It's Almost Winter Break!

First, thanks so much to everyone that helped with the Book Fair this year including parents, student crew, media staff, family, teachers and administration! Our book fair was very successful considering the extreme downturn in the economy recently.




The Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl is quickly approaching, and I have been busy reading books and writing questions for the school and district competitions! My most recent read was Journey to the Blue Moon by Rebecca Rupp, a little story about a boy who has lost a family pocket watch, thus throwing his life into a tailspin. He finds out that all lost items end up on the moon, so he takes an adventure to the moon to find his watch and set his life straight. I'm not a big fan of fantasy, but I found myself reading this book very quickly to see what happened in the end. :)

Since we are talking about HRRB, I must remind everyone that the school and district competitions are in January. Be sure your team has read all the books! See Mrs. Biddle or Mrs. Hinger if you have any questions. We will have practice each December Friday morning at 8:00 in the media center.

We have only three weeks until Winter Break! I look forward to the holiday season, but as you all know I have a special package coming around Christmas as well! After our new baby is born, I will be out on maternity leave until the beginning of March, so enjoy your time with Coach Carroll and Ms. Harris. I will miss you guys!

Mrs. Hinger

Fall, HRRB, and Book Fair Fun!

I hope everyone is enjoying the fall-like weather we've been having lately! Fall is perfect for reading on the back deck while enjoying the cool breeze.


I have finished a couple of the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl books in the last few weeks. My favorite so far is Truth and Salsa by Linda Lowery. It's a great story of a young girl who is having a hard time with her family situation and moves to live with her grandmother in Mexico. While in Mexico she works on her art, takes a part in a movie, makes a great friend, and discovers and investigates a ghost. Read it and see what you think!

Speaking of the Reading Bowl, several teams have been formed at all three grade levels. We had a meeting last week and the teams were informed that they will be required to write 20 questions for 4 books by the November 13th meeting. So stop by, check out a book and get started today!


The CMS Book Fair is coming soon! The book fair will begin on November 5th, right after fall break, and run through the next Wednesday, November 12th! We will have a parent/teacher preview breakfast on the morning on November 5th and the Family Literacy Night from 6-7:30 PM on Monday, November 10th! We need student and parent volunteers for all events, so stop by and see me or email to get volunteer application.


Which HRRB books have you read? What's your favorite?


Talk to you soon!


Mrs. Hinger

Welcome back, a month late!

Welcome back to school!

I hope your school year is going well so far; mine has been great but very busy. I can't believe we are already into the middle of September.

Please stop by the media center and see all of our new books, new circulation system (Destiny) and our new delicious bookmark site!

We will begin the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl (replacing Battle of the Books) meetings next week 9/15-9/19, Wednesday-Friday during homebase. http://gcba2008-2009.blogspot.com/

Have you read Breaking Dawn, the new Twilight book yet? I have read about 200 pages and have not gotten back to it yet, too busy! If you have read it, what do you think?





See you soon!

Mrs. Hinger

Podcast

See the link below for my practice podcast.

Audio File

How's your summer going?

Hi everyone,

I hope your summer is going well. I just finished up with summer school at CMS and have been taking 4 classes at UGA, which are still ongoing. Since I have been so busy, I have not had the opportunity to travel at all, but we are planning a trip in September with family.

Summer school was a great deal of work, but I enjoyed teaching my CMS students and meeting new student and teachers from Burney Harris Middle School. My graduate school classes have been interesting; I have learned so much about technology, reading, working in the media center and adolescent literature! I can't wait to share on the blog, and in person, about the books I have read this summer.

When we return to school in August, the media center will be getting a new circulation system. It is called Destiny! It is awesome; we will be able to access the catalog from anywhere on the Internet.

TECH TOOL

Are you familiar with del.icio.us? I have just begun using it, but I plan to create a social bookmark list for the media center and hopefully for different subject areas. As soon as I get it created, I'll include a link on my next blog.

What's going on with you?

Talk to you soon!

Mrs. Hinger

End of the year, The Giver and Star Girl

I cannot believe the year is almost over! It's crazy how fast time passes at school. In the media center we have been working on getting all the books back in and planning for inventory. Can you imagine how much fun it is going to be to scan all of our 10,000 + books?

What are you planning to read this summer? For school, I am currently working on your summer reading list. And for my graduate school stuff, I have a GIGANTIC list for an Adolescent Literature class I will be taking at UGA. If you are bored and want something to look at, stop by the MC and I'll let you read over the list. I have already started collecting and reading some of the books.

The first two I started with were already on the list inside my brain label "I can't believe I haven't read this yet". I read Stargirl and The Giver. I liked them both and found them unusual and interesting, but didn't love either.

Stargirl was a cute comment on school, the individual and cliques. I really liked the characters and look forward to reading Love, Stargirl, which Hannah D-G told me was written from Stargirl's POV.

The Giver was a little more complicated for me. I LOVED the book until the ending. I thought it was well written and had an interesting concept that reminded me of 1984 but didn't like the vague ending. I really thought that Jonas and Gabriel were dead based on the ending (am I a pessimist?). Jenny A. told me that Jonas is later featured in The Messenger, so I guess they don't die, but that's really what I got from it. Have you read The Giver? What did you think? Am I the only person that thought they were dead?

Did you love or hate either of these books?

Talk to you soon!

Mrs. Hinger

Media Festival Winners, Battle of the Books 2nd place

Hi everyone! We have great news to share from the CCSD Battle of the Books and The Clarke County Media Festival.

The CMS Battle of the Books Team including Katie Googe, Ariel Santillian, Nida Javaid, Hendley Landers, and Alex Dominicali placed 2nd at the district competition yesterday.

The other great news is that we had several students win at the school level with amazing projects, and many of our students placed at the CCSD Media Festival. The first place winners' projects will move on to the International Student Media Festival in Orlando, Florida. I am working on uploading all of the projects to YouTube for families and friends to view. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/mrshinger Below is a list of our winners:

1st place: (There is a four-way tie) Mattie Jasiulevicius, Clarke Middle: Women’s Abuse, Dory MacMillan, Clarke Middle: 1 Out of 8, Matthew Dellaria, Clarke Middle: The Truth, Hector Martinez & Jesus Medina, Clarke Middle: Natural Disaster
2nd place: Brionna Hall, Clarke Middle: Preventable Diseases
3rd place: Katie Google, Clarke Middle: Burning Dinner

I hope you have a great weekend!

Mrs. Hinger

Battle of the Books 2008 Round 1

Yesterday, we had our first three, of the many Battle of the Books Competitions that will take place in the next two weeks! We had heated battles in all three grade levels. I am very proud of all participants; the students were well prepared and very competitive this year!

And the grade level winners were:

6th grade Team—Jenny A., Geneva H., Isabella Z-J., Aurora F., Josefine S.

7th grade Team—Katie G., Ariel S., Nida J., Hendley L.

8th grade Team—Theo K., Orion M-H., Jonathan M.

The school Battle of the Books will take place on Monday morning during ELT (8:35-9:30) in the media center!

In case you are not familiar with Battle of the Books, I'll give you a quick description. Students have an opportunity to form a team and read ten books over the course of the school year. Then, in April compete first, against teams at their own grade level and then, at the school level and eventually, at the district level to answer 20 questions about the books. The team that answers the most questions correctly moves on to the next of each of these levels.

The teams listed above will compete Monday morning during ELT in order to win an opportunity to advance to the district level competition held at the Athens Public Library on Thursday of next week!

Come and see the Book Battle fun at CMS or the Athens Public Library next week! I'll be back on the blog next week with the results of the school and the district competition!

Mrs. Hinger

I'm back, YA blogs, Wake and the new Maximum Ride

Hi everyone,

It's been a sad month. First, my husband's grandmother passed away, and as we were leaving to attend her funeral in West Virginia, my own grandmother suffered a stroke. We attended John's grandmother's funeral and returned to spend the last days of my grandmother's life with her.

It's a strange feeling to know someone is going to die very soon. I told my grandmother how much I loved her one last time, as I watch her drift away. When my father died suddenly almost 17 years ago, I didn't have this chance. I wonder how it would have changed my life if I could have spoken to him knowing he only had a few days to left.

While all of this was going on, I tried to read to take my mind off things, but that didn't work out because everything I picked up seemed to be sad. Finally though, after lots of sifting through sad books, I ended up finding this quirky little book called Wake. The book, written by Lisa McMann, is a little paranormal and a little mystery. The main character is a girl who has her own share of problems but gets pulled into other people's by seeing their dreams. It's CRAZY. I loved the book! I have a review copy in the media center if you want to borrow it. I plan to order a copy for the fall.



Also, I read Patterson's 7th Heaven over spring break. It's from his adult mystery collection, but his latest in the Maximum Ride YA series just came out as well. I haven't read it myself since Ms. Hyers and Casey D. hijacked it from the media center as soon as it came in. Now that I have my hands back on it, I'll let you know what I think soon.

Did you know that there are many Young Adult Literature (YA) blogs out in the wide world of the Internet? If you like to find new and interesting books to read, this is a cool place to look for suggestions. I've been subscribing to one called The Page Flipper for a while and recently answered the author's request to do an interview with someone with a "bookish" job. She is really cool and a teenager just like you guys! I'm going to connect her blog to mine so that you can find her easily.

See you soon!
Mrs. Hinger

Wow, it's been a while

It's been almost three weeks since I last posted on the blog. The CMS Media Center and the school as a whole has been a whirlwind of activity since we returned from winter break. 7th grades are finishing up with their Movie Maker projects, 6th graders have been in and out of the research room working on a schoolwide planet display, 8th grade ELA classes have been working on Black History poetry presentations, and we are still in the middle of OAS testing at all three grade levels. It has been crazy, in a fun sort of way!

Upcoming events in the CMS Media Center:

International Student Media Festival --March 3rd-7th
Battle of the Books--Competition in April
CMS Half-price Book Fair--March 24th-28th (Parent-Teacher Conference Week)

On the reading front, I finally had a chance to read the book I mentioned in the last blog post, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It was an amazing multi-genre experience; the story, set in Paris, of a young orphan follows his adventures of making it on his own. Young Hugo, a self taught clock maker, learns about his father's past through his adventures. He must investigate the past when he meets a young girl and her scary god father. The story is told in words and pictures; I would reccomend it to anyone who likes a good adventure and beautiful illustrations!

Look for my post on Black History Month soon! In the meantime, check out this list of African American Writers I found on Wikipedia.

See you soon!

Mrs. Hinger

Research tools and random book thoughts...

Hello everyone! (When you are finished reading this, please respond... I know you're out there!)

Today I spent the first part of each period in 7th grade social studies classes showing students the many benefits of using online encyclopedias for research. The media center website has a link to Compton's Britannica Online and Galileo, Georgia's online library. 7th graders are researching topics related to their social studies curriculum. Ms. Baker....what is the general subject area you guys are researching? (other than the individual topics that I heard: Indian Civil War, terrorism and religion)


Since we are talking about research, I'll tell you about Dr. Tallman's I-search class I just started this week at UGA. This class, and way of teaching the research process, seems so interesting because you can choose any topic you want to research. One would think since I have been given all of this freedom to choose a topic I'd jump right on it, but I am having so much trouble deciding. If you could research anything what would you investigate?


Random book thoughts follow:

I read Sparrow by Sherri L. Smith a few months back and for some reason I can't get it off of my mind. The main character reminds me of a student I met recently...maybe that's the connection. I'm not sure, but it's a great book!

The other book I must tell you about but have actually not read myself is the 2008 Caldecott Book Award Winner just announced yesterday! This a very unusual book to receive an award reserved for picture books. The images are amazing, and I have a feeling I will have to fight with students and a few teachers to be the first one to read the copy of this book I just bought for the media center. And the Caldecott winner is The Invention of Hugo Cabret written and illustrated by Brian Selznic.

So, hopefully next time I check in with you I will have read the new Caldecott award book above.... Ask me about it!

Mrs. Hinger

It's a new year

Before Christmas, I started working on my books for graduate school and began reading Wuthering Heights. I like it, but was surprise by the vocabulary. I think that I've been reading YA lit for such a long time that I had forgotten the language of many classics. What have you been reading?

For the past few days since Mrs. Bailey's goddaughter went missing, I have been focused on newspaper and news website reading. She is such a sweet girl; I remember her coming to the school and helping out. She is like a daughter to Mrs. Bailey. I am so sad for them. It seems today that Meredith Emerson will not be found alive; it's heartbreaking.



I have jury duty next week, so I will catch up with you guys sometime soon.

Mrs. Hinger