ASD Libraries Annual Report 2015: Strategy 2

Identify and integrate into the school community the skills, knowledge, and understandings essential to students to succeed in a changing world.

The Upper Elementary classes incorporate both weekly fixed check-out times, as well as a flexible schedule. allowing opportunities for collaboration with grade level teams and teachers. Lessons are planned and developed, scheduling times both in the classroom and library for use of the online catalog, locating print and digital resources, ethical use of information, as well as self-selection of appropriate materials. Various databases and other resources are accessed in the UE to support research across the subject areas. BrainPop, CultureGrams, Country Reports, and online encyclopedias including Britannica and World Book are frequently used to located information in support of curriculum goals. 

This year we have added an award winning database, PebbleGo  for reading and research for pre-K to grade 3. It includes built-in reading and research tools for emerging readers with leveled text, educational games, and multimedia to help teach concepts to our youngest researchers. PebbleGo is made up of  four separate databases: Animals, Earth & Space, Biographies and Social Studies. They are simple to navigate and offer key reading supports such as read-along audio and word-by-word highlighting.

The focus in Lower Elementary is on enjoying reading and developing reading skills. Grades Pre-K through grade 2, have regularly scheduled library classes each week. Classes focus on various themes including Library citizenship, sections in the library, authors and illustrators, parts of a book, literature appreciation, award winning titles, as well as the opportunity to self-select appropriate materials to checkout. A number of electronic book sources have been subscribed to to support these goals including BookFlix, MyOn, and TumbleBooks.  

Stop by the MSHS library on almost any day, and you'll find it buzzing with activity. Students are welcome to come in on their own whenever they have free time, and they work along classes that come as a group. In the MS, SWAT groups are scheduled on a routine basis for book talks and checkout. The social studies classes come the most often for research assigments in both the middle and high school. In high school, the foreign language classes visit for conversational Spanish practice and silent reading time. The English classes come to the library for research, book checkout, and silent reading.

From the faculty survey:

The Libguides are an amazing vehicle that students really academically benefit from.

Libguides is the platform the MSHS library uses to gather resources for particular classes or assignments. The A to Z Databases guide was accessed over 4800 times this year. The Current Events and Senior Seminar guides were the most used, each with over 3000 hits. Thirty-eight guides had 100 or more hits.

On the high school student survey, 32% of students indicated that Libguides were among the library resources they used most regularly, and 82% indicated that Libguides are helpful when doing a school assignment.

Our Libguides are searchable outside of the school community as well. Our 2014 library annual report was viewed 721 times.

John Coy, this year's PTA visiting author, worked with grades 4 through 8 for a week in March. John has authored several books about sports, including one about the origins of basketball, so it seemed a natural fit to have him work with our PE classes as well as language arts classes. After hearing the story of James Naismith and how he invented basketball, the students were invited to invent their own games. John also presented two parent sessions that were well attended. The focus of those sessions was boys and reading.

What a wonderful week we had with John! Thanks to the PTA for sponsoring his visit!

Feedback from a language arts teacher:

"John did a great job presenting and kept the kids engaged for an entire block.  He gave them an honest sense of what a writer's life is like.  The routines.  The process.  The struggles.  He also emphasized that strong writing is the result of hard work.  We were fortunate to have him visit ASD."

Databases appropriate for student research are some of the most important resources the library provides.

Students are often often encouraged to begin their research with a general encyclopedia, which results in high usage numbers for World Book and Britannica. Britannica also includes ImageQuest, a copyright friendly source of images, which accounts for over 1/3 of Britannica's hits.

EBSCO is our largest database that covers almost any topic. BrainPop is a video database that was used extensively in sixth grade this year. 

Gale, Facts on File, and ABC-CLIO databases are specialty databases that are appropriate for specific subject areas. Students are welcome to use them at any time, and are directed to them for specific assignments.

Our relationship with Qatar National Library enabled students to access their ProQuest suite of databases for free while on campus. This is an incredible resource that resulted in the students finding over 1000 articles in the first year of our agreement. In addition, we cancelled our SIRS Discoverer subscription and were able to access it through QNL; this resulted in over 2500 searches.

At teacher request, we have added JSTOR, an excellent database for the sciences and humanities, for next year. 

The MS and HS teacher-librarians work with classes in the library and in the classroom, helping students to develop inquiry skills as they study the course curricula. The high school librarian worked with the senior seminar, social studies, English, and science classes as students took on research projects.

From the faculty survey:

"Learning to use the library resources and having help with research skills and then being supported in their actual research is invaluable for the students."

Monitors were purchased for all 5 of the MS/HS library study rooms so students can plug in their laptops and work collaboratively. In addition, one wall  two of the rooms was painted green for green screen filming. Whiteboards have arrived for 4 of the study rooms and are awaiting installation.