Tales from a Loud Librarian

Book Buddies: 7th graders work with the 1st graders at King Charter School We had a new to us middle school ELA teacher at our school this year. She has around 12 years under her belt with gifted 6th graders in New Jersey. PFTSTA was so lucky to get her. Every time that we talked about lessons and activities, I was amazed at her ability to think everything through ahead of time. She is very detailed oriented, and it showed in her lessons. She took our 7th grade Ninth Ward unit and turned it on its ear . Her students were required to create a product using Google Slides that would showcase all that they had learned about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina including the rebuilding efforts. They were required to conduct an interview with a family member who was effected by the hurricane and we took them on a field trip to view the rebuilding efforts with our own eyes and complete some service learning when we visited an elementary school in the Ninth Ward . Some of the products we...

 I have blogged about every field trip  down to the 9th Ward in New Orleans that I have made with the seventh graders. The very first one  in 2011 was the best field trip that I have every been part of as a teacher, and over my many, many years of teaching, I have been on lots of field trips. This year, we made some changes to both the unit that is taught at school and to the trip itself.  This unit with the trip is very intense because there are so many pieces and parts, and there are several teachers handling the various responsibilities so that it all gets done on time, but this also is tricky making sure that all the loose ends are tied up by the time we board the buses. Musicians' Village We have a 7th grade ELA teacher on staff who is not only new to the school but also new to New Orleans. She was more than willing to be part of this project, but she had some ideas of how the unit could be better incorporated into her ELA program. First, she wanted ...

I know that my students need help in assessing the validity of information that they find on the web. So I approached one of the English I teachers to see if she would like a lesson on how to discern the difference between fake and real news. Her students were starting Animal Farm by George Orwell. We thought this would be the perfect place to insert my lesson as propaganda plays a key role in the story as well as the Squealer's ability to adjust the facts to fit his own logic to get the animals to do his bidding.  Designed using results from Media Bias/Fact Check So I created a slide show that would direct students to various tasks using web tools that would allow them to look at websites and news feeds in a new way. I like to start a lesson with something to grab students attention. I have used giphs or memes, but for this lesson I found a fabulous video that you will find linked on the second slide. The author of Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz , put together a se...

A few months ago I found a website where students could post a letter expressing their opinions about how the next president should deal with issues plaguing American society. I shared the link with our English and Social Studies departments. I regularly send out links and websites of interest to my teachers, and sometimes I get a response sometimes not. In this case one of our middle school teachers of English language arts new to our school said that she wanted me to work with her on a lesson around the Letters to the President 2.0 . We batted around some ideas back and forth through email--face to face collaboration is nice but not always possible. She talked with her classes about the issues and the election on many occasions as preparation and asked her students to watch the debates and comment on them for extra credit. Planning and executing the lesson: We finally decided that students would weigh in on three different issues that we would select for them including...

Taken at the Flood Wall in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans, by Emily Gibbons, 7th grade PFTSTA Last week, the seventh graders with their English teacher, Ms. Ritter, the librarian, that's me, their math teacher, Ms. Klusendorf and another ELA teacher, Ms. Bordelon traveled 30 minutes from school to visit the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. This is our fourth annual trip to walk in the footsteps of the characters in Jewell Parker Rhodes' book, Ninth Ward . After the first reading of this book, we realized that the students really had no clue about the Ninth Ward, and this group was only about three years old the year that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, so a visit gives them a first hand look at the devastation and reconstruction wrought by the hurricane. Before embarking on the field trip, the students are asked to complete a pathfinder that I created. I made a Livebinder with video, audio, and text describing and explaining all the stops that we will be making on the field tri...

That's me, Ms. Kahn, looking at a student's work on Easybib Collaborating with the teachers in my building is one of my priorities. It is a waste of time to teach skills in isolation because in most cases what you are trying to teach just won't stick. By planning lessons with my teachers to meet the specific needs of their teaching and classrooms means that the students will immediately use what I am sharing with them. It also means that the students will be assessed on what I am teaching because the teachers require an end product.  Another type of collaboration that I do is help teachers follow through with the activities which I introduced in the library and is what I call, the second person in the room. This means I serve as an extra pair of hands, eyes, and mouth. I have been the second person during skype visits when the teacher felt uncomfortable with the technology or they wanted help to make sure the conversation with the expert on skype went smoothly. ...

View image | gettyimages.com Tomorrow is my first collaborative lesson with one of our new English teachers. This semester he began teaching all of the English II students, as our school is on a block schedule and classes are held for 90 minutes a day for only one semester. I have worked with these students in science, but in English I hold them to a higher standard in following correct citation format for both works cited and in-text citations. Also, there are many of these students who are new to our school and haven't heard my spiel on research and MLA very often. I wanted to be well prepared, and I wanted to set them up not to fail. In order to do that, I created a tool that I could use to teach a lesson, but also, that they could refer to as they research, take notes, and write. Below is the presentation that I created with links to useful resources on creating a persuasive essay, links to resources to use for research, and detailed explanations of ways to use...