Library Lessons

Library Procedures

- librariantiff 6 Comments

Spending time at the beginning of the year practicing library procedures with students is essential for a successful year. I love my 8th graders this time of year, because they’ve got the procedures down. They know exactly how our library functions and they’re leaders who model the procedures to new students.

Particularly with self check-out and return in place, I really have to drill those procedures with students so things run smoothly. It’s just me running the show in our library — no assistant with over 1000 students at our school — so self check-out is the only way that the library can stay open for circulation all day every day.

Every year, I like to schedule my 8th graders for the first library visits. I feel like it’s only fair that they have first dibs on checking out books (because once 1000 students come through, the shelves start looking a little bare). Instead of droning on about library procedures with my 8th graders this year, I had them help me put together a video to review procedures with 7th grade and introduce them to the new 6th graders.

I let the students break into groups of 3-5, giving each group a camera and a procedure to film. Some of the submissions were hilarious — I was highly entertained by what they submitted. The video and audio quality left something to be desired; it was a little hectic and loud with so many students working in the same space to record. I was pleased, though, with the final product:

I showed this video 33 times over the course of two weeks for back to school library visits. I only got a little tired of it. 🙂

My 6th graders came in this week for their second visit and they’re starting to get the hang of our procedures. I used this Kahoot to review with them. I will continue to review them and sound like a broken record (“Scan your ID first to check out”) until this library runs like a well-oiled machine.

Think before you post!

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Last week in the library, we did an activity that fostered a lot of great discussion and serious thoughts about posting on social media. Students honestly don’t put much thought into the things they post — and it’s scary how quick and easy it is to post something, and how difficult it is to recover from something harmful to your reputation and online presence. I work very hard to serve as a positive digital role model for my students (and coworkers, for that matter). I’m very transparent with everyone about how active I am online through social media and this blog. Sharing about the positives that come from my professional online presence and how it impacts my life is a big part of who I am and what I do. For most of my students, I may be the first POSITIVE digital role model that they have…because I see some of the things their parents are posting online on toxic Facebook groups within our community.

Some of the ideas for this activity came from the Common Sense Media lesson called Private Today, Public Tomorrow. We started with some discussion on what happens when we post things online. I used these slides to guide the activity:

Students were broken into groups and each group was given an article about the consequences of using social media in a harmful way. You could either have students access these articles online or print them. I decided to print copies, and I formatted them so they wouldn’t look wonky. Here’s the PDF:

Here are links to the articles:

Pittsburg High School students suspended for inappropriate comments on Instagram

Recruit Yuri Wright expelled for Tweets

Students arrested, expelled for making violent Twitter threats

They Loved Your G.P.A. Then They Saw Your Tweets

Social Media Shocker: Twitter and Facebook Can Cost You a Scholarship or Admissions Offer

Texas teen tweets herself out of pizzeria job

High School Coaches Back UGA’s Social Media Scrutiny

Concord coach invites Twitter to ‘burn down’ RFRA-supporting pizzeria

Students read these articles, discussed them, then came up with questions that people should ask themselves before posting on social media. Depending on the amount of time I had with the class, they might make decision trees or a list of questions. Here are some of their products:

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We ended with a whole class discussion. It was really interesting to see where the discussion went with each of the different classes. We talked about what they read in the articles (some were shocked that these were TRUE stories) and they shared their group’s questions (or decision tree). Lots of discussion was had about how “appropriate” is a subjective word. This is one of those lessons that will be referenced regularly, especially since a number of administrators popped in during these discussions.

I did this activity with all of my 7th and 8th grade students — 24 times total in four days! I plan to do it earlier in the year next year with the incoming 7th grade students. This activity would be very relevant to high school students, as well!

Self Check-Out & End of the Year Wrap-Up

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I know we say this every year…but GEEZ, this year has FLOWN by! I cannot believe we just have one week left of this school year. As I look back on this year, it has been so great and I have many things to be thankful for. I’m going to write a post soon about how WOW! this year has been for me professionally, but first I want to share about some great things that happened in the library as I wrap up this school year.

Just last March I was pondering self check-out. Moving to a self check-in and check-out was one of the best things I did this year. I honestly don’t know how I pulled it all off before self check-out. I feel like I have been freed from the cord that tied me to the circulation desk, and life will never be the same! I decided to create two separate stations: one near the door for self check-in and one at the circulation desk for self check-out. I made some minor tweaks throughout the school year, and I’m quite content with the way things work now.

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So each station has a unique Destiny login that ONLY allows students to check-in OR check-out. The check-in station is seen above. I’ve set them both up with laptops, because that’s what I had available. Students must have their IDs to check out — they can’t just type their names in (this keeps their information secure). I’ve covered up the keyboard so they can’t even try to type in their names or numbers. I also have the “reset” barcode at each station. Teaching procedure was key for this — they KNOW that they MUST reset before they walk away from the computer.

To check in, they just scan the book barcode, watch the screen for their name, and then reset before they walk away. To check out, they scan their ID, check their accounts for any books still checked out, scan the book, check the screen to make sure it registers, then reset. For me, one of the most important things that makes this work is the sounds that go each time something is scanned. Even when I’m not looking, I know the sequence of sounds that should go off when students check books in and out, and when something doesn’t “sound right” I’m able to help them take care of whatever issue it may be.

A few other updates to wrap up the year…

We had our first ever Book Swap this week…and it was great! I had about 30 students participate in the swap, and they were SUPER excited about it. Although I had a couple of students who were absent and had to pick through the leftovers, this is definitely something I want to do next year (maybe even more than once). Honestly it wasn’t a lot of work (although next year I won’t be doing the swap the same week as book return…WAY too chaotic). I meant to take pictures during the swap, but it was a frenzy and happened so fast that I forgot. Here’s what it looked like before the students made their selections:

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The students said this is something they enjoyed and that we should definitely do this again…SUCCESS!

I never posted the results of our March Madness at CMS…oops! We had a lot of fun with this as well, and it was another pretty easy thing to pull off. I used a Google Form for voting each week. I was very excited to see the number of votes increase as the weeks progressed. I was also beyond to see one of the books on our state book award list, The Fourth Stall, end up in the final round! In the end, The Hunger Games was the winner, but all of the books in the bracket stayed checked out through the end of the year!

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The end of the school year is always a stressful and hectic time (kind of like the beginning of the year, now that I think about it…), but the anticipation of summer and the reflection on a year well done makes it all worth it!

Spine Poetry

- librariantiff 5 Comments

In honor of National Poetry Month, we did an activity in the library that I’ve been interested in trying for quite some time…spine poetry!

In one of those awesome “check out the power of Twitter” moments, Shannon Thompson, an awesome librarian from Athens, Georgia, brought up spine poetry. This is something that had caught my attention before, so I tweeted two of my awesome sixth grade ELA teachers (Alaina Laperouse and Jason Dupuy) to see if they were interested

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They were in, so we started thinking about how to pull it together. When I looked at our library books, I noticed that many of our spine labels covered parts of the book titles. This would not make for pretty poetry. Also, Shannon mentioned that students pulling tons of books off the shelf could get to be quite a mess.

So Alaina (one of the awesome sixth grade ELA teachers who happens to be my best friend) and I took a little trip to a nearby bookstore. We picked books that we thought would make great lines of poetry for our students and snapped pictures. I cropped them down, cleaned them up, printed them on cardstock, and cut them out. Yes, this took a lot of time. However, I now have reusable “book spines” that don’t have to be reshelved! I’m planning to continue to add to this collection as time goes on, but definitely continue to reuse what I’ve already done. I can also share my document with you to save you lots of work!

We were very curious to see what poems our students would create. They absolutely had a blast! I knew I would be impressed with some of their work, and they didn’t disappoint.

We had students take photos of their favorite poems that they created, then post them to an album on Schoology. Here are a few of my favorites:

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What are some fun things that you’ve done to promote National Poetry Month in your school and library?

Information Skills Tasks

- librariantiff 5 Comments

Whether we like it or not, state testing is just over a week away for us in Louisiana. I’m not going to get on my soapbox and talk about my thoughts on standardized testing, because the reality of the situation is that it’s something we have to do. Scores play a big part in our school performance scores and teacher evaluations, and I work in a high performing district with high expectations. Testing and test prep is a stressful topic for everyone.

In order to best support my teachers and students, I wanted to come up with some activities that would help support them in preparation for “the test” while still engaging students in a fun (and rigorous) way. I bounced the idea around with my awesome 6th grade teachers and then got to work on developing a series of “tasks”, structured like puzzles, for the students to complete in groups during a library visit. Putting this together was A LOT of work…and my teachers really didn’t have time to put something like this together, so it was a great way for me to be able to support them. These activities went over so well with our 6th graders that I’m planning to add, adjust, and tweak them to do with 7th and 8th grade students next week.

Since I’m planning to do some variation of these activities will all of my students (meaning 42 times!), I knew that repeating the directions so many times would get old. So I used the idea shared by Lodge McCammon at METC to film the quick instructions so they would be delivered consistently each time:

Putting together all of the materials for this was time consuming. I created visually appealing pieces for the students to use, which I’ve shared below — five tasks all together (although each group only used 3-4 of the tasks). I color coded activities using card stock and numbered all of the pieces in each folder to correspond with the group number on the folder (six groups in all — meaning I made six copies/folders of each task). This way, when I found a rogue piece on the floor, I would know which folder it came from (and I stressed with students the importance of keeping up with materials).

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Below, I’ve shared photos of each task in action, as well as digital copies of the materials used to create each task. Feel free to take and use anything here that I have shared!

Author’s Purpose:

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Authors Purpose by librariantiff

Research to Build Knowledge:

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Research to Build Knowledge by librariantiff

Bibliographic Entries:

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Bibliographic Entries by librariantiff

Parenthetical Citations:

Parenthetical Citation by librariantiff

Thinking Maps:

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Thinking Maps by librariantiff

Task List Handout:

Library Tasks

The model bibliographic entries and parenthetical citations pages, as well as the resources from the Research to Build Knowledge activity, are from our state test sample materials, which can be found here. The author’s purpose and FLEE map samples were created by our 6th grade ELA teachers.

Digital Citizenship at CMS

- librariantiff 5 Comments

I feel like one of the most important and relevant things that I can teach my students is how to be a responsible digital citizen. Honestly, most of the adults in their lives don’t truly “get it.” They don’t fully understand or consider the impact that a student’s digital footprint can have on their future. They don’t get how essential digital literacy skills are to a student’s success. I try to lead by example so I can show my students what a positive digital citizen who is creating a strong, transparent digital footprint looks like. I share the ways I use my blog, Twitter, and other networks to grow as a professional. And I facilitate discussions and activities where students consider the impact that their digital choices can have on different parts of their lives.

I originally posted about the Common Sense Media Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum back in October of 2011, and I’ve been adapting these lessons to my library curriculum ever since. They have a range of really great lesson ideas, videos, and print resources available for all grade levels K-12.

My absolute favorite lesson that I’ve taught this year is the Trillion-Dollar Footprint (click this link to access all lesson resources for this lesson). I’ve taken the lesson provided by Common Sense Media and created this presentation to guide my students through the discussions for this activity:

During this lesson, students look at the social media profiles of two potential job candidates to determine which works better with others and is more trustworthy. Students discover discrepancies in the social media profiles, and it sure does get them fired up and engaged in an active discussion! You know an activity is powerful when students continue to discuss it well after the lesson has ended, and that’s exactly what I found with this lesson. I loved this lesson so much that over the course of the first semester, I taught it to all of my 7th and 8th grade students.

I introduced my 6th grade students to this curriculum with the Digital Life 101 lesson. In this activity, students think about the different aspects of their digital lives and create a simile. Here are an example of what one of my students created:

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Other tried and true favorites for me from this curriculum include:

My favorite thing about these lessons is that they’re very discussion based and get students thinking about their digital lives. I interviewed some of my students and asked them about what they’ve learned about digital citizenship, and here’s what they had to say:

How is digital citizenship taught in your school? What role do you play in helping students better understand their digital lives?

Library Survey Results

- librariantiff 2 Comments

Before the holiday break, my awesome principal recommended that all of the teachers take some time and have their students complete anonymous surveys to provide feedback on their class (questions ranged from teaching, relationships, classroom environment, respect, etc.). Being the great leader that he is, he lead by example and asked all of his teachers and staff complete similar surveys on him, giving feedback on our perceptions of the job he’s doing as an administrator.

I decided that I wanted to conduct a student survey for the library, too. At first, I considered just posting the link on Schoology and asking students to complete it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I may not get the amount or quality of feedback I wanted unless I had students complete the survey during a library visit. So for the first two weeks back from holiday break, I had students complete these surveys when they visited the library with their ELA classes. I have to say, it was completely worth my time to have all of this data and feedback to sift through. Here’s the survey I put together:

LibrarySurveyAnd here are the results:

I was very interested to not only see the overall results, but also to break them down by grade level. I was really happy with the results of the survey. It’s nice to know that the kids think I’m doing some things right! The students overwhelmingly feel like the library is a comfortable and welcoming place, and that I’m approachable and helpful — these are things that I work really hard to develop in the culture of our library.

Over the last several years, I have worked with my ELA teachers to find a schedule that works best for them. I know that many librarians feel very strongly about having a completely flexible schedule. I feel very strongly, though, about seeing and reaching every student in my school on a regular basis. So I have created a flex/fixed schedule that seems to be working well. I see 6th and 7th grade ELA classes every other week, and 8th grade every three weeks. But for almost 30% of the 8th graders, they aren’t able to visit frequently enough. Overall, though, this is a confirming thing for me in that I see how many of my students wouldn’t be visiting the library if I didn’t schedule time regularly with their ELA teachers…so this seems to be working out pretty well.

I wasn’t shocked by the results that show that most of our students don’t use our library catalog. The reasons for this, I believe, are: (1) genrefication makes browsing so much easier that students use the catalog less; (2) they ask me where a particular book is and I can tell them off the top of my head where it is since I know the collection so well; (3) I don’t spend much time teaching them to use the catalog, since I feel my time is better spent teaching other things. I’m going to continue to ponder on this point.

The results that most pleasantly surprised me: “Do you feel the lessons and activities during class library visits are helpful/informative?” Students had very positive feelings about the activities that we’ve done (from search strategies to digital citizenship activities to book speed dating), and they even left some positive feedback about this in the open ended questions.

I knew that the results to the genrefication questions were going to be extremely positive, but I’m very excited to have some numbers from this survey to be able to share on this topic! Our students love the organization of our library, and in the open ended questions many raved about this as well.

The open ended questions were by far my favorite. Although it takes a lot to go through hundreds of responses, there were some real gems in there! For the results shared above, I picked out some of the most frequently given or nicely put responses.

Giving this survey and spending time with the results has been a really powerful experience for me. Not only was it a way for me to evaluate my practice, but it was also a really great way to empower students and give them a voice.

If you would like to make/save yourself a copy of the Form that I created, click here.

 

Book Speed Dating

- librariantiff 7 Comments

One of the most powerful things I can do for my students is work to promote reading for fun and helping students find books that they will enjoy. I feel like middle school is one of those key times in life where many students either take the path to become a life-long reader…or not. So I try to do as much as possible to talk to my students about what they’re reading and help them find books that will get them hooked!

One activity that I’ve found to be extremely successful this year is a round of “Book Speed Dating.” I know that this is an activity that many librarians have done for years…it’s tried and true for a reason!

Here’s how I’ve put together this activity:

  • I pulled books that I frequently recommend from 7 different genres and put them in boxes at each of my 7 tables. It exposes readers to new genres that they may not seek out on their own.
  • Students come in and decide on a ranking system they’ll use to rank the books they preview (scale of 1-10, five star ratings, etc.).
  • I set a timer (like the one projected on the screen) for five minutes. For the first 30 seconds, they can peruse the books in the box at their table and select a book. Then, they spend 4 minutes reading the book to see if it hooks them. With 30 seconds remaining, they make note of the title of the book and give it a ranking.
  • If at any time they find a book they want to check out, they can hold on to that book. All other books go back in the box, we rotate the boxes, and repeat this activity 4-5 times.

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I always get great feedback from teachers and students with this activity…they love it! By the final round, about half of the students will typically have a book that they want to check out. And ALL of the students have spent some time with a book from a genre that’s outside of their typical reading comfort zone.

I did this several weeks ago with my 8th graders, and this week the 6th graders are having their turn. I especially like that I can customize the boxes for the classes/grades that I have visiting. And I LOVE that lots of book replenishing is needed after each class!

Do you do something similar to this? What other tried and true activities do you use for the love of reading?

Time to Connect!

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We had such a fun week in the library, connecting our students with others in honor of Dot Day!

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My students had a blast connecting with and learning from students in different parts of the world!

On Monday, my BFF Alaina Laperouse‘s (who just started her new blog!!) students connected with students of some of our dear friends Sherry Gick (in Indiana) and Matthew Winner (in Maryland).

On Tuesday morning, two of my classes had awesome hangouts with some of Sherry’s students, asking and answering questions about our schools and hometowns. That afternoon, a class of our 7th graders did a Mystery Skype with Diana Maliszewski‘s students in Toronto, Canada. After a very lucky guess, my students were able to figure out their location!

On Wednesday, we connected with another of Sherry’s classes. I mean, can I just say how much I LOVE Sherry and her students? By doing multiple Hangouts with her classes, I were able to learn a lot and come up with a format for these types of Hangouts that flow really well! And I loved having out students discover similarities between our libraries, like self check-out and a genrefied shelving arrangement! Of course, my students are ALWAYS jealous when they see others in “free dress” — meaning they don’t have to wear uniforms. And discussing school lunches is always a hot topic for middle schoolers!

Thursday was busy with Hangout/Skypes with three different schools: Kari Healy‘s students in Minnesota, Sherry’s students in Indiana, and another Mystery Skype with Diana’s students in Canada!

Friday was a staff development day, so students didn’t have school, which cut our “Dot Day” week a bit short. But this was one of those weeks that gets you pumped up and excited to see what the school year will bring! I am so excited to make more connections throughout this school year! Connecting virtually with other schools allows students the opportunity to overcome nerves and speak in front of their peers. With speaking and listening being a key element in the Common Core State Standards, I feel that these virtual connections will be more important and powerful than ever!

I’m definitely going to be looking for more opportunities to connect this year — Mystery Skypes, sharing book talks, making presentations, and just fun get to know you Q&A sessions — let me know if you’re looking for opportunities to connect too!

Dot Day!

- librariantiff 2 Comments

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So I’m jealous of all of the excitement going on with Dot Day and figure it’s time I got my students involved with this! I absolutely love my friend Matthew Winner’s idea of the trading cards (see here and here) and want to use that with my students! I also want to make some Google Hangout connections! I’m planning to share this video to introduce the students to The Dot by Peter Reynolds. Then I’m planning to have my students make three trading cards (one to trade with another student in their class, one to trade with a student in their grade but on the other team, and one to send to our friends that we connect with via Google Hangout). So do you want to hang out with us?

I’m looking for middle school classes to connect with on the following days/times:

Monday, September 16:
7:40-8:00 AM CST
9:20-9:40 AM CST
1:20-1:40 PM CST

Tuesday, September 17:
9:20-9:40 AM CST
1:20-1:40 PM CST

Wednesday, September 18:
7:40-8:00 AM CST
9:20-9:40 AM CST

Thursday, September 19:
7:40-8:00 AM CST
9:20-9:40 AM CST
1:20-1:40 PM CST

I can be somewhat flexible in the times if I need to, so please let me know if you’re interested!! If you’re interested in connecting, you can leave a message in the comments or use this Google Spreadsheet to put in your information so we can connect!

I hope to “see” some of you soon!!