What in the world did principals do years ago without the IG and FB groups of the world?
All the great ideas are ideas that people share that you can adapt, tweak, and make your own just make my principal world so happy.
For example, the great Jessica Gomez on IG shared her birthday book cart. She gifts every student at her campus, (and every teacher too!) a book on their birthday!
To make this work for my Wolves, I waited until we had our Scholastic book fair, and then used a considerable amount of points to let some of my teacher leaders choose books across a variety of levels and interests. (and yes, I even used points to buy the cart!)
I used book bins to sort and arrange on my cart. I have big vinyl plans to decorate the end to reflect what our goal is…for every student to find a book they WANT to read. I bought picture books, I bought comic books, I bought graphic novels. I bought books Pernille Ripp said I HAD to have and I bought #allthebooks Brad Gustafson said I needed.
I am ready.
My plan is to use our campus master list to announce their birthdays on the announcements, have them come down to the office, check their name off the list, and grab a book! Holiday birthdays will be delivered when we get back, and I’ll do summer birthdays before we leave!
I mean, really! Who wouldn’t want to choose a book from all these choices???
I’m going to add a sticker inside each with a birthday message, like so!
Now how could one “level up” the birthday cart?? What if you added PRINCIPAL SELFIES, for instance? What better way to let a student celebrate their special day with a mini pic of you and them and their birthday book?? This this mini camera was gifted to me, Fujifilm Instax Mini 70 – Instant Film Camera (White)
Combined, hopefully, all our Wolves will feel celebrated on their special day in addition to getting something new to read! Am thankful for a PLN that not only does great things but shares them out so that we can all celebrate those around us!
How do you celebrate your students and staff on their special day??
Selfies &
Kelly Taylor says
June 19, 2019 at 9:38 pmI love this idea! Your students are so blessed to have you! 😊
Rae says
September 3, 2019 at 1:01 pmI am planning to do this at my school. We have some students who do not celebrate birthdays. I am planning on letting them pick the month they want to receive a book. How have you handled this in the past?
adteaman says
September 5, 2019 at 9:24 amHi Rae!! For my students who don’t celebrate, I chose a random day that I can take a book down to them so they still get one, but ts not in connection to any celebration. 🙂 I spoke to a couple of my Jehovah Witness momma’s to make sure that was ok, 🙂