Being supportive and encouraging will lead students to engage.

 

AASL Shared Foundations Blog Series – Engage

This blog is the fourth in a series of blogs that discuss a variety of the shared foundations that SC librarians find are important in their school libraries.  

This librarian is Kathryn.  She is the librarian at a middle school that serves 800 students.  This school is located in a small town and the majority of the students are from low income households.  Creating programs to promote reading and also provide personal experiences for those student to relate to.

Annually the school promotes the One School, One Book project that strives to engage students to read with peers, family members and staff.  The school strives to choose a book that will appeal to most students.  The book must also be supported by the teaching staff, so that they will support the program and encourage students to participate. 

There is a service project that is related to the book and the students to become engaged in their community.  By engaging students in the community they can learn and share ideas with those around them.  The 2019 book was Restart by Gordon Korman; the 2020 book is the Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty.  The main character in the book was middle school aged became a math genius after being hit by lightning.  She originally was home-schooled but then was made by her grandmother to attend middle school for one year. 

As the students and staff prepared for the community service project they decided to incorporate collecting donations for the local community animal shelter.  Classroom teachers engaged students in projects in their classrooms to promote the book.  The ELA classes researched dog breeds and made a flyer for an imaginary dog that needs to be adopted.  The science and social studies classes learned about lightning.  Math classes created a Fibonacci spiral and learned about the Golden ratio. 

Some challenges that the Kathryn faced while planning and coordinating this project was the impact that could be made on virtual students.  Many teachers were reluctant to add research and collaboration of the book project at this time.  Also, virtual students struggle to complete required assignments and adding a reading project made this effort concerning to teachers.  However, the resolution was to just encourage the participation of all students in this diverse learning community of Camden Middle School.   One Book, One School is designed to encourage all staff, families and students to take time to read together.  Being supportive and encouraging will lead students to engage. 

Creative Collaborations in the Library

 

AASL Shared Foundations Blog Series – Collaborate

This blog is the third in a series of blogs that discuss a variety of the shared foundations that SC librarians find are important in their school libraries.  

This librarian is Kristi.  She is the librarian at a 600 student elementary school.  Her library is an integral part of her school.  She works diligently to provide opportunities to challenge learners and partner with other educators to scaffold learning.  A few of those lessons are weather with second grade students and a science ecosystem web quest with fifth grade students.

The weather unit combines a read aloud of the book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, discussion about the types of severe weather, and research using online websites.  The students are given a graphic organizer to provide scaffolding when working in small groups to document their research about a specific severe weather.  The summation of this collaborate lesson is for students to be filmed being a meteorologist and giving a weather report.  They worked in groups to provide peer editing of their weather report according to standards created by Kristi and the classroom teacher. 

This fifth grade web quest collaboration incorporated the librarian’s domains of leading inquiry-based learning opportunities and demonstrating the idea that information is a shared resource.  The use of the SC Discus website to research the information requires students to access the shared resources provided to SC students for research.  This project included 10 tasks for students to complete while working in pairs.  Students were required to use multi-medias to complete the tasks.  The entire activities were standard-based according to SC science standards for fifth grade. 

The challenge Kristi finds in is scheduling time with teachers to collaborate.  The typical librarian’s schedule is based on a related arts schedule for the school.  This leaves very little time for the librarian to meet with teachers to develop and implement a collaborative lesson. Kristi provides opportunities for student collaboration in the library as often possible during lesson time.  This allows learners to work productively and learn to understand diverse perspectives during their own inquiry process.  

Creating a Global Learning Environment

 

This blog is the second in a series of blogs that discuss a variety of the shared foundations that SC librarians find are important in their school libraries.  

This librarian is Jennifer.  She is the librarian at a 600 student elementary school.  The school has a very diverse population.  One of those populations is bilingual Spanish students.  The shared foundation of include is very important to her in creating a library collection and environment of diversity and inclusion for all students.  Finding resources for these students are important and constant.  The limited selections of fiction and nonfiction books that would appeal to those ESOL students, but also reflect their culture in the characters is important. 

Some of the resources that she has included in her collection allow for Spanish translation to benefit the students and parents of the students.  Recently the community of Jackson Elementary, Jennifer’s school, and Camden Elementary to meet with ESOL parents.  The event was called Elevate and it provided read a-louds for the students and resources for parents. 

Challenges in the library program are establish opportunities for students to excel while learning a new language.  As this group of our community continues to grow, so should this part of the library collection.  Online resources have also been chosen so that they can have translation options.  The Google technology platform used by the school district allows for translation of documents by teachers and students. 

The library is committed to sharing resources with teachers.  Grade levels that collaborate on a regular basis is first and fourth grades.  Weekly, Jennifer will curate resources designed around themes being covered in the classrooms.  Teachers will use these print resources and website recommendations in the classroom.  The use of the library is still limited due to social distancing restrictions, but Jennifer coordinated these requests whenever the need arises.  By understanding and empathizing with the needs of the classroom teacher and students, Jennifer creates the environment of a global learning community in the school.   

 

Curated Resources a Win-Win for everyone

 

AASL Shared Foundations Blog Series – Curate

This blog is the first in a series of blogs that discuss a variety of the shared foundations that SC librarians find are important in their school libraries.  

This first librarian is Bambi Ferrer.  Her school is located in rural Kershaw County.  This high school is currently in under construction due to a tornado destroying the school in February, 2020.   One of her roles as librarian of the school is to curate a new collection physically and virtually.   With the loss of the physical library, it became important to Bambi to have resources digitally for students and teachers.  She curated sites that they both could use that were available by way of the school website. 

This platform was created using Google Sites and were very easy to navigate and visually appealing. 

During her process of curating these resources she wanted to provide ways to challenge her learners, provide appropriate resources and tools for them to use, and reach a variety of audiences.  These audiences included students, parents, and teachers.  Some of the sites include Tutor.com, SC Discus resources, SORA eBooks, virtual field trips all over the world, and games to enjoy. 

These resources were created so that she could collaborate with teachers, while not having a physical library.  The virtual resources were utilized by students for class research projects.  Courses that she assisted were science, history and English classes.  Recently she created a choice board for a history teacher.  It allowed the students to digitally navigate some topics for an American Revolution project. 

Challenges in her curation efforts are finding time to curate and update the selections on a regular basis; vet the resources to be appropriate for student use; and planning time with teachers.  Kershaw County has a very progressive technology plan to provide hardware and software for students and staff of the high quality.  They have a strict district procedure for software approval and teacher are to have any new resources approved by the district technology department.  This can slow down the process of providing new resources to staff and students.  The final challenge is getting teachers to take time to collaborate.  Teaching time is critical these days.  Having teachers give up critical time in their schedule to utilize the curated resources is a struggle but in the end will be a win-win for the teachers and the students.