Day 9 - PosterMyWall and Basketball fiction

Thursday was filled with lots of planning and working with students.  Cathy gave me more ideas for visual, creative student projects. PosterMyWall is a site that allows students to create collage posters that can be downloaded for free.  This can be used to combine text and images to represent a work of fiction.  This requires students to analyze and synthesize and work those higher order thinking skills.
Not your average book report!

In her capacity as a Tech Trainer for the district, Melanie is teaching a course on Google Docs.  The teaching role of the teacher librarian is not limited to instructing students.  TLs can and should be up to date on technology initiatives as we'll as curriculum content in order to provide professional development to school colleagues.

The Pinterest Nursery & Layette project continued and I enjoyed seeing the varied baby related gear the students pinned.  I helped a student find some basketball fiction - new category for me!  I made a note to read some YA sports fiction as well as to become more familiar with authors/titles popular with boys/young men.

Next week I take the PRAXIS II - Library Media Specialist area.  This is one of my last steps in becoming a certified School Library Media Specialist!

Day 8 - Pinterest and Planning

Today the focus was on a class project using Pinterest, planning for the Dystopian fiction unit, and completing a display.  As always, I came away with great, practical tips from Melanie and Cathy on school library program administration and management.

On Monday, Melanie and Erika has worked with a Child Development class as they began a Pinterest project.  The students had to set up Pinterest accounts using their student Gmails, follow their teacher, and then be invited to "pin" to shared Nursery and Layette boards.  This process came with some obstacles, but once accounts and passwords were created, things ran more smoothly.  This was a reminder to me to always plan ahead when using a Web 2.0 tool for student projects.

During 4th block I met with Ms. Shepard to plan activities and technology products related to the Dystopian fiction unit.While I had initially thought of student created book trailers, we decided that Destiny Quest book reviews would be a better fit for this class.  Students will also create a visual/text digital product to represent their understanding of the novels or a specific characters.  I am excited about working with this class and glad that I have read 3 of the 5 books that the various groups read.

I completed my display for the graphic novel section.  I made a poster for one of the columns and faced out titles across the top of the shelves.  It was gratifying to see some students stop and pick up a graphic novel or two. However, my sign making skills have a ways to go - I am trying to emulate Cathy's design whiz/font snob style and make some fresh, eye-catching signage.  I plan to add pictures of graphic novel covers around the poster to add more interest.

Day 7 - New Books and BYOB Book Club

Two exciting events occurred on Thursday and I was lucky enough to take part in both. 

DHS Media Center received a large order of new books and I got to help with processing.  Erika showed me how to use Tattle Tape, a tiny strip placed in each book for security purposes. ( Or loss prevention as I knew it in my retail days.)  We also stamped and put extra barcodes in each book. I love new books and getting to look through a large order of new books was a huge treat!

 

Lunchtime brought the much anticipated BYOB (Bring Your Own Book) Book Club.  There were three sessions to match the three lunch periods.  Almost all the students that signed up showed up and several participants mentioned that the turn-out was much bigger than in previous years.  Students discussed books of their choice.  At the next meeting each lunch period will discuss one of three books: Legend, The Fault in Our Stars, or Divergent.  Luckily for me, I have read all three of the books.   I may have to read Divergent again as I read it when it first came out in the summer of 2011 and I want to be prepared when  Allegiant comes out. 

 

Plans are in the works to collaborate with teachers, create shelf graphics for the graphic novel section, and soak up as much as I can from the Dorman's Dynamic Duo (Melanie Dillard and Cathy Nelson)!

Day 6 - Research and Paperwork

Cathy let me know in advance that we would be working with an English class during 1st block.  The students are doing a poetry project and creating a poetry anthology.  On Monday Cathy presented information on useful literature databases so the class came into the media center ready to research.
One student was having trouble searching for poems so I suggested she search through some poetry anthologies as well as the collected works of individual poets.  A few other students used the 811s as well.  Sometimes a physical book is easier to search than the world wide web.  One student wrote an original poem to include in her anthology and she asked me to read it over and make editorial suggestions.  Her poem was very personal and well-written and I was once again amazed at the abilities and creativity of high school students.



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I gathered some resources for a special education teacher doing a unit on personal finance with his students.  A good amount of the day was devoted to processing reports of outstanding library fines and overdue materials.  Melanie walked me through the steps to run overdue reports in Destiny.  With over 2,600 students, there are a good number of overdue notices.  This served as a good lesson for me in library management when working with a large student population.  Everything takes just a little bit longer!

Overall it was a productive day and I came away with several more projects to work on over the coming weeks.  Never a dull moment in the DHS Media Center.

Teacher's Day & Thank You

At my home school, we have a guest teacher from China.  A few weeks ago he sent all the staff an email thanking us for all we do and letting us know that in China September 10th is National Teacher's Day. According to Mr. Zhao, "Usually, all the teachers have just half of a day teaching, and half of the day off today. Students like to give small presents and flowers to their teachers to express their thanks and gratitude."

Though we don't celebrate this day in the United States, it did remind me that I wanted to thank certain teachers at Dorman High School.
Thank you to:

• Mr. Smutzer, Mrs. Dillard, and Mrs. Pearson-Goode (Mrs. P-G) for allowing me to observe their classes.
• Ms. Mullman and Ms. Shepard for inviting me to present Dystopian fiction booktalks.  
• Mrs. Adkins and her class for the opportunity to share research resources.

I am only a few weeks into my internship and have had great opportunities already.  I look forward to many more collaborative projects and positive student and class interactions.

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.