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Free For All Friday - Pets in the Library Update

You may remember from my Learning New Things post back in October that I've created a Pets in the Library program to help boost student interest in my nonfiction section of my library. I've expanded the program recently to include Library Pet Manager positions.

Students use a Google form to apply for a LPM position with the animal of their choice. The link to the Google form is posted on their Seesaw accounts for student and parent access. Once students apply, I assign LPM jobs and post them outside the library door so students can see when they are scheduled. I also send out reminders to parents via Seesaw.

My 10 LPMs come to the library every morning of their week at 7:45 (15 minutes before school starts). On Mondays, the previous week's LPMs train the incoming ones and for the rest of the week they handle all the feeding, habitat care and learn more about their assigned pet. It has been insanely popular. Out of my 300ish students, over 50 have signed up to do a job.

Benefits of the program - students learn responsibility, their attendance improves and tardies decrease, students gain more interest in science, animal care and non-fiction texts and it frees my time up in the mornings from caring for the animals.

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