Summer 2010 -- What's New at Steed Library?

 Here it is summer already! Make sure you include reading in your summer plans. The Midwest City Public Library should be one of your weekly stops for books to read. Join their Summer Reading Program, which runs from June through July.

Guess how many books were checked out at Steed during the 2009-2010 school year? 29,079, which is about 3,000 more books than were checked out the previous school year. In fact, three classes checked out an average of over 100 books per student during 2009-2010:  Mr. Dewsbury, Mrs. Ross, and Ms. Hilbert. That's a lot of books, and it keeps Mrs. Hartley and Mrs. Helaire very busy, which we love. We were so happy to have Mrs. King and Mrs. Patterson volunteering in the library.

Mrs. Hartley plans to do a lot of reading and relaxing this summer. She needs to rest up for a busy 2010-2011 school year! It will be a technology-rich year, that's for sure!

1.  Thanks to a fabulous book fair, we were able to purchase a Smart Document Camera for the library, and it makes such a big difference in how students can view books and lessons projected onto the big Smart Board. Many kids are visual learners and love being able to see the book's illustrations in larger format and read the story together as a class. Parents--Thank you for purchasing books at our book fairs! It benefits all the kids!

2. We will be doing a lot of podcasting in the library. Mid-Del Schools has a new podcast server that makes it even easier to publish our students' stories and book reviews on our website. Take a look and a listen to the podcast stories produced by our first-graders. You can click here or click on the tab Podcasts--Steed Reads with Mrs. Hartley, on the left navigation bar.

3. We hope that Steed will win a grant we wrote for two iPod Touch carts and other related technology. We will find out in late July. Keep your fingers crossed! We all enjoyed using the district's iPod Touches in March and April 2010. From PreK through 5th grade, we found that all students could use them easily for educational applications. We would love to have this technology for Steed students year-round.

4. Have you seen the new iPad? Well, Mrs. Hartley gets to use an iPad with Steed students and teachers next year. It is part of a district technology grant from the State Department of Education to learn how the iPad can be used in education. Mrs. Hartley is VERY excited about this, and the students will be, too.