2019 Concurrent Session Descriptions

Celebrating 25 Years of the Americas Award
Patricia Austin, Colleen McCoy, and Denise Woltering-Vargas

With an increasing Hispanic population in the U.S. and the urgent need to share books about parallel cultures, this session will highlight Américas Award winners, which portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or the Latinx population in the United States. Honored books have addressed many topics including immigration, civil rights, and cultural connections. Session attendees will take away a list of great books, the know-how of implementing Mock Award committees with students, and resources to use as they share Américas Award books in classrooms, libraries, or community outreach.

 

Banned Books Week Game Night
Kathy Barco

It’s often said that libraries “celebrate” banned books week. Imagine a celebration that features a BBW Game Night (or Afternoon). Designed for teens or adults, this session outlines a fun and informative way to talk about books that have been deemed unacceptable by individual patrons, school boards, courts, and even librarians. Attendees will get tips on hosting their own BBW Game event in a library, school, or as an outreach event. They will play Jeopardy and Charades based on banned or challenged books, and be invited to write a haiku about their favorite. Handout includes Jeopardy answers and questions.

 

The Magnolia Book Award
Lindsey Beck and Venetia Oglesby

The Magnolia Book Awards provide the children of Mississippi with the annual opportunity to nominate, read, and vote on their favorite books. Public and school librarians are invited to join us in expanding the reach of this award. Attend our session to learn more about how to integrate it into your library and see the new prizes available to participating sites! With four voting categories: Pk-2nd grade, 3rd-5th grade, 6th-8th grade, and 9th- 12th grade, every student can fall in love with a new book. Get involved now to help instill a love of reading in the youth of Mississippi!

 

Programs Aplenty: Programming Ideas for Everyone
Anna Brannin

Need new ideas for fun and affordable programming at your school library? This session will review over fifty programming ideas that have been a hit at the high school level, but can also be adapted for a younger audience or public libraries. Relevant resources will be available, along with giveaways!

 

Bibliotherapy: Finding Reads to Meet Your Children’s Needs
Jenifer Brea and Kim Walls

Bibliotherapy is a creative arts therapies modality that includes storytelling or the reading of specific texts with the purpose of healing.  The library is the perfect place for this.  Attendees will leave the session with a list of books that will help them help their patrons deal with tough topics like abandonment, abuse, bullying, lose of sense(s), depression, poverty, suicide, etc.

 

Storytelling-More Than Just Listening
Dianne Butler

This storytelling workshop will provide tips on how to get audience member involved, and not just be a sedate listener.  Different methods will be demonstrated to encourage participation of each person in the art of storytelling.  Picture books will be utilized as well as a good old fashioned folk tale to promote listeners to take possession of the art of storytelling.  With my own special brand to telling and magic, each person will become an active part of each activity.

 

Intersections: Technology, Social Justice, and the Public Library
Dawn Collins and David Jackson

In this session we will discuss how programming at the public library acts as an instrument of social justice and can help our youth create their future.

 

Ivy League Dummies: Sending Your Picture Book Dummy to the Head of the Class (A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Get Your Story on the Published Shelf)
Melinda Taliancich Falgoust

Have you ever thumbed through the pages of a well-loved children’s book and thought: “Hey, I could do that!”  Well, grab your computers, pencils, or pens and get ready to walk through one author’s path from class clown to teacher’s pet as award-winning children’s author Melinda Taliancich Falgoust takes you on her personal journey from idea to publication.  Topics included cover picture books through YA Novels.

 

How Do I Talk About it with Them?: Explaining Death and Loss to a Child through Books
The Grief and Bereavement class in the Southern Miss School of Social Work 

Death and loss can be an extremely scary and unsettling time for a child. The Grief and Bereavement class in the Southern Miss School of Social Work used their sociological imagination to break down the complex topic of grief to a child through books.

Incorporating Nature into the Curriculum Some Practice Ideas
Jo Watson Hackl

Study after study has shown the power of nature to increase focus and creativity. This interactive presentation will provide practical ideas educators can use to enhance their instruction in a variety of subject areas, increase student focus, and create an even more engaging classroom environment.

 

Create! Play! Learn! Interactive Early Literacy Programming
Terri Hadley and Emmie Powell

How can you make sure that your patrons are getting the early literacy skills they need? Join us to learn about creative and fun ways you can power up your programming to be enriched with activities that will support early literacy and get kids ready to read, write, and succeed!

 

Reading and Math – The Perfect Combination
Jo Hawkins-Jones and Diana Sweigart

After what seemed like thousands of entries and keystrokes, the calculator turned to the children's book and begged, "Join my team. I need a voice."  This session includes experiential learning through participative activities and discussion to help participants connect math skills and concepts with literature to make learning less complex and more exciting. We will discuss children's literature that can be used to build students' math skills and practices ranging from computation to problem-solving to understanding the Pythagorean theorem.

 

Extend Your Stem with Mother Goose
Soline Holmes, Carrel Muller, and Alicia Schwarzenback

As it is never too early to expose children to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), why not incorporate these concepts when teaching them Mother Goose nursery rhymes?  For example, "Humpty Dumpty" can teach about gravity, "Hey Diddle Diddle" about the moon and space, "Sing a Song of Sixpence" about counting, and "Jack and Jill" about sequencing and coding.  At the same time students learn the nursery rhymes and build foundational literacy, they will also effortlessly learn concepts of STEM literacy.

 

Feast on Graphic Novels across the Curriculum
Soline Holmes and Alicia Schwarzenbach

Once referred to as “the marijuana of the nursery” and the “bane of the bassinet,” comics and graphic novels have become increasingly popular and also help to create lifelong readers.  The format spans genres and curriculums including ELA, science, history, math, arts, and geography.  Yet, many are still wary of using them in the classroom.  Join us as we "feast" on graphic novels across the curriculum, and get ideas on how to incorporate the graphic novel into your classroom—which graphic novels to choose, how to prove the benefits of graphic novels, and how to teach using a graphic novel.

 

PopUp Libraries in the Community
Christina Keiper

This session describes how our library developed an idea to get our library’s services out into the community. Information shared will include ideas that have worked well and those that had to be modified or eliminated for this type of outreach success. The workshop will share a brief PowerPoint showing pictures of our setup at several outreach locations.

 

How Diverse is Your Youth Collection?
Hanna Lee and Meredith E. Wickham

A 2018 SLJ survey indicates that a majority of librarians consider it “very important” to have a diverse book collection for kids and teens. So how are we doing? In this session, presenters will share their experiences conducting diversity audits on collections of a variety of sizes, in a range of communities. Participants will gain very practical guidance on how to assess the diversity of their collections, as well as resources for supplementing or building more representative collections.

 

Let’s Get Graphic: Graphic Novels and Literacy Development
Teri Lesesne and Karin Perry

This session will focus on how the GN form/format can be used for literacy lessons.  An examination of how GNs tell their stories and how to read GNs is the place we begin. Then, through booktalks of new (and some classic) GNs, we will discuss what elements of literacy instruction could be used.

 

When You Don’t Have Time to Collaborate: Common Core Lessons and Strategies for the Busy School Librarian
Jenifer Luetkemeyer

When You Don't Have Time to Collaborate: Common Core Lessons and Strategies for the Busy School Librarian will provide attendees with simple and effective ways to integrate Common Core activities into their school library programs.  The presenter will offer ideas that support the curriculum and can be easily incorporated into practice.  Participants will leave with multiple strategies and lessons for grades K-12.

 

Google Expeditions in the Library
Kelly Matthews and Jeannie Thompson

As many schools adopt Google in Education, use Chrome Books for instruction, and become "Google" schools, Google Expedition app provides easy to use, cost-effective integration of augmented-reality (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) into your classroom and library lessons. A math and science teacher and library media specialist teach you how to use Google Expeditions in your classroom or library to help students visualize and retain information. Download the Expeditions app to your cell phone and join us for a fun trip through a virtual world.

 

Making a Maker Space in a Middle School Library
Tamela Camp Miller and Emma Seiler

The on-going trend in libraries for several years now has been creating maker spaces. They can range from very low tech to very high tech and are most often found in public libraries. However, they are also cropping up in school libraries across the country. Can school libraries find the room and school library media specialists find the time and funds to create a maker space in a school library? Join one middle school librarian as she documents her attempts to turn her long-time school maker space dream into a reality in her library.

 

Kamishibai Storytelling – Bringing culture and interactive storytelling into your program
Claudia Nisbet and Nancy Varian

Come to our session and learn how to use Japanese Kamishibai storytelling in your library, classroom, or even sharing stories with your children and/or grandchildren.  This interactive storytelling technique uses a small theater and will be a hit with all ages.  Try your hand at writing and illustrating your story to be presented in the theater and get lots of take-home ideas!

 

Raising a Reader: Empowering Children Through the Magic of Books and Author Visits
Carmen Oliver

Author and booking agent Carmen Oliver talks about the role of authors in raising a reader. Children not only connect through books, but these connections help them to find their own voices in the world. Author visits show children that books are written by real people--people like them who love to read.

 

Authors, Books, and Coffee
Vandy Pacetti-Donelson

Learn about a successful professional development program for teachers that turned participating teachers into an effective Reader's Advisory Group.  A sample session will be provided with book talking handouts and online program materials to customize to your school library program.  In addition, examples of follow up support will be discussed.  Testimonials of teacher participants who modified their styles of reading motivation and book talking based on this program will be shared.

 

Increase Fiction Circulation by Genrefying Your School Library
Elizabeth Simmons

“Genrefying” means organizing books by subject, category, or genre so that patrons can find materials that interest easier. This idea helps school librarians become more informed of what their students want to read and develop the fiction collection based on those needs. Organizing the fiction collection by genres specifies circulation statistics and allows budgets to be spent on books that will be read by students. The MDE school library program office has created an universal genrefication system to create a more student-friendly fiction collection.

 

Best STEM Books for K-8
Terry Young

Keeping current with the best STEM resources for elementary students can be challenging.  Learn about the best titles, series and authors.  Need a list of online resources to find the best...that's covered also.  Science literacy is important for all our students, so let's make sure that we are providing them with the very best STEM resources.