Bio/Honors Bio Research
Students in Mrs. Murphy's science classes came to the library to practice close reading skills. Students read an article about brains and internet use and practiced the close read strategies of circling difficult words, underlining claims, explaining what they mean, and why they matter. Students were able to practice extending their thinking from WHAT something is about to WHY it matters to the world. This activity was in preparation of students in Mrs. Murphy's and Mr. Dinsmore's classes reading research that they found individually for the cancer research project. Students researched various forms of cancer and created infographics. They learned the library curricular elements of finding information, organizing information, and creating information products for others
ELA 11 I-Search Websites
After completing their research and writing papers last month, students in ELA 11 classes took the information they learned and created a new information product, a website! Mr. Holloway helped students navigate the use of Google Sites as a web design tool. Click on the buttons below to see a few of the finished products!
Algebra 1 Close Read
Students in all Algebra 1 classes came to the library to practice the close read strategies while solving practice ACT questions. One of the hardest things about standardized math tests is understanding what the problem is asking. Math teachers helped students improve this skill by working with librarians to incorporate the same skills used in close reading of difficult or uninteresting texts.
Rather than circle difficult terms, underline claims, and explain what the claims mean and why they matter, we transformed the same skills to work in a math word problem.
Students circled the viable information while crossing out distractors, underlined what the problem was asking for, and wrote the strategies they might try to solve the problem.
The final step was to actually solve the problem. While this process was slow at first, the more students practiced, the quicker they got while more easily distinguishing necessary information from distracting information.
Economics Podcasts
Students in Mr. Breedlove's Economics class learned about the impact of everyday items on the economy through podcasting. After evaluating the techniques in the podcast, Economics of Everyday Things in the library, students learned about how podcasters actually cite their sources and document their citations when the media is audio. Students then researched the economics of various topics, created podcasts, and documented their research the way true podcasters do.
Geography Board Games
Students in Mr. Jones' Geography classes made board games to demonstrate their knowledge learned in class throughout this semester.
They were responsible for creating the board, movers, spinners, cards, and rules.
After playing the game themselves, students switched and played the games of others to evaluate the learning and the game production.
Overdue Book Maintenance
Librarians visited all ELA classes to remind students to return overdue library books. Students were encouraged to renew materials they still needed, return materials they were finished with, and check out new items for the break. Research shows that people that read books for pleasure live longer and have bigger brains!
Close Read Success
As we worked with more and more students and teachers this semester, we developed a tool to help us gather data on the effectiveness of our close read instruction. We learned that during the course of 1st Semester, 557 unique students did close reading training in the library. Of those, 425 attended once, 116 twice, and 16 practiced the close read strategies three times. That makes a total of 705 trainings. By grade, 242 Freshmen, 109 Sophomores, 104 Juniors, and 102 Seniors have practiced close reading in the library. As we continue to help teachers implement these strategies across the curriculum, we expect to see these numbers grow and for reading performance in all corners of our building to increase.
Final 1st Semester Thoughts...
Overall, this semester seemed like it was both 5 seconds and 100 years long. For the semester, we saw 394 classes totaling just under 10,000 students! This equates to having every student in the school come to the library for curricular reasons at least 6 times. We checked out 2,885 resources and of our 394 classes, 119 of them were new collaborations. Our busiest week saw 51 separate classes come to the library for lessons, which means we had just under 3 classes in the library during every period that week. In addition, with 378 class periods during the semester, the library had 1.04 classes every hour. These are some busy statistics. The only thing we need to keep this energy going, is a para! For real.
Credits:
Created with an image by LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS - "different print business and travel newspapers on stand"