Celebrating Success

Food Collected by collaboration with our Student Council

We had a Food for Fines Program in the media center this holiday season.

Students could opt to pay for their fines or lost books with cans or boxes of food. 

We collected over $100.00 worth of fines in food for the local food bank.

The effort was in collaboration with our Student Council. 

Battling with Davis Drive 

Our small but mighty team has been working hard reading, working on their  quizzes, and memorizing title and authors.

We have also been practicing our battles with Heritage Middle, Apex Middle and Davis Drive Middle. It really helps the team stay calm during the actual battle and be prepared for some tough competition.

We will begin profiling books next week by outlining major characters, plots, summaries and conflicts. Hopefully, this will keep the details clear for the team. The competition is only 7 meetings away! 

We meet online in Edmodo to talk to each other about books, related news and add questions. Our goal is to participate in the second round of the competition. Go! Big, Bad, Book Bosses!

Voicethread Expedition

Why are we doing this?

     Week four with my new enrichment group is already here. After polling our 8th grade teachers across subject areas, I decided our new focus would be vocabulary skills. Vocabulary skills? I thought it was a poor idea before I got started. I could envision the teeth-sucking, eye-rolling, chair-flipping and general anarchy erupting among the group.

     I'm thankful to report, aside of minor grumbling, my students are engaged in vocabulary-focused research and information processing. Our first week focused on prefix meanings. We worked in groups to uncover the meaning of unknown words, based on their prefix meaning. The students made educated guesses, adding them to a large chart at each table. They debated about their individual guesses, then verified against a dictionary. At the end of the week, we learned how to play Balderdash. I was excited to see the students make thoughtful definitions, based on their knowledge of prefix meanings! Not one student had played before and all seemed to enjoy the fun.

     I dedicated the second week to American Revolution vocabulary. Our first day included a pre-assessment of 10 terms from the 15 we would study throughout the week. Most students didn't know the terms, but that's why we do a pre-assessment, right? I was delighted to share a Schoolhouse Rock video, No More Kings, to summarize the American Revolution in an interesting way. I asked students to pick out some vocabulary terms they recognized in the video and infer the correct definitions.

     They were thrilled to spend the rest of the week in the computer lab. I used an existing Quizlet.com on American Revolution terms. They were chatty, but after I re-focused them, they used the tool to learn the terms, learn to spell them, quiz themselves and play games with the vocabulary terms. On the last day, they took a post-assessment on the Quizlet. After only three days (30 minute periods), 75% of the students earned a 100%! Many were 'competing' to see who could earn the first perfect score. Those who earned less than perfect tried again and improved each time. I wouldn't call this a lesson with deep meaning, but they do remember the Proclaimation of 1763 now.

     We spent the last two weeks learning how to extract meaning from complex text. Upping the ante, I switched to chemistry terms for this process. Students learned how to search the EBSCO database by Lexile level and Boolean operators. They needed to find their term, summarize the article as related to the term, find an example (quote) of the term, then make an inferred defintition with textual evidence. Of course, they were expected to cite their resources. Each student had two terms, each requiring two sources. They will spend this week on an expidition into VoiceThread.
    
     Voicethread is newly-acquired on a county level; I've never used it in a classroom setting. I shared with the class that I don't know how this will work on a class level, but was hoping to get their support in this new adventure. It will be sloppy. It certainly won't be perfect. We'll all make mistakes, but we'll do it together and be the model for the rest of our students at WMS. "We're alpha testing Voicethread guys, isn't that exciting?"

     Some grunts and a few crooked smiles were reassurance enough for me. The first day was slightly messy, but the students and I worked past the end of class without once looking at the clock. I'll consider that a success.

Adventures in a Common Core Experiment

Like any educator worth their salt, I question my ability to provide the best opportunities for my students every day. In the last four weeks, something wonderful has happened in our media center: students were actively engaged in meeting their curriculum objective. What's the most amazing piece of this puzzle? They knew it wasn't going to be graded.

I have a group of engaged, inquisitive, creative and thoughtful 8th graders who are attending my four-week enrichment session called Inquiry Learning and Research Skills. Our objectives tied in ITES Standards for Research Process, Sources of Information and Technology as a Tool. They met standards for the 8th grade Language Arts Social Justice unit. This is a snapshot of their process:

Week 1: Students met each other, then were placed in five small groups (5-6). I presented their objectives, Essential Questions and thematic focus. I showed the groups different at-issue themes from our resources in the media center. Groups selected three of their own choice. I selected one of their choices for their theme. Ms. Hetzell, our AG coordinator, helped in groups two days in each of the first two weeks. We worked collaboratively to assist students in research by helping students analyze information for credibility, bias, quality, authorship and timeliness. They used a variety of formats (online video, journal databases, magazines, newspapers and non-fiction text, plus interviews)

Week 2: Student groups met to discuss their first week findings, discard information that did not meet criteria, then agree on their focus within the group. They reasearched all week, taking notes, citing sources and discussing their findings. Homework was never required, but many chose to work outside of class on their research. (victory!)

Week 3: After finishing up research and completing citations, students worked in groups to choose one representative icon of their theme for each member of the group. This discussion lasted one class period, and they had some wonderful converstations!

We spent one period learning about murals and how they are used locally, nationally and globally. We looked at examples from Clayton, NC, Philadelphia, PA and Belfast, Ireland. Students noted how murals reflect perspectives of community and politics.

On the next day, we took a 'field trip' on school grounds, using our ipads to create the iconic images with the camera application. Student groups used transparency sheets and a dry erase marker to create contour drawings of their icons, then projected them to a 'mural' sheet, using an overhead projector.

Week 4: Students individually write summaries of their perspective on the issue, based on their research. They will need to reference their sources in their arguments; it will be a challenge! The final product will be their murals with their individual perspectives pasted (literally) around the images for a collective piece of artwork and writing.

This was a time-consuming and resource-rich project. It was very successful, which I attribute to allowing students to have choice in their learning. It made it a meaningful, enriched and exciting learning experience. I'll hear their reflections and take a plus/delta survey next to learn what the students thought about this project, and I'll be sad to see them leave to their next enrichment adventure.

I wonder what I'll do with my next four weeks and my new group of students?

And... we're off!!

Our first day of orientation started today. By this time next week, I will see all 970 of our students! It is quite a challenging year so far. The media center has solo staffing this year, so we need as many parent volunteers as we can muster. My primary role is providing collaborative teaching and learning projects to support the new Common Core curriculum in the classroom.
What does that require? Full-time clerical work. Hours of technology troubleshooting. Staff trained in technology and literacy support. Are you ready for a challenge? Please contact ldextre@wcpss.net if you can give your time to volunteer.

On a happy note, our orientation, which started with sixth grade classes today, went quite smoothly. We had some great comments from students on their exit tickets:

"What I liked about the media center is all the interesting books and how much room there is."

"Two things I liked about the media center were that you can still check out books if you loan something or donate something [take-it-or-leave-it]. Also, you can check out almost every book."

"I think the media center was really fun, and it was a comfy place to be in."

"I liked the library here. It had a lot of good books and I like the bookmarks they had."

"Checking out the books was slow. We need two librarians."

"I love the way they really give you a choice in the media center with all those books all organized all neat. Good job, library staff!"

"I like that you're allowed to sit anywhere you want in the media center. I also like that you are able to keep your book for three weeks."

"I love the way everything was set up and the anime books. They need a lot more anime books."

"I really liked it. It's so different from elementary school. It's bigger and better. I loved it!"

 Trying to maintain our previous level of service with 60 hours less of help each week will prove to be my biggest challenge in my career. How will I handle it? With grace and focus, remembering that student literacy comes before plugging in cables. Involving parents in their child's education by listening to advice and allowing them to lend a hand for displays, project setup and resource support. Collaborating with classroom teachers to create a meaningful, fun project will trump paperwork piles, technology fix-its and laminating. 

 I will hope that we will again see a state IMPACT model standard, along with a national school learning environment to support the needs of our Common Core teachers and learners. Teacher librarians can't do it alone, but we sure work with remarkable efficiency and a welcoming smile anyway.

Are you wired to be a gamer?
Join the LEVEL UP Book Club for some summer fun!

Things You Don't Learn in Graduate School

Mr. Bradford sacrificed his dignity for a day to support our Library Media program. For that Mr. Bradford, we are eternally grateful. We exceeded all sales in WMS Book Fair history, thanks to your effort! Thank YOU!