3/14/2016

I forgot to mention earlier that among the twenty or so new books that I processed there was one I had recommended to Ms. Gratto. The book is Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older.

All throughout my MLIS program I have been interested in learning more about multicultural children’s literature. Every time I have had the opportunity, I have worked on researching titles with multicultural characters and authors. I had included Older’s Shadowshaper on an Urban Fantasy Recommended Reads list I put together for an LIS 566 Resources for Digital Age Children assignment but I had not had the opportunity to read it. When I first started my DFW at the library I searched for it in the catalog and couldn’t find it. Ms. Gratto had mentioned that one of their collection development goals was to add more multicultural titles to the collection so I recommended Older’s book. Ms. Gratto included Shadowshaper in her latest book order and I not only read it (it was awesome!) but also processed it and added it to the library catalog (which left me with a nice feeling of accomplishment). This week I am going to booktalk this great title and hopefully get some students interested in multicultural literature.

Shadowshaper was included in several Best YA Books of 2015 lists. Including Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2015.

3/1/16

Today I did a full day and I kept busy. I arrived at 8:30am and right away had to go to a classroom to observe Ms. Gratto give a lesson to a 7^th grade class on how to find information for a social sciences assignment. She gave the students a quick review about how indexes work since most of the information they are going to need for the assignment is in their textbook. But she also discussed the different sources available through the library catalog. She had told me she was giving the same lesson to three different 7^th grade groups and because I need more practice teaching, we agreed I would teach one of the lessons. In the end, I only taught half of a lesson because it was a tough group, but I think I did ok at keeping their attention. This was an ESL class, so we played around with one of the databases to show them how they can translate the articles. On e of the students asked me to read out loud in Spanish and we had a bit of fun with that.

In between lessons I finished processing the books, I added spine labels, barcode labels, and I put covers on some of the books (see pics below).

Today was a good and busy day...

Working with indexes

The books have been added to the catalog.

Nos adding labels

New covers

Putting new covers on (this takes some skill!)

2/25/16

Today was a pretty quiet day. When I first arrived Ms. Schell told me that their supervisor, Mary Keeling, was here observing Ms. Gratto’s media literacy class. They thought Ms. Keeling would stay all day, but after the class she gave Ms. Gratto some feedback and then left. Ms. Gratto and Ms. Schell spent some time explaining how Ms. Keeling visits each school library and how she supervises their work throughout the year. This is something I had not given much thought to, how the work of a school librarian is supervised not only by the school’s principal but also by the district’s library supervisor.

It is helpful to have a general idea of how things work, even though I know each school district may have a different approach.

Around mid morning I sat down and observe Ms. Schell give a lecture to 6^th graders about text features in non-fiction books. She gave a quick lecture on text features and the gave out a short form for the students to fill out where they had to list the text features they saw on 5 different non-fiction books. Ms. Schell had already piled non-fiction books on their tables, so they did not have to get up and walk around. The students seemed to enjoy the activity and they did the work quickly.

I also spent some time adding more of the new books that arrived yesterday to the library catalog. This is work I actually enjoy doing, it is very relaxing and it gives me some quiet time to work on my own.

Here is the form Ms. Schell had the students fill out:

2/23/16 & 2/24/16

The last couple days I spent a lot of time in the classroom observing both Ms. Gratto and Ms. Schell as they imparted their media literacy lectures to 8^th graders. We had already discussed this specific media literacy lecture and I knew what they would be teaching, but it is interesting to see how they adjust their lecture based on the class (“know your audience” as Ms. Schell called it). Ms. Gratto, for example, gave a somewhat different lecture when she was with the ESL class. She gave more detailed information, spoke at a slower pace, and went through the first couple exercises together with the class to make sure they understood the activity.

Ms. Schell on the other hand gave her lectures to TAG classes, so she moved more quickly through the content and gave the students more autonomy when working on the exercises. She also had them explain why an option was wrong or right.

I guess I should mention that Ms. Gratto and Ms. Schell prepared their media literacy lectures based on the SOLs (Standards of Learning) and what the students need to know for those tests. They even used released SOL questions for the exercise they have the students do.

After the classes I started working on processing the new books that arrived this week. Ms. Gratto had ordered these books a few weeks ago using some of their book fair funds.

2/16/16

Today I started the day with the usual shelving. Then I spent some time discussing some of the ways Ms. Schell and Ms. Gratto do collection development. This came up because earlier that day they had received a few boxes with sample non-fiction books from one of the publishers they have bought books from before. We talked about how they select books (does it relate to the curriculum? will it get checked out? is it too easy? too hard?) and how they pay for them. A lot of the books included were either too simple (and expensive) or too hard for middle schoolers, but Ms. Schell found a series about the different government agencies that she thought might be good to add to the collection. She explained that usually she takes the books to the teachers and asks them to peruse them and tell her if they would use them.

I also did a little bit of reader's advisory! I was walking around the library doing some shelving when a student asked me if I could help him find a novel about basketball or football. I suggested he do a keyword search in the catalog to see what we had. We found several options, but he kept asking me how long the books were (it seems that he was starting the work on an assignment pretty late and he needed to find a quick read). After spending some time looking through the results list, he picked "The Crossover" by Kwame Alexander.

2/11/16

Today I worked a full day. I have been here since early this morning, which has given me a chance to experience what a full day is like at the library.

When I first got here Ms. Gratto had left me a note asking me to look at the library catalog and note which websites and databases have relevant information on each of the topics for the PE & Health teacher’s substance abuse project with 7^th grade.

I spent most of my morning working on that (the internet is rather slow sometimes and I have been having some access issues).

Today I also observed Ms. Schell and Ms. Gratto give lessons to 6^th grade TAG classes. It was interesting to see how they took the same lesson they were giving yesterday a step further for these students.