Tag Archives: School Media Specialist

Guest Blogger, School Media Specialist

CMLE Scholarship Report: What’s New in Children’s Literature Workshop

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This is a guest post from Gara Goldenstein, Media Specialist at Jacobson Elementary in Rush City, MN. Read more CMLE scholarship reports here.

 I attended the What’s New in Children’s Literature workshop through BER. This workshop highlighted books published in 2019.

Jonathon Hunt was the presenter and he did a fantastic job!  It was a little different as we attended through Zoom.  I was worried about how effective it would be attending using Zoom.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went!

A website I was introduced to is the ALA Best Websites for Teaching & Learning.  There is also the Best Apps for Teaching & Learning website.  These are great resources to find technology to enhance your teaching.

One app I highly recommend is Novel Effect. It is free and it will play sound effects as you read a picture book.  The really cool thing for students is the app listens for key words so it will work no matter what speed the book is read. 

One discussion that I found interesting was the benefits of having large print books.  They especially recommend this for struggling readers.  It is easier for them to physically track the words and leads to large gains in comprehension.  I haven’t seen many children’s books offered in large print, but it’s something I will be looking for!

Here’s my list of top 10 book recommendations.  It was super hard to narrow this down!!

  1. Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks by Jason Reynolds (gr 4-7) Short stories of students walking home from school.
  2. Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary D. Schmidt (gr 4-7) His family inherits a snooty British butler!  Humorous!
  3. Fly by Mark Teague (K-3) A baby bird wants to use a variety of methods of transportation, except it’s wings!
  4. Beneath the Bed and Other Scary Stories by Max Brailler (K-3) Acorn Scholastic book – beginning chapter book
  5. Monstrous: The Lore, The Gore, And Science Behind Your Favorite Monsters (Gr 5-8) Great infographics!
  6. Monkey and Cake series by Drew Daywalt (K-3) Great for those beginning readers! Very humorous!
  7. Five Minutes by Liz Garton Scanlon and Audrey Vernick ( K-3) How 5 minutes sometimes seems long, sometimes short.
  8. Torpedoed by Deborah Heiligman ( Gr 5-8) WWII setting. A ship leaves London bringing children to Canada.  It is torpedoed by a German submarine.
  9. How to Two by David Soman (K-3) Focuses on how to play on a playground.  Also a counting book.
  10. Dear Sweet Pea by Julie Murphy (Gr 4-7) A girl’s parents get divorced but her dad moves in just down the street!

Thank you so much for the scholarship that provided me the opportunity to attend this workshop!  This workshop is offered every year and I highly recommend it!

Advocacy, School Media Specialist

How School Librarians Help Literacy

This article from Education Week Teacher delves into several ways school librarians can collaborate with teachers to enhance student learning. It also tackles the question of classroom libraries replacing school libraries, and the problems this can create.

The article also links to this research article explaining how having a school librarian leads to higher-achieving students and a better school community. It’s impressive research and really reinforces just how much school librarians have a positive impact on their schools.

From the article “Why School Librarians Are the Literacy Leaders We Need”:

“Making Connections: Our school librarian helped students connect to reading and digital literacies in a variety of ways.  She found out what students were learning about in history and science class and found interesting reading materials to connect to those topics. She helped us bring local authors to visit to talk to students about their work. She helped students and teachers access periodicals and other helpful programs online.

There is a cumulative benefit to students and teachers, both academic and cultural, when a school librarian becomes a literacy leader.”

Read the rest of the article here!

School Media Specialist

What do newbie school media center people need to know?

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McMillen High School Library

CMLE has over 200 member libraries, and we know they are all doing great work!! (Really! We’ve visited a bunch of them to admire it, and it’s always so cool!!)

A big part of our mission is to support our members. We want to get as much of the administrative/policy/back-stage kinds of things done for them as a group as possible. Library staffers are best utilized spending most of their time with their community (face to face or online), not working on the tedious stuff. We can’t take away all of that (sorry!), but we want to see what we can do as a system to make it easier for our library people to get away from that and spend more time with patrons.

One thing we are working on is a “Hello! Welcome to Your New Job In A School Media Center!” handbook. (The name is, obviously, still a work in progress. Send suggestions!)

We have some ideas, and have been gathering thoughts from school library people – but we want to know what YOU know! What do you do each day? What kinds of things do you wish you knew your first day, week, month? What suggestions do you have to pass on to your colleagues in school libraries??

Please feel free to send this request (appeal for help!) to any school library people you know! The more ideas we get, the better our end product will be.

(And yes: we are talking about CMLE members, because they are our primary mission – but anything we produce will be available for any school library person to use! We are strong believers in the idea that libraries are all stronger when we work together!!)

Leave a comment below! Email us at admin @ cmle.org! Tweet to us at @CMLELibs! Call us at 320-257-1933!

We would really love to hear from you – no matter what you do in any type of school library! The more info we get now, the better we are able to help!!

Thanks!!

School Media Specialist

April 4th is School Librarian Day!

April is School Library Month, so of course there’s a day specifically to celebrate school librarians. That day is today, April 4th!

If you are a school librarian – we appreciate you and the incredible work that you do! If you know a school librarian, share your appreciation and admiration!

AASL has a whole page devoted to School Library Month, so make sure to check that out. This year’s theme is Because School Libraries Empower Students and the hashtag is #slm17. Their page also includes complimentary webinars and graphics to use at your school library or media center.

School librarians and media specialists do so much to equip students with necessary research, technology, and literacy skills. For a few examples of the cool things that school librarians are doing, see this article from Education Week or this one from Learning.com.

Many of CMLE’s members are school libraries and we have been able to visit several of them. Discover all the excellent programs and activities taking place at these local libraries on our Library Visit page.

Thank you to school librarians and media specialists for all that you do! 🙂

 

Resources, School Media Specialist, Tech

Top Five Resources from February – Teaching4Tomorrow

It’s always helpful to have new and useful resources if you are an educator working with technology! Big Deal Media has started a blog called “Teaching 4 Tomorrow: Ed Tech Ideas and Strategies Worth Sharing” to discover new platforms and resources for tech educators.

This article shares the top five resources that educators used the most in the month of February. Some of these resources include:

Siemens STEM Day: For students grades K – 12, “STEM Day offers a variety of tools and resources that will help you reinvent your STEM curriculum. You’ll find new, original hands-on activities, a teacher support center, and our Possibility Grant Sweepstakes”

RobotBASIC: This platform incorporates programming language with a robot simulator. The program “enables users to simulate a robot with many types of sensors, control a real robot using the wireless protocol, create animated simulations and video games, handle complex engineering problems, motivate students to learn, and create contests for robotics clubs.”

“Oversharing” Rap Video: This video is all about social media, and about responsibly posting and sharing content. The site has quizzes and activities to help students learn about appropriate social media behavior.