The 8th grade finished the movies and did a great job.  Some of them can be found at the site: http://vimeo.com/album/1594080.  There were some problems with our new microphone, but since we received the grant "We are Teachers" with the help from our students, teachers and community, we now have a new Flip camera so we won't have that trouble again.  Also, students can now film each other which will be a good learning experience for them. 

This project was the most difficult movie an 8th grade had ever done before at this school.  It had an introductory video clip, a book jacket, their book review, a closing video clip with credits, the conclusion video clip, and added music.  The movie was then converted to play on both the computer and on the Internet.  The students followed directions well and their movies turned out really great!  The audio was the only problem.  We'll overcome that next year. 

The 7th grade finally finished their "Famous Women" project.  This project was to make a newsletter using Microsoft Publisher and should have finished in March, which was Famous Women's Month.  The spring is a difficult time to do a project because of spring break, testing and practicing for testing.  Because of the length of time this project took, the teachers and I are going to try to alleviate some problems with this project.  This took way too long. 

     The 8th Graders have each been given the title of the 2009 or 2010 Best Books for Young Adults (from Alabama Library Association) to give a review to their classmates.  The classes will go to the computer lab, look the book up on Amazon.com, read the reviews and write a review of the book telling what the book is about.  Then they will give the title and author's name, the price of the book, their opinion as to whether our library should purchase the book and whether the readers on Amazon liked the book or not.  Their review of the book will be filmed by Ms. Gann in the library.

     After the filming, the 8th graders will take their film that has been put into their file and make a movie (or podcast) out of it.  This movie will have an introduction, a book cover, the film itself, credits, and a conclusion.

     This entire process will not be finished until at least March, maybe April.  With all the holidays, and coming to the library only one day a week, this is a time-consuming project.

      In November, the 7th Grade went to work on writing stories to honor veterans.  After writing, typing and printing their stories, they made a cover for their work.  All members of the class voted on their favorite cover for the books.  They voted electronically through Quia after seeing all the covers.  Ms. Gann then made took the pages and the cover chosen and made it into a book.  Therefore, all seventh grade classes had a book made for Veterans' Day.  They are located in the office for perusal. Above, you see one of the covers for a book done by the seventh graders.  Didn't they do an awesome job?

                October is Internet Safety Month so during the end of September and all of October, Internet Safety was discussed.

      First was discussed basic Internet Safety.  This included safety with personal information that includes not giving out your name, address, parents' names, phone numbers, social security number, and definitely no pictures!

      Next, viruses, worms and trojans were discussed to keep your computer safe from hackers getting your personal information and destroying your computer.  Free preventive software was discussed.

      Then cyberbullying and bullying was discussed.  What is a bully?  What to do if you are being bullied?  Also, some articles were read from Scholastic magazine as well as from off the Internet about recent deaths caused by bullying incidents. 

       Finally, copyright and plagarism were discussed in detail.  A movie was shown from the "Copyright in the Classroom" program (www.copyrightfoundation.org).  A book review will be written using cited material to show how to prevent plagarism.

             Students started by reviewing how to find books and put them back correctly on the library shelves.  This was done by using laminated cards with the title of the books with the call numbers.  Students would get three cards and go find the books, put a shelf marker in the books' places, show the librarian the books and the cards, and then put the books on the shelf and taking out the shelf markers. 

     Then the students started working on the Dewey Decimal System and the ten categories.  Using a list of titles of books, students would tell into which category the book would be categorized. 

      Practice on decimals then took place.  It was determined by playing a game on the computer that students did not remember their decimals.  After re-teaching decimals, students did much better on the game.  Then a matching activity with the Dewey Decimal System and its numbers finished the study of the D.D.S.