News from Your IMC

It seems hard to believe we're coming up on the end of the first quarter of school! Everyone is just as busy as ever with academics, planning, activities and sports. But as the weather cools down, things are really starting to heat up in the IMC! We're kicking off our annual celebration of Teen Read Week with a Scholastic Book Fair and more! Our IMC webpage got a facelift over the summer, and as always new books are always arriving. There's no trick, just treat yourself to a browse in the IMC to find some fun downtime reading. We love to see you!

Lots of fun events are on tap for this year's Teen Read Week, taking place in the IMC Oct. 11-14. Our annual Scholastic Book Fair is scheduled for the week in the IMC (and in front of the cafeteria during Parent-Teacher conferences). We will also be making our classic "book pumpkin" crafts during the lunch hours, and this year I'm excited to announce a new contest: Bookface in the IMC! See some photos below for examples of how a bookface contest works. Students will be encouraged to take photos of their best bookfaces and send them in to the IMC. Photos will be judged, and the winning student will receive a gift certificate to the book fair! More details about Teen Read Week will be forthcoming; please spread the word with your students, or better yet, plan some time to drop by!

Visit our Scholastic Book Fair! The Fair will begin in the IMC this Friday and go through Parent-Teacher Conferences next week. In addition to the great selection of books for preschoolers through adults, we'll have contests and drawings in the IMC during that week as well! As a special incentive for teachers, we will be hosting CYBER TUESDAY just for teachers! Make any order on our Scholastic website on Tuesday, October 11 and get entered into a drawing of just NCHS teachers to win a $20 gift certificate! Remember that all Scholastic purchases directly benefit the NCHS IMC!

Some of you have already noticed that the IMC webpage looks a little different. It still does everything the old site does, but it's a little better organized and eye-catching. Take a few minutes to take a look, and be sure to stop by the databases page. If you use databases often with your classes, or if you've never used them at all, take some time to see what they can do. Aside from providing our students with top-notch credible and timely sources that are easy to search, kids don't have to worry about sifting through sites that might not be reliable or appropriate for academic research (I'm looking at you, Google). On top of all of this, most of our databases allow students to download articles to their Google Drive for easy reference, as well as have highlighting and annotating abilities.

I'm happy to talk to departments during PLC time, or to classes starting research projects about these databases and what they can do.

I am so excited to announce that we have a lineup for the IMC Lunch and Learn! This program was so successful last year, thanks to teachers' promotion of the speakers to their students. I'm working again with the McLean County U of I Extension office to provide lunchtime speakers on a variety of topics, such as honeybees (Yes! Tom Pankonen is coming back!!), a local refuge food forest, student loans, and more!

Lunch and Learn will take place in the IMC over the lunch periods on the second Thursday of each month. More information will be forthcoming about individual speakers.