Our First Administrator Member Kudos to our first school principal joining HASL! We’ve honored many administrators for our Outstanding Service Award but this is the first time they've been invited to officially join our roster. A warm welcome to Mrs. Anne Marie Murphy. She came to the islands in 1993 and began her educational career as a science teacher at Wheeler Intermediate in 1996. After completing her administrative training, she started her meteoric rise to become principal at Central Middle School. Her passion to serve students and to bring excellence in our schools are clearly reflected in this interview. LINK
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Caitlin RamirezLibrarian at Mokapu Elementary School, Kailua, Oahu At our school library, I want students to stretch their creativity, build their collaboration skills, and develop their background knowledge. I want them to have the freedom, and the responsibility, to choose how they spend their time and operate as an independent learner. Library centers is a great way to make this vision come to life. I have several centers. Some are simple and fully implemented. Some are complex and still under construction. At the library discussion board, students can respond to a question and check out how others have responded to the question. I change questions monthly and I ask questions that are relevant to the month or to things happening at school. For instance, this month is book fair and the theme is Enchanted Forest, so our question is: if you could have any enchanted forest creature as a pet, what would you want and why? The collaborative coloring table illustrates the idea that working together has beautiful results. Students enjoy the meditative process of coloring and it helps develop the fine motor skills that they need to become surgeons, drone pilots, or maybe just write legibly. Don’t know what to do with all those books you just discarded from the library? I weeded my collection and created a free book shelf for students and teachers. Students can take a book from the shelf and...here’s the best part...keep it FOREVER! They get so excited about this. Teachers can get great books for their classroom libraries too. I encourage students to donate books they no longer want in their personal collection so someone else can enjoy them. I always remind them to check with their parent first. At the Word Play Center, students can complete crossword puzzles, word scrambles, word searches, and play Madlibs. As the year progress, I’m planning to introduce poetry activities like blackout poems and magnetic poems. Students hone their observation and spatial recognition skills by working on a jigsaw puzzle. They have to be patient and persistent too - since it can take as long as a quarter to finish! I’m working on expanding our STEAM center. Right now we only have an origami kit, a simple engineering kit, and a bookmark making kit. But I’m planning to include a yarn arts kit (for lei making and weaving), microscopes with slides, and a lego area. More than 50% of our 3rd-6th graders said they want to make cool stuff in the library, so I anticipate this center being popular once we get it off the ground!
An entire month of school has gone by and it is time for another blog! Need an idea for a small, easy-to-do change? Well, is your MakerSpace addressing ALL learners from the visually impaired to ELL? Here are a few easy tips from Gina Seymour’s ALA breakout titled, “The Inclusive Makerspace: #WeNeedDiverseMakerSpaces”:
Connect with your ELL or SPED department and schedule a set time for their students to come and enjoy Makerspace! Begin a partnership! |