding images to show what they’ve learned about bats.

Each December, our library joins classrooms around the world in celebrating Hour of Code. This initiative is a fun and engaging way to introduce students to the basics of computer programming while strengthening their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. More importantly, Hour of Code empowers students to become creators instead of simply consumers of technology.

Early exposure to computer science helps students begin imagining the many career paths available in the tech world. To support this, I guide students through kid-friendly, online platforms such as Code.org, all of which are linked on my class website for easy access both at school and at home. Many classroom teachers also use these resources during free-choice time, and students love having the chance to continue coding beyond library class.

We explore a variety of grade-level-appropriate activities and games, including:

• Kindergarten: Code Monkey Jr.
• 1st Grade: Google Coding
• 2nd Grade: Botlogic
• 3rd Grade: Moana Coding
• 4th Grade: Bits and Bricks
• 5th Grade: Grinch Coding

In addition to online tools, I’ve also created several themed Unplugged and Digital Google Slides coding activities that pair with favorite books—another fun way to blend literacy and computer-science thinking.

Hour of Code is always a highlight of the year in our library, and I love watching students discover the joy of coding and the power of creating with technology!

Each January, my library classes take part in one of my favorite projects of the year — our Mock Caldecott! We spend the month reading and studying twelve picture books that might be in the running for the real Caldecott Medal.

We talk a lot about how illustrations help tell a story. We talk about how the colors, details, and style can make you feel something or notice things you might have missed in the words alone. It’s always fun to hear what students notice and which books they think stand out.

Each class votes for their favorites, and let me tell you, the excitement is real when we announce our winner and honor books! If one of our picks ends up matching the actual Caldecott results, it’s a huge deal around here.

It’s such a fun and meaningful way to get students talking about books, art, and storytelling — and it’s become a highlight of our library every year!

I’ve put together a full unit lesson plan with scoring sheets and a Google Slides presentation to introduce the award and guide the process. If you’d like to try a Mock Caldecott in your own classroom or library, those materials are available in my TPT store.

For a more detailed step by step blog post check out my previous post. Link here