Literary Cafe: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

After seeing this Nerdy Book Club post I knew I wanted to have a book cafe of my own. I asked my 6th grade ELA teachers if they would be interested and they said yes. Their first class novel is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor. Some of the issues in the book include the Great Depression, school segregation, separate but equal, boycotts, and sharecropping. So I took those issues and tried to think of activities that would help prepare the students to read and understand the novel. The four stations that we agreed on were:
1) Read short articles about boycotts (both in the past and more recent) and create a Tagxedo using important words from the articles. I found articles on Tween Tribune and in our state databases. You can see in the picture below that this student read about Claudette Colvin and created a bus shaped Tagxedo using words from the article.

2) Preview books about segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, find pictures about events and people from the time period and create a photo collage using Picmonkey.com. Students found the site easy to use and were able to explore many images from this time period.

3) Complete a sharecropping math worksheet and writing activity. I found this activity online and used it as a model. Few students were able to earn money at the end of the activity, which illustrated the vicious cycle of sharecropping. The reflection questions on the back helped students put themselves in the sharecroppers' shoes.

4) Watch a Discovery Education United Streaming video featuring interviews of those that grew up in a segregated South and those from sharecropping families. While watching the movie they enjoyed mini cornbread muffins (a food mentioned in the book).

The students were able to create several nice products, both collages and word clouds. Their reflections were thoughtful and reactions to the video were empathetic. I believe this was an excellent way to prepare them for reading the book. I look forward to hearing from the teachers about how the students are able to connect these activities to the novel when they begin reading this week. 

Have you ever had a book/literary cafe? I would love to hear your ideas.

Exploring the Role of Literature in Common Core Standards

These are the presentation slides for the Simple K12 webinar Kristen Hearne and I presented this week. You can view the full archived video and the other videos from the Common Core day of learning by becoming a full member of the Simple K12 community.

Exploring the role of literature in common core from Palmetto Middle School

A Day of Learning: Common Core

Preparing for the Common Core standards has become the main priority in my school and district and probably yours too. I was able to bring home several ideas from the NC conference and we've been sharing what we're doing through the TL Virtual Cafe, district training and conference presentations. Now I can add another webinar to that list.
 Kristen Hearne and I will be presenting a webinar on the Simple K12's Day of Learning this Thursday, October 18th. We are presenting "Exploring the Role of Literature in Common Core Standards". All of the webinars are free. You can see the full list for that day here.
We would love to see you there and hope that you'll check out the full list and help yourself prepare as the standards are implemented in your state.

Infographics Update

We have been steadily working on infographics with my 7th graders. They are amazing me with their creativity and talent. Several students are finished so I wanted to share more of their work. You can see examples on my Flickr photostream here and I've embedded a slideshow of the set below.


This project has been an excellent way to teach citation (and you can see from some of the examples we still have work to do), Creative Commons images, design elements, and research skills. Many students had so many citations that it was on a separate slide. When I printed them on the poster maker I combined the slides, but I didn't include them in the Flickr set.
At the end of this month several students from this class will be presenting to teachers from all over our district about the project. A few teachers have asked me about sharing the details of the project. The classroom teacher and I spoke about it and we wanted to include the students. Many of the students are excited about the project and they are busy planning how they want to lead the session. I will give an update after the presentation. Please enjoy looking at their work and feel free to contact me if I can be of help if you want to give this a try.

Sharing and Learning

This month has been a busy one for presentations. We kicked off the month with our TL Virtual Cafe webinar, Your Common Core Secret Weapon. Monique, Kristen and I had a great time with that presentation. We were honored to be invited.
Then days later Monique and I hit the road to attend and present at the North Carolina School Library Media Association conference. The conference theme was the Common Core standards so we were excited to present and also learn from our neighboring librarians. We presented "Keeping Lit @ the Core" together and I presented "Learn to Love Nonfiction". We had a wonderful time, learned so many things we want to try at home, saw old friends and met lots of new ones.
A few highlights for me were:
1. Seeing my friends Jennifer Northrup and April Dawkins, conference organizer extraordinaire.
2. Meeting two of my heroes face to face, Buffy Hamilton and Jennifer LaGarde. And we were color coordinated:)

3. Leaving inspired by ideas shared at the conference like Jennifer L.'s gaming session with her math teacher Ryan Redd, Jennifer N.'s collaboration advice, a lesson on weeding with students from Heather S., showing instructional impact from two USC professors and many more. Conference handouts and presentations are shared online here.

4. Of course, it is always great to spend time with my PLN face to face. My partner in crime, Monique German, and our SC friends Fran Bullington, Cathy Jo Nelson, Heather Loy, Susan Meyer as well as meeting new NC friends Jennifer Abel, Tavia Clark, Deanna Harris, Paige Ysteboe and more that I probably follow on Twitter, but just didn't get to talk to. 

Monique and I presented "Keeping Lit @ the Core". We thought this would be a timely concept because so many teachers and librarians are worried that the emphasis on nonfiction in the standards could be taken to the extreme, leaving recreational reading out in the cold. We shared the fiction/nonfiction breakdowns from the standards, the part of the standards that mention student selected reading, expert opinions on the value of recreational reading and strategies for continuing to market and promote fiction to our students and teachers. Here is my Pinterest board of middle grade books that fit the CC evaluation guidelines and my board on CC resources.

Keeping Lit at the Core from bibliogerman

Immediately following this session I presented "Learn to Love Nonfiction". I thought it was funny that I presented one hour about how much I love fiction and then one hour about how much I love nonfiction. I do enjoy purchasing and promoting nonfiction to my students so this was a fun session for me. I shared strategies for preparing your collection for the Common Core standards, the importance of weeding, ideas for promoting nonfiction, why we should highlight nonfiction and suggested titles to build up your high interest nonfiction collection. I also spent a fair amount of time talking about how and why I ditched Dewey. The rabble rouser in me loves to talk about this and see the audience reaction. It is a mix of horror and intrigue. It never gets old. You can see my Scoop.it on the Dewey Free library here. 

Learn to love nonfiction from Palmetto Middle School

You can see the list of titles I shared on this Goodreads list. Feel free to download the slides and use as signs in your library. If you find either of these sessions helpful I would love to hear about it.

Thanks to all of the NC librarians for a wonderful conference, hospitality, sharing and networking. I had a great time. 

Show Me Your Data: Infographics with 7th Graders

Last week I started working with two classes of 7th graders on creating infographics. This is a joint project with one of our related arts teachers that has daily access to the computer lab. I'm working on my National Board application this year and I've been trying to decide what student work I wanted to submit. Most of my student work comes from research projects, but I couldn't use those because the big research projects are done in the Spring when the application is due. So I had to think of other ideas. This teacher came to mind because we spoke before the start of school about increasing the rigor of one of her newsletter assignments. I've wanted to try infographics with our students for a while so this seemed like a perfect fit. All these factors came together with this project.
Only a few students are finished, but they are creating such wonderful products that I wanted to share the project with others. Students have already started newsletters on a topic of their choice. The related arts teacher helped them pinpoint a topic and begin gathering information. I came in and led the infographic portion which will be one page of their newsletter.
I started by explaining the concept of infographics and the steps they will follow to create their own. You can find my presentation, student research worksheet, rubric, templates and citation guide here. Feel free to use. I've cited my sources at the end of the Power Point if you want more information. My most invaluable resource was Kathy Schrock's page. After going through the steps with them we gave them time to explore all types of infographics online. This helped them find inspiration for creating their own.
The following day I came in and talked more about citation and showed them how to use Son of Citation Machine. They were mad that I had not shown them this last year, but I explained that the teachers' asked me not to because they wanted them to learn the old fashioned way first. I hope they will continue to use this site in the future. After a few practice citations we let them begin finding images and data that they could use for their infographics.
The third day we began creating the infographic in Power Point. That's right, Power Point. This is what I use to create library posters and even an infographic showing the steps of this project. I've looked at other infographic creators online and haven't found one that I really like yet. After showing them a few tricks like sending images to the front or back, setting a transparent color, changing orientation, and importing an Excel graph they were off. They are creating amazing products and seem to be having so much fun with this project.
Here is an example of one of the infographics. I'm so proud of these students and can't wait to share their creations with our administrators.

Common Core: Love it or Hate It?

Whether you love the Common Core standards or hate them, this is an issue in which librarians need to be active, vocal participants. Thanks to Gwyneth Jones, my colleagues, Kristen Hearne & Monique German, and I were interviewed for an Edweek article. Kristen was our spokesperson and Monique was our lovely model. Overall I believe the journalist did a good job explaining how librarians play a role in the new standards. I do have one issue, the title.
Common Core Thrusts Librarians Into Leadership Role

The leadership role we play in our district isn't a result of the standards. We simply used the new standards to highlight skills we already had. In fact, I will go so far as to say that if is wasn't for my bold, sometimes annoying habit of sticking my nose into everything we might have been left completely out of the implementation of the standards. When I look at the standards it screams librarian to me, but that isn't so obvious to others. Actually this is why we had the idea of calling ourselves a "Common Core Secret Weapon". Librarians are not the obvious go-to person, but we should be. The standards didn't inspire our administrators to think of us. We were left out of the initial preparations.  Our district administrators started scheduling Common Core training at the end of last year. I found out about the training from emails sent to the English teachers. Was I invited? No! Did I sit back and pout about how nobody ever thinks about librarians? No! I invited myself. I asked my school principal if I could attend with our teachers and he agreed. During the training I frequently raised my hand to share how librarians could fit into the implementation of the standards. Looking for novels that fit the new criteria? We can help with that. Looking for interdisciplinary projects? We can help with that. Looking for ways to integrate nonfiction? We can help with that. You get the idea. Even more important, the administrators leading the training got the idea. After the meeting ended she asked if I thought we should have a special meeting with the librarians to talk about the new standards. Yes, please!!

The librarian meeting was scheduled with our Director of Elementary Education who organized the Common Core training. We all had an opportunity to share our concerns, ask questions, and suggest ways we could help with the new standards. During the meeting our Superintendent and Associate Superintendent came in to see how the training was going for the day. He was surprised. He thought the only training that day was for the special education teachers. He asked why we were meeting? Surely not about Common Core. In fact, yes. So we had a few minutes to tell him how we fit in. Is this a poor reflection on him? No, we all love and respect him. He is a wonderful superintendent that has done his best to protect librarians and our budgets during these tough financial times. I tell this story to show you that we are a small part of a big education system. Classroom teachers are the majority and administrators have to focus on them most of the time. And rightfully so. That means we have to work extra hard to make sure we are not forgotten and that we share our contributions and impact. If that means you crash a meeting now and then, by all means, do it!
We have come a long way since that first meeting and we are looking forward to sharing what we have done at the next TL Virtual Cafe webinar.

If you read the Edweek article you may have seen the comments from Stephen Krashen. You can see them here as well. I highly respect him and can't think of a single time when I've disagreed with his articles, comments or speeches. The same applies in this case. I agree with his concerns over too much testing and that poverty is the real enemy of education, not teachers, old standards, or teacher evaluation. In fact I've written about poverty and the library before. The way I see it we have a few choices about what we do next. We can sit back, change nothing and feel sorry for ourselves that the standards have been forced upon us. Or we can take this opportunity to highlight libraries and librarian contributions. If you agree with Krashen's comments about the standards, take action.
Here are a few ways you can get involved in education and library policy.

1. Sign up to receive the library text alerts so you can email, tweet, call and write your legislators when library legislation is under consideration. 
2. Get involved with education organizations that speak on your behalf. Just joining an organization sends some funds to national advocacy efforts.
3. Does your state library organization have an advocacy or legislative committee? If so, join. I'm on both and was the legislative committee chair last year. 
4. Does your state send a representative to Library Legislative Day? Find out. Volunteer to go if no one else is representing your state. I've been the last two years and it is a wonderful experience.
5. Get involved in state initiatives like our SCASL Snapshot Day. Nothing like that in your state? Start one.
6. Vote! It boggles my mind that there are teachers who chose not to vote. These are the people that determine your salary and the policies that govern you. Do you need more reasons to vote?

You are probably like me, no one asked if you wanted the Common Core standards. Like most education policies it was decided for us. Now it is up to us to make the most of it. Love them or hate them, we have to act. You can continue to voice your issues with the standards and still use them as an impetus to do good in your own school. If they create some new kind of standards in a few years, you better believe I'll be searching for ways librarians fit in and advertising it to the administrators. We have two jobs, voice opinions about education policy and do the best with what we have right now.

Hope to see you at the webinar where you can hear about what we've done and share your own ideas.