Day 19 - Literary Research

Today I worked with Ms. Davis' 12th grade English classes (hard at work in the photos to the left and right). The students are writing an essay about symbolism in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". First I introduced appropriate database resources for their literary research and how to access them. Then I provided research and formatting advice. As Ms. Davis observed, these students are preparing for college and should be able to work independently.  Overall, most of the students did use Discus, Gale or Ebsco Host literature databases for their research. The essays are due tomorrow; as a fellow student, I wish them luck tonight!

 

 
I enjoyed reflecting with Melanie and Cathy about how they evaluate and design action plans for their program. Cathy also shared details about her American Association of School Librarians conference adventures last week. Check out her blog to learn more.

The best part of my day was talking and working with DHS students. I have come to know some of them and will miss their insights and great reading suggestions.  One of the student library helpers is reading #4 in Michael Grant's Gone series, Plague, and agreed with me that this series is addictive.  As I was leaving I got to meet Dorman principal, Ken Kiser, and he praised Melanie and Cathy for the great job they do.

Day 5 - Student Interactions Aplenty

Day five was filled with lots of student interaction.  I helped two teacher cadets brainstorm on an interactive element to go with a literary unit.  The girls have written a story and are making it into a Big Book. Later this semester they will get to work with K-2nd grade students and actually use their story unit.  The students at Dorman have so many opportunities to explore their career interests - a big change from when I was in high school!

Every semester the library has a rotation of student helpers.  I got to help train some new helpers which helped me get a refresher course on all the sections.  DHS has such a big library (24,000 materials!) that I am still finding new sections after 3 weeks.

A government/econ class was making a group video project about college tuition and they recruited me to be interviewed.  I was impressed with their professionalism and got to express my humble opinion that, yes, college tuition is rising too rapidly.

During 4th block, Mrs. P-G's government class worked on a project about the Bill of Rights.  We suggested that the students use Discus and research databases instead of general internet search engines.

Next week is Banned Book week and the BYOB lunch club.  I look forward to more adventures with Melanie, Cathy, and all the DHS gang!

Thursday - Discus, Google, & Legend

This was a busy day for me at Dorman.  During 1st block, Cathy and I went to Mrs. Adkins' STEM Humanities class for a library orientation (Cathy) and DISCUS/Research presentation (me).  I incorporated many of the ideas Cathy had discussed with me the week before and was grateful for the PowerPoint slides she shared with me.  The focus of the presentation was to introduce the students to the database resources available through the Dorman Media Center as well as Discus.  While I recommended not defaulting to Google automatically, I would like to develop a presentation related to using Google effectively.  Google is a great search engine when you know how to use it efficiently and I want to make sure students can do this. Next presentation idea! :0

To start off I had four students hold up signs (Google, Discus, Library, or Ask a Friend) and stand in a different corner of the room .  Then I asked the rest of the class to go stand next to the sign that best represented their own initial search strategy when conducting research.  Cathy blogged about the class visit and here are the collaged group shots she took of the class in action:

Before Presentation



Notice that Google and Discus changed in size in the After shot (except the one student who switched from Discus to Google - I must not have convinced him!).

After Presentation

During 2nd Block, Melanie and I went to Mrs. Shepard's class to present a Dystopian Fiction book talk.  This class had a slightly different selection of titles than Tuesday's class so I created a new Prezi with trailers and book descriptions.  Melanie came to my rescue when a question was raised about the Marie Lu's book, Legend.   While I did read (and loved!) Legend this summer, I had not prepared a book talk about it and drew a blank.  Melanie serves on the SCASL South Carolina Book Awards committee and reads everything.  She was able to provide the students with a brief plot description and, most importantly, spark their interest in the book.  I hope to become as well versed as Melanie is in young adult fiction, but will have to do a LOT of reading to catch up!

The remainder of the day was filled with readers advisory, students signing up for the BYOB Lunchtime Book Club, completing a resource list for Mrs. Campbell's SAT class, and ideas for future collaboration projects.  Once again, I left Dorman with my head buzzing with ideas and projects and excitement in knowing that this internship is preparing for my future position as a School Library Media Specialist.