Librarians Role in Common Core

If your state is adopting Common Core then you may be hearing conversations or even beginning training on these standards. Our district recently started training by grade and subject. Where did that leave librarians? Well, I invited myself to one of the ELA training sessions and I'm so glad that I did. I knew from reading about Common Core that this was a good opportunity for librarians to build collaborations and play a role in training our content area teachers on literacy.

If you are unfamiliar with the standards I urge you to visit the site. I believe you will find that in regards to literacy skills these standards are closely aligned with our AASL standards. Just like with all standards there are pros and cons. I do appreciate the literacy components in science and social studies as well as the variety of texts pushed including works from other cultures and diversity in genres. I am a little nervous that recreational reading will take a back seat to the focus on informational text.

Regardless of our personal opinions of the standards we need to be knowledgeable and seek out ways to assist our students, teachers and administrators as we make the change. In an effort to be proactive I emailed our district librarian ally and asked her if we could be included in the training. She was happy to schedule time for us to meet. I invited all 15 librarians and 2/3rds were willing and able to attend. I am fortunate enough to have Jennifer LaGarde in my reader and read this post about her recent meeting with her district. I urge you to read her post and look at her presentation. There are lots of great ideas there.

• At our meeting we were able to share our ideas about how we can assist in training our teachers and lend our expertise in literacy. First on our agenda is sessions we can lead for spring professional development and our annual summer institute training after school ends. Each area (K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) is creating a presentation to share with teachers that highlights new and noteworthy books, fiction and nonfiction. Our hope is that we can replace some of our traditional choices for novel studies with more modern titles. A local book vendor will be in attendance so that teachers can purchase the titles if they are interested in reading them over the summer or adding to their classroom libraries. There are other sessions in the works that I will share in another post are not related to Common Core.
• Another way we hope to assist in this shift is seeking out collaborations with content area teachers. Now that many are panicked about the literacy components it is a good time to strike.
• Many of our teachers will be looking for nonfiction articles and texts for cold reads so I plan to find resources for them. One excellent example is this project from the NY Times.
• Ensure that our nonfiction books are up to date and easy to search and browse. Don't forget nonfiction when we create book displays, share booktalks, choose books for book clubs or author visits. Pair fiction books with nonfiction books. My middle school buds, Monique German and Kristen Hearne, and I are working on a list for our SC Junior Book Award nominees for next year. Our list includes a nonfiction pairing, website of interest, and book trailers. I shared the document on our state listserv so that anyone can contribute so hopefully this will be a resource for all of us.
• I created a nonfiction text features poster that I'll share on Flickr. I plan to use our poster maker and create a large print copy of this for our science and social studies teachers.
• Collect and share Common Core resources with each other. I've started a Pinterest board just for this. It includes websites, link to the Common Core app and lots more resources.

Another idea I copied from Jennifer LaGarde is updating books with QR Codes. I plan to do this project with 7th grade after our state testing this year. I created a mock up to take to the meeting and luckily our superintendent came in to check on us and saw the book. He thought it was very creative and expressed concern over the age of our books. He said he would try to find funding so that we could update our collections. Score!

Common Core has been causing a stir on our listserv the last few days. Some librarians voiced their disappointment over the outdated recommended book lists shared at state standards training. I created another Google Doc so that we could all create a list by grade (tabs at bottom). Our collective brain should be able to create a list that fits our student and teacher needs. Feel free to add to and use if you need this.

What are you doing to prepare for Common Core? I hope you'll take this opportunity to show off your skills as librarians.

2012 Fascination Awards

I received an email that notified me of a nomination for the 2012 Fascination Awards in the library category. The nomination was for the post Mr. Dewey, I Bid You Adieu. I'm honored to receive this recognition. Blog posts are nominated for inspiring the audience and creating conversation. That blog post has received the most traffic and comments (positive and negative). If you would like to vote click the image below. Voting begins on February 27th.

Promoting State Book Awards

The South Carolina Association of School Librarians sponsors a book award program. The program consists of Children's Books, Picture Books, Junior Books and Young Adult Book categories. While we often have titles on the Children's and YA book list in our collection we focus on the Junior Books at the middle school level.

The past two years we have asked our county voting commission to bring voting booths in for our students to cast the vote for their favorite. The students really enjoy voting this way and we even got a little media attention. They are always happy to come because it promotes their mission as well as making a fun event for our students.

Our book award committees put together an activity guide and brochure each year that is shared with SCASL members only (a perk of membership). Last year they created booktalks for each title. I put them on our school iPods and used with my students. I visited our feeder schools and allowed the 5th graders to listen to the booktalks and we talked about the titles and our book club. They were really excited about library events and even though it was a year ago those kids still talk about that visit. One of our members created a Prezi of the titles, another created a Powerpoint that included the book covers and a short description of the books, I created a Glog of the titles including the booktalks, and Kristen Hearne and I created QR codes to be placed on each book that led to the author site or another related page.

This year I hope to duplicate these activities, but in addition Kristen Hearne, Monique German and I are working on two new projects. One project is to pair each book with a nonfiction title, website and book trailer if available. We shared the link to the Google Doc on our listserv in the hopes that others will contribute to the list. The second project is a total rip off from Cathy Jo Nelson. We are using Wordle and Powerpoint to create slides for each title that we can advertise on our digital frames or on a bulletin board.

I created the image above and a series of collages that I use to put into my picture frame mousepads (just $1.50). Feel free to snag those from Flickr and use as you wish. I'm going to really miss Picnik.

What types of activities or promotions do you use for your state book awards? I would love to add to my list.

Virtual Library Tour

I love visiting schools and especially poking my nose into the library to look around and ask questions. I get the opportunity to do this occasionally as part of the National Forum's Schools to Watch program, but not nearly enough. There are several libraries that I really wish I could drop by and visit in person like the libraries run by Joyce Valenza, Gwyneth Jones, Jennifer LaGarde and Tiffany Whitehead. Even though they are not far away there are South Carolina libraries I haven't been able to visit yet. Watch out Fran, Heather and Cathy. I hope to come soon.

So I had a thought that I could create a short video virtual tour to share. I wanted to show you around my library and talk about the programs I am most proud of. Not only could this connect librarians, but this can serve as an excellent advocacy tool. Students, teachers, principals, parents and legislators can see what a 21st century library program looks like.

This was my first time using iMovie and I realized I say "fun" and "popular" too much. I am going to continue to work on and add to my video, however I wanted to put something together to get the ball rolling. I know that the super creative members of my PLN can blow my video out of the water. I hope that you will consider creating one of your own and sharing. I can't wait to tour your library. I tagged the video with virtuallibrarytour and if you do the same we can search easily or you can share your link in the comments. Hope to "see" you and your library soon.

I'm a Nerd. It's Official

It's official. I'm a big geek and now that I am part of the Geek Tribe, I can say that I'm a card carrying member. I'm a nerd too and now I can say that with even more confidence because I'm part of the Nerdy Book Club. If you haven't heard of the Nerdy Book Club, what are you waiting for? You can join too. Any group that includes the inspiring Donalyn Miller is a group that I want to be in. She is going to be one of the speakers at our state library organization, SCASL, conference and I'm really excited to see her in person.

One fun thing about the Nerdy Book Club is that you can be a guest blogger. Fill out this form if you are interested. My contribution about Passive Aggressive Book Promotions will be showing up on March 2nd. I hope you'll check it out.

Meet Me On Facebook

A few months ago I was invited to speak at the Follett New Leaf in Learning Conference. I was honored. The best part is that they asked me to present with my library BFF, the one and only Mighty Little Librarian, Tiffany Whitehead. To say that I am looking forward to meeting her face to face is an understatement. I know we're going to have so much fun presenting and sharing ideas and laughs.

We have two sessions ready that I am really excited about.

Be a Next Gen Librarian, Today!: We will discuss the thirteen virtues of a next generation librarian from this excellent article. I created a topic on Scoop.it of our resources if you would like to take a look.

The Embedded Librarian: Connecting and Collaborating. We have lots of tips and strategies for taking library instruction outside the walls of the library.

One of the events leading up to the conference is a Facebook chat about the future of libraries. I invite all of you to come and share your concerns and thoughts on our ever-changing profession.

Here's all the details about the chat:

9:30 am EST, Wed. February 15, 2012- Next Generation Libraries

I will be dishing on this topic at the conference in March. Get answers to your questions on the New Leaf in Learning Facebook Page.

There are some serious names presenting at the conference including Shannon Miller and Jon Schumacher, Eric Sheninger, David Loertscher and more. I look forward to spending time with so many passionate librarians.

Hope to see you on Facebook or in Illinois in March!

Library Photo a Day

Most of you have heard of the Photo a Day projects and some of you may even be participating in one. The idea behind Photo a Day is to take one picture each day for a year to document your activities, travels, family and every day blessings. My amazing colleague, Kristen Hearne, suggested that we apply this idea to our library. I thought this was a wonderful idea and an easy advocacy tool. She created a group in Flickr and invited each of the 14 media specialists in our district to the group.

I love her description of the group on Flickr:

This is a place for the Anderson One media specialists to post a photo that you take each day of something that is happening in your media center. It can be ordinary or extraordinary! We just want to chronicle the year in our classrooms!

Now we can take a quick photo each day and share with the group. I'm using my iPhone because it is just so darn easy. The photos will provide us with images that we can put into a Photostory or Animoto video and share with our administration and school board.

Try this with your own library or with all of the libraries in your district.

Here are my first three photos of the year including one taken by a student so I could be in it.