Teaching with Primary Sources: Historical Photographs

 Teaching with photographs( primary sources) motivates and encourages students to ask good questions and will eventually lead to higher order thinking.  Primary Source photographs inspire students to think about the past an relate it to their life today.

  As educators we need to determine questions about each photograph.  Students will need to study and investigate the photograph to locate information and  think of an answer to a question.
 This  will bring an emphasis on inquiry learning with encourages  learns to observe, analyze,  and form their own ideas on the primary source, This also helps them build knowledge.

More information will follow  about the Library Of Congress website - check this out for Primary Sources useful for American History.

https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

Reading Posters from the library!

   I will be working with my art teacher to produce reading posters. The poster will be a montage of students reading in different locations ( maybe even at their homes with their pets or siblings??) I would like to make a couple for each floor and perhaps even doubles of some of the photos.

  The art teacher is going to mount them on poster board. We will come up with a catchy slogan- perhaps more than one. 

  I am hoping to show how many students like reading and do read.  I am open to students reading newspapers, comics,  or magazines. I will also catch students reading text books, signs, and posters.  This will be a great way to showcase reading at the middle School or on any level/.

Library Calendar of classes and activiites.

 I just finished this posting my library calendar on the school library's website.   It was there before  but not up to date or very visible to the staff. What I did was place the link to the calendar in the middle of the main page. 

 On the calendar, I have posted the classes that will be in the library for that week. This way  teacher can look at the calendar and see if the library is open for students to  come and  check out books or be sent to do computer work or research.   Also teachers can look at it and plan  when to bring students or have students work on projects.

  Many times during the course of the week, I am into classrooms and or in the lab helping students do research  so this is also helpful to know if I am there or not. My assistant is not always there , so I may find a way to indicate that information.

   I then sent a mass email to staff and told them about where the link was to the calendar. I am hoping this will also serve as a reminder  that they can reserve the library and it resources for their classwork.

Reading & Writing Partnership- Librarians and teachers

     School Librarians  make good partners with ELA and reading teachers. Librarians provide oral and silent reading  depending on the grade  level. We  as Librarians provide quality books to help improve reading scores.

   In the context of reading , students often are asked to describe , synthesize, analyze, and critique their  understanding of what they have read. So when librarians provide books, model and share our love of reading, we can motivate and encourage  more student reading.

   Discussions, book clubs, reviews, casual conversation,   and book challenges are all part of the job. We need to read and know the quality books in our collection in order to motivate our students. So big surprise we need to read!

Bulletin Boards for October

  These are just a few ideas for October:

 Fall in love with reading!  leaves falling down to the ground from a bare tree- could put titles of books on the leaves

Scare up some good books- ghosts with titles on it

Pick of the patch- lots of pumpkins!

Reading is a Scream - put up covers of
scary or horror  books all around the letters!

One Goal for the school year

One of the goals of the school library media specialist  is to promote  reading and also work with staff  to help improve reading scores.  This is one of my goals this year. When students become better readers they do better in school.

  So here is a few ideas that I will use to work on this goal.  Student made reading posters, books displays, author posters,   book discussion groups,  library recess groups, use of the AR program, and reading motivation programs.  I am also hoping to work more closely with reading and ELA teachers,

  A few more ideas  to get students more involved in good books are: shelf talkers, student book reviews on our website and reading workshops.

Library or Classroom Project- Did you Know?

      An interesting and little different author/ reading project is an Author Poster, which could be do as a small group or individual  project  .  Students choose a favorite author to research . They will find interesting biographical information  about the author. "Did you know?" can be the heading and the information can be listed in bullets or around  appropriate images or clip art or the authors photo. This poster will also have a list of titles  written by the author. 
       This will provide students with good suggestions for excellent  reads. The posters can be displayed in the library, in the hallways and in classrooms. After having several done, the posters can be swapped out for different ones  to provide variety, interest and surprise.