Thanks to all of you who responded. You'll find some great ideas
contributed here for involvement in literacy at your schools!
Best,
Toni
HIGH SCHOOL
My last school was in FL and we were a Florida Reading Initiative high
school- basically it was whole curriculum reading program. Everyone from
gym teachers to science teachers to media specialists were expected to
teach reading. The things that we did in the library were: vocab word wall,
reading out loud to our regular classes (a short story from Chicken Soup,
etc.) and starting a book club. It was a cool program.
***
I'm so proud of my administrators! As a result of our self-study for our
Middle States re-accreditation process, our school formulated goals to
improve literacy. Our administrators formed a literacy committee and named
me, the librarian, chairperson. There is at least one member from each
department on the committee. I just assumed they would appoint me to the
technology committee, because that's where the library fits in the Middle
States process, but they are smarter than that. We are a parochial girls'
9-12 college preparatory school. We have been given all our staff
development time to meet and work on promoting our literacy goals. I'm
happy to provide any other information you want.
****
Kinko's donates a monthly 24x36 full-color "READ" poster (like the ones in
ALA Graphics), featuring one of our students. I take their pictures and
format the poster file; Kinko's does the rest! Students select a few of
their favorite books from our library for the display case, and I type up
their paragraph (describes why reading is important in their life.) This
case is outside the door of the library, which is near the front entrance of
the school, so it is very visible.
***
I just wanted to respond in two ways. First is that here at my high
school, I promote reading through making the library a pleasant place to be
and purchasing high interest material for my students. We are currently
working on developing some kind of "drop everything and read" program, as
well.
Second, however, I'd like to say be careful what you ask for. Although I
understand your desire for librarians to be deeply involved in the
education of students, unfortunately many elementary school librarians are
now being forced to teach reading groups every day during their "free
time", meaning the time they don't have classes scheduled.
Meaning the time they need for collection development and maintenance,
collaboration with teachers, development of programs, lesson-planning, and
other managerial and administrative functions as well. I personally am
"sick" of seeing the role of the librarian undervalued and misunderstood
and seeing professional librarians forced to carry out tasks which are not
appropriate to their positions while necessary functions go undone due to
lack of time.
***
Glad you sent this out! My high school is one of 4 schools in the state of
Virginia to receive a HUGE 3 year grant to improve content literacy. We're
working with the University of Kansas' Center for Research on
LEarning. Anyway, I'm one of the teacher/leaders for the school, ensuring
that we are supporting literacy instruction throughout the school in every
way possible. We are using the same instructional models as the other
teachers when we do instruction with students. I'm on the planning
committee that is intensively involved in training teachers. We've helped
with technology solutions where nobody thought there was even an issue to
be fixed but technology made it so much better! I've share the Scholastic
document "School Libraries Work" with the University of Kansas people (they
didn't know there was any research on libraries and student achievement and
they're VERY in to everything being backed up with research). The latest
in the ongoing saga of this project (it just started in May) is that
librarians are going to be added to the teacher/leader team in ALL schools
involved in this project. The end result is that we will become
demonstration sites for other schools in the state (and nation) when it
comes to improving content literacy.
***
MIDDLE SCHOOL
I am in 7-12 building. I am on PD committee. Last year and this year one
of our focuses is reading comprehension. I have acquired a nice group of
books on the subject specifically for use in middle and high schools. I
have helped model the reading strategies for staff members at our in-service
days and also help teachers use reading strategies in collaborartive
lessons.
Writing to text and multi-step problem solving are our other goals and I
likewise help model strategies and techniques at in-services for improving
student achievement in these areas as well.
I also present lessons to students to address all the above goals as do all
other professional staff members. As a library media specialist, I not only
have lessons on reading comprehension but also math multi-step problem
solving. It certainly helps students and faculty to see me as a real
teacher.
***
Some of the things that I do
1)I'm chair of the professional development committee at my school. We
help plan faculty meetings and inservice days. I often present things at
the meetings.
2) I attend many literacy workshops, including a great one last summer that
included Jeff Wilhelm, Laura Robb, and Jim Burke.
3) I'm on numerous listservs for middle-level literacy.
4) I put myself in the language arts department and attend their meetings.
5) I volunteered for the district-wide Blue Ribbon Committee to examine
reading in grades 4-8 in our district. I'm the only media specialist on
the committee.
None of this would be helpful without bigtime SHARING! I try to do more
than just bombard people with emails, articles, etc. Sometimes less is
more=a brief mention or example of a technique or book to use can be very
valuable to a harried teacher.
I've also boosted the titles in our professional library. I use Scholastic
points to get some of their worthwhile resources from book order forms,
etc. Then you have to let the teachers know you have them!
We have bought some other great titles through the professional development
committee, many of them from Stenhouse.
Last year I even went to the NCTE convention-and I taught science for 23
years. Was that ever weird. Teachers are teachers, but the English bunch
was much different from science!
ELEMENTARY
I have been the director of the AR program for 15 years. This year I am
also a reading intervention teacher for 8 periods a week. I have no
training as a reading teacher, but I am picking it up and getting better.
It is interesting to have the same students one period every day (grade 5)
as I have never done that before due to providing planning time. Although
it was not my choice to get involved with reading intervention (they needed
a body, as we say in the trade), I do believe that the media specialist
should get involved in as many aspects of the school as possible. And if
one has to do something, one may as well try to do it well!
I wish that I had time to read more novels, but I spend so much time
fundraising to buy said novels, that I just have to depend on the reviews.
Going to AASL will certainly make it easy for me to spend the money this year!
So I am very involved in my school, but a bit tired after 29 years. But it
sure beats having two or three schools a week like I did for the first 11
years of my career!
***
Well, I am left out of the literacy mix officially. This year I decided to
focus on making reading and books FUN. We have a new reading program and
in the training we were told, and this is a direct quote, "It's not about
the story, it's about the skill." The teachers have actually asked us to
have fun with the books - do holiday stories and such because they can't.
Is my approach scientifically based? No - it's common sense (gasp!) If
they don't LIKE to read, they won't read. What good is a skill if it is
never used?
We adopted the Harcourt Trophies series, as have many schools across NYS as
a result of receiving the Reading First grant. Apparently it is one of few
"scientifically based" programs out there. The quote came from the
Harcourt trainer. The analogy I like is piano playing. My kids were
taught the SKILL of playing piano, but not the fun. Today they don't touch
the thing. What good is that skill for them?
I don't know if this helps because, as I said, I am contributing despite
being left out of the mix., but it's the best I can do. (Actually, it may
be better that I am out of the loop - I have more freedom!)
***
We have taken our state's (MO) GLE's (Grade Level Expectations) for
Communication Arts and turned them into a chart that we use to document
the ways we teach literacy in the library. I truly feel this is my most
important function and I have prominently displayed the poster that
states "The more you read, the more you know....." in my library.
The main ways I support literacy is with read alouds and SSR. Our
classes come for two 30 minute periods per week. We have one 30 min.SSR
period per week for our 5th grade. My assistant and I read aloud to all
the other groups at least one time a week and we encourage and sometimes
have to enforce! SSR after books are checked out. We are beginning to
teach even the littlest Kinders about sustaining time with a book. They
are doing this in the classroom also. As we do readalouds we build
background especially with historical fiction. For example we are
reading Saving Grace to 4th grade. This book is set in 1932 during the
depression and mentions an icebox. So, we found pictures on the
Internet of an icebox. We also ask students to predict at all levels,
inference is also addressed. I feel that we are a major part of our
balanced literacy program at our school.
Jane E. Danielsons, Library Media Specialist
Veterans and Stowell Elementary Schools
Hannibal, MO 63401
<mailto:jdanielsons@hannibal.k12.mo.us>jdanielsons@hannibal.k12.mo.us
This has been a big issue for me, too! In fact, 3 years ago, as part of my
evaluation, I wrote a short document about how we can support the literacy
instruction in our schools here in Ann Arbor.
Right now, I'm involved in a new project that connects literacy and the
library. I'm working with all the K-2 teachers and special ed. teachers to
acquire lower level texts for our beginning and struggling readers. These
will be added to the library and classes will come to the library every day
so students can check out a book for independent reading at home that
night. The idea behind it is that students need LOTS of Just Right books
to read and the library has very little, or nothing, at the lowest levels
for beginning readers. The teachers and I have lots of issues to work out
with this, but we're all quite excited and eager to see how this benefits
our students. This is all still early in the planning stages. Perhaps I'll
have more to share about this when I see you.
You're right that we often are left out when it comes to literacy
support. That's why, when our district moved to Balanced Literacy a few
years ago and began training classroom teachers, I pushed (with the support
of my principal) to be involved in that training. Currently, I am the only
"demonstration teacher" that is a media specialist. I make it clear that I
am not a reading instructor, but that through my role as a media
specialist, I can and do support the reading instruction in my
building. With my new project, I'm hoping to prove that the support I
offer makes a difference in student achievement for our students.
Toni Buzzeo, MA, MLIS <mailto:tonibuzzeo@tonibuzzeo.com>
Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year Emerita
Maine Association of School Libraries Board Member
Buxton, ME 04093
http://www.tonibuzzeo.com HIGH SCHOOL
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