Tales from a Loud Librarian

View image | gettyimages.com View image | gettyimages.com As I was getting ready to plan for the teaching of the research process to our 6th grade students, I remembered that I had changed my game plan last year. Since my brain has been aging, it is harder for me to know what I did last week much less how I taught something last year. I did remember that I had written a detailed account of what I did with this lesson on this blog. So I conducted a search to find the post, and you can read about it here . By reading my blog entry from last year, I saw that we had deconstructed the research process to start with the bibliography. The teachers and I decided to get that out of the way first. Before the day of the lesson, I reviewed my slide show that you can see below. I did some editing and took out tasks that I thought weren't necessary and added some slides at the end to be more specific about explaining how to create a word document out of the bibliography...

I was first published in print several years ago, but I haven't had much in the way of bylines since then. Until now. Below is a copy of the table of contents page for the current issue of Library Media Connection. The Gale TEAMS Award that we won in fall 2011 was also sponsored by LMC. The editorial staff asked if Lisa Valence and I would write an article describing the project that won us the award. If you have the current copy of LMC, you can read all about it on page 40. If you can't get a copy, click the link underneath the table of contents below to read a pdf version. One of my colleagues in Jefferson Parish, TerryYoung, has an article on page 14 in this edition, and it is all about STEM resources.  Collaboration is the Key to Successful Research

I like to post weekly, but all I have is a very short note. I saw a small group of 7th graders today. The assignment is a mini-research paper to correlate with their reading of the novel,  Flush  by Carl Hiaasen. I put together a set of 7 task cards for them to use to begin their research for this assignment. They were given specific resources both print and electronic to use to find information on water quality and water pollution. Once they found their sources of information, the students had to create a citation for each source in Easybib . I thought this would be simple for them. All of the students had experience with the databases and using Easybib. It did not go as well as I would have liked. First, the students did not follow the steps on the task cards. Not following directions is often a big problem with students. So I went back to my task cards and at a teacher's suggestion, I divided each task into steps. You can find my task cards here .

When Lisa Valence and I heard that we won the Gale TEAMS Award in September, we thought that we would receive $2500 and that would be it. Who knew this was an honor that would keep on giving and giving, even several months later. Gale Cengage sent us to the American Association of School Librarian's Conference in Minneapolis in October and held a reception there in our honor. We have a year's subscription to Library Media Connection magazine, and we are waiting to receive the cash award along with $500 in Gale products and some Linworth products, too. Library Media Connection asked us to write an article for their magazine describing the collaborative project that we submitted for the award.  The icing on the cake is this marvelous video that Gale had produced about Patrick Taylor Academy and the project that we designed to teach the social studies research paper. The video was shown at the Gale booth in the exhibit hall during the AASL conference (over and over ag...

We have been waiting and asking that the district add the news of the Gale Teams Award to the homepage of the website. Finally, they did. Here is a link to the article on the Jefferson Parish Schools website:  http://www.jppss.k12.la.us/district/news/Blog.aspx?id=2147506012&blogid=2147485652 .

 So much has happened in the last week. I don't know where to start. Attending the AASL conference in Minneapolis was a great experience. I have lots of ideas running through my head. I hope to implement some of them over the next couple of months. I need to make some decisions in my library on how to spend money on electronic books. I have a collection of over 350 reference in electronic format, but I want to start purchasing non-fiction titles that the students would use as supplemental material to their textbooks. During the conference I talked to Rosen Publishing about their ePoint Books and Follett about their Follett Shelf, and of course I can always add to to our existing Gale Virtual Reference Library.  There are some super-star librarians out there who are doing amazing things. Listening to them talk about all that they do means that some of them must never sleep. I got to meet a few of them during the conference, and I was really inspired by the information that the...

Can't wait until tomorrow. I will be heading to the AASL conference to enjoy the wisdom of all the other school librarians whom I will meet. I am also going to receive the Gale TEAMS Award for Middle School. Hope to have lots of pics and video to show you afterwards. This conference is one of the best because it is the only national conference that is geared towards school librarians. The only sessions that really don't interest me are the ones for the elementary level. Years ago those were the only sessions that I attended. Can't wait, and I will be ready for the cold weather.

Gale and Library Media Connection Announce Winners of the 2011 TEAMS Award Click the link above to read all about it. Of course, I want you to read it because I am one of the winners. Lisa Valence, an English teacher, and I wrote the application for the award. We are so excited about it. The press release explains it all.

In May, one of our English teachers asked if I would work on a grant with her. She was looking to fund sets of books to use for teaching her 7th graders. The grant was sponsored by Gale and Library Media Connection. It was not a whole lot of money, but we thought that it was real doable. For the Gale Teams Award we had to highlight a collaborative project that was designed to address a problem or need, explain our goals and strategies and how we met these objectives. During the 2010-11 school year, Lisa Valence and I worked together to help the students write the research paper for the annual social studies fair. We broke down the research process in small bites for the students, and we felt that we had succeeded in achieving our goals. This was the program that we highlighted in the grant. Today we received the following email: (Click on the image to enlarge it)   There were a total of 3 winners in the whole country, and we won the middle school division!!!! Gale is send...