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Standard 1:  Use of Information & Ideas

      Encouraging a love of reading and a curious outlook about life, as well as supporting a desire to seek out information, are skills that can be fostered by the Library Media Specialist.  Nurturing these skills can help students develop a life long interest in learning.  Strategies such as storytelling, booktalks and author’s guides can captivate students and bring books to life. 

   
Effectively accessing valid and reliable sources of information, such as databases and pathfinders demonstrate cogent means of locating data.  In addition the Library Media Specialist ensures that a wide range of resources and tools are available for all as part of their offered service.  The sample assignments found in this section support the knowledge and skills promoted in Standard 1.
 

 Artifacts
  Children’s Literature Poetry Unit
   The final project for the Library and Materials for School Age Children required that we design a 3-day literature-based lesson that could be used in a school library media center.  The project I developed is intended for students in a 6th grade Language Arts class and teaches them about similes and metaphors using a poetry unit. The theme of the poetry unit was ‘Things That Scare Us’. 

Teen Civil Rights Project
   with Power Point presentation


     
I collaborated with a 10th grade History teacher on a lesson plan where the students were required to complete a research project exploring the Civil Rights Movement.  The goal was for the students to select a particular person or topic from an established list and learn and write in a blog about the impact of that person/event on the Civil Rights Movement. 

  
  Storytelling Script

  
There are numerous ways to engage students in reading, a lot that has to do with grabbing the attention of the children and engaging them in the story so that they care about the characters and want to know what is going to happen next.   One strategy for promoting reading for elementary level students is to tell them a story using props.  This could be presented to the students during their visit to the Library.  The story I selected for this Individual Storyteller assignment in my Library and Materials for School Age Children was Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester.


  Booktalks

    
Booktalks can be used more effectively for older students.  Booktalks are quick and catchy, a means of telling the students enough about a book that their interest is piqued such that they would want to check the book out to read.  The sheer number of available books is overwhelming for students to dig through so the booktalks provide a sense of several available books simplifying the selection process.  Often booktalks are done in the Language Arts or English class, taking up just a few minutes of time.  My selection for the booktalk assignment for the Library and Materials for Young Adults included:  Peak by Roland Smith, I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak and What Happened to Cass McBride?  by Gail Giles.


Database Evaluation

    
In our Reference Sources and Services Class we accessed several databases in order to explore a particular topic.  My topic focused on eating disorders in teens.  Through this assignment I was able to evaluate the databases and gain a solid sense of their usefulness and the benefits of this valuable resource for teens.  

Visual Critique

     I selected two quite striking books as part of my visual design critique, The Wall:Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sis, and Spiders by Nic Bishop.  The assignment, from the Selection and Utilization of Educational Media course, required us to use a Caldecott winner as one of our samples, and we were to identify the design elements and principles that we noticed and critique the visual from a visual literacy standpoint. This project supported the development of a 'good eye' for the visual elements that add appeal, pattern and arrangement to a design.


Textbooks vs. Portable Laptops

      Exploring and discussing challenging issues that arise with the use of technology in education is explored in the Researching Current Issues class.  One of the scenarios presented considered whether it would be worthwhile to move from using textbooks to using netbook computers in the schools.  This paper reviews and weighs out the factors involved and the value and feasibility of doing so. The scenarios in this class provided thoughtful and stimulating discussions on issues that we could potentially encounter.