No Shhing Here

This is a two part series: Part I is a refresher on inquiry based learning models and their alignment to the Common Core. Part II discusses an inquiry driven 8th grade ELA research unit aligned to the Common Core. So I've spent some serious time hating on the Common Core, but over the past year I've come to appreciate many aspects of the new standards (though I continue to abhor any additional testing it's generated). One fantastic aspect of the Common Core is its emphasis on inquiry. Librarians are inquiry experts - it's what we do 24/7. Having the Common Core around helps justify our existence; I'm finding that most classroom teachers are uncomfortable with inquiry based learning, so we're needed now more than ever! Need a little refresher yourself? In this learning model, instead of expecting students to find the “right answer,” students are asked to find appropriate solutions to problems (typically, the problems - aka "questions" - are genera...

This week we hosted author Susan Campbell Bartoletti . It was my first time working with a big-name author, and between three months of maternity leave and teachers prepping for upcoming state testing, I felt a little frazzled pulling off the event. Happily, some advance made the day a success, even though I'd never done this kind of event before. Here are my top tips for planning a successful author visit at the junior high level. Susan eats lunch with our students. Ask your classroom teachers what authors they're interested in (or give them a short list to choose from). It's so much easier to pull off an author visit if you have teacher buy-in. They're under tons of pressure to perform on state exams and adjust to new curriculum standards, so they are going to be reluctant to give up class time for an activity they don't value. When they have a stake in the event everyone is much happier. Select authors that match your curriculum. When I prepared my s...

Like many schools, my district encourages us to let parents know when students are doing a great job. As a junior high librarian, it can be difficult to make these connections with parents - in the past, I haven't had reasons to call home with good OR bad news. I see students in short, two week chunks of time as they complete projects, and then when they're done with their projects, I have only casual, informal interactions with them. I'm not assigning grades, and they don't stick around long enough in the classroom to become discipline problems, so bad news phone calls to parents are never a necessity. I would, though, like to make an effort to let parents know when their child does something fantastic, even if I only get to know that student during a two-week project.  Although I haven't made an effort to do so in the past, it's great publicity for the library and way to build a base of parent advocates. I just needed a way to share the good news with pare...

My apologies for the lack of posts for the last month and half! I've been busy with this pregnancy thing, and not had much time to blog. Now that I'm full term, it's just a lot of waiting around for something to happen.  In the meantime, I've left my library in the hands of a long-term sub (it's a lot harder to let go than I thought!). Once the baby's born, I plan to take 12 weeks of maternity leave, which should put me back in action sometimes toward the end of February.  Until then, I'll try to squeeze in a few posts and some great project updates, but hang tight as the blogging decreases while I start this new adventure.  Enjoy your what's left of your short week and Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't know about you guys, but orientation is one my least favorite times of the year. I love meeting all the new kids, but I hate repeating the same thing over and over and over. With 5 eighth grade teachers, I do the same exact presentation almost 30 times each fall. Orientation requires a lot of talking - I have to convey loads of information, so even though I try to mix in other activities to keep everyone interested and intersperse some hands-on learning, I'm still exhausted by the end of the day. So, two years ago, I smartened up. My goal was to create a library orientation activity that didn't result in permanent laryngitis. I had a class set of iPods at my disposal, so I developed a library iPod tour. Using my iPhone and iMovie, I recorded 1-2 minute clips about each section of the library. Students move from station to station around the library. At each station, they watch the corresponding video on the iPod about that zone. After viewing the iPod video...

We seem to have an unusually high number of visually impaired students this year, so we've been working hard to help the classroom teachers meet their accommodations. Every 8th grader, including those with low-vision, needs to choose one of ten dystopian novels for an upcoming English project. The novels are all titles published in the last year or two, and I can't find enough ILL large-print versions to meet demand. So, to solve the problem, I've been buying digital versions of the books and putting them on our Kindles. The kids can change the text size on the Kindle, allowing them to view the page at whatever size is best for their eyes. Alone, this solution would be adequate, but this week Amazon released a fantastic tool called Whispersync for Voice. This awesome improvement allows me to start reading the Kindle version of the book and then pick up where I left off in the audio version of the book on a different (or same) device. That means I can stop reading at the ...

It's September, so I'm back at my computer with the old to-do list posted in front of me. How is my desk already this messy on the fourth day of school? Like most teachers, it's a little bit of a struggle to get back in the saddle after a couple months of vacation. This year, as an added bonus, I'm seven months pregnant, so everything I do seems to take just a tiny bit more effort than normal. Teaching requires physical endurance - I always forget how much energy I need to "perform" all day long. I always sound like a croaking, gasping frog the first few days until my voice and breath readjust to the routine. Here are my tips for getting back in the groove after summer vacation: * Don't wait until the night before school starts to re-do your routine. I find it a lot less stressful to ease into an earlier bedtime/wake-up schedule. If I've gotten up at 6:30 AM the last few days, I'm sleepier at a more "normal" time, and the shock ...