The Beginning of a New Year!!!

How did it get here so quickly? I'm overwhelmed to say the least. The school year snuck up on me. I'm sitting here at my kitchen table reading my emails and realizing I have less that 48 hours left before work begins again. So I thought I might as well get the first blog entry of the year over and done with. That's right it's Saturday night, at the end of August and I'm blogging about work. You are allowed to shake your head and call me a geek. I don't mind.

I learned something interesting over the summer. I like most people believed that the summer school holidays were created to match the Victorian Era farming harvest. Well that's a myth. Check out this link to The Independent to find out about holiday myths. It turns out there are all kinds of reasons for the long break including pressure from the tourist industry and parents changed the school calendar to create a longer summertime break for the benefit of families. Other articles state that concerns for the spread of disease through insects in the summer heat may be behind the summer vacation. Read up about it. Here's another link.

So what did I do with my summer? Everyone says we have so much holiday time. They're right I do have holiday time. Technically, we're unemployed during the summer but that's not what's important. It's precious time. I didn't get into teaching for the summer. It was never even on the radar, it didn't occur to me that it would be a really great thing.  In fact the time didn't become special until I had kids. I am extremely lucky to get the time and I spend it with my kids. What a gift! I have two months to bond and share the world with my boys. It's a dream come true. I hope my kids realize how lucky they are, not every mother gets this kind of time with their kids.

I haven't really been clear about summer activities though so here goes.... I don't think I really stopped once and took a good long break. We took a bunch of day trips in and around Bruce and Grey county (mostly hiking and canoeing). My husband and I took a three day holiday where we backpacked and camped in Bruce Peninsula National Park. Nope sorry no grand world travels, just simple affordable little vacations in and around our lovely province. Oh, and I experimented with underwater photography!!! Finally, I also did an extraordinary amount of home renovation. You are now reading the words of a laminate flooring master. My kids are masters with a hammer after a summer of practice.




Summer also included reading a collection of books and book reviews so I can go shopping right at the beginning of the year and fill the library with some new titles for the kids. My son helped me with the reading, he's 12 this year so right smack in the middle of the RHL cohort. I read a great many articles on technology. Here's a link to just one of them. "Critical mistakes made with iPads". I spent a good amount of time running over my plans for both the library and our technology program.

I've spent part of the summer emailing ideas back and forth with our new Principal Mrs. Neela Zinn. I still need to work out some details but our technology should be more innovative than ever and well the RHL Library/Learning Commons will be even more dynamic than last year.

I also plan to add a photography club and an outdoor adventure club to the mix this year. What am I thinking, this sounds like an awful lot of work. The answer is it is but it will make my year fly by and I get to do things I love with a bunch of people I love being around, namely kids.

Music Class on the iPads

Recently I have been working with Mrs. Caroline Singh on a music project that utilizes the app Garage Band.   We worked together to plan the project. We discussed timing and coordinating use of the iPads, along with how many periods students would need to complete their work. We also discussed the actual use of the iPads for making music.

Caroline and I decided that it would be best to stay simple for this first project. We decided to focus on teaching students how to use Garage Band rather than the actual musicality of their songs. The plan is to have them master the app itself and then next as a progression students will begin to focus on creating music that focuses on rhythm, chords, etc.
Students were very enthusiastic to learn about Garage Band. They were curious about all the different features available and spent a great deal of time experimenting with the app. They have  created some very short but interesting songs.
I've upload a few here.

Gen and Taylor song

Caroline's song

Matea's song

Nishaans song

Our plan is to take these songs and upload them into iMovie then students will utilize iMovie to edit and create music videos for their songs. The focus of the project is more on creativity and learning the apps then it is on the actual musicality of their work. We will upload some of the music videos once they are completed.

A Water Story using Waterlife and Storybird!

Recently, several classes of grade 8 students visited the library in order to research water. They were interested in topics like water pollution, water use, the water cycle and the belugas whales in the St. Lawrence River.
Mrs. G. Singh and myself first discussed the project approximately two months before students were to arrive in the library for research sessions. Last year we utilized a Web 2.0 tool called Storybird.  It's an easy and versatile site that can be used for all sorts of activities from creative writing to writing non-fiction picture books.
Mrs. Singh and I came up with a set of criteria for the kids and tried to build on the project from the previous year. This year we added some time to research water issues using the National Film Board site called "WaterLife" Students were given a graphic organizer called "A Gem of an Idea". I've Included an image of the organizer here along with the instructions for using it.

The students spent two classes searching through the website writing down interesting facts and sharing this information with their peers by creating graphic organizers about water. Here are some examples. 

Students were then instructed to come up with some ideas for writing a story that would explain what they had learned about their chosen water topic. We discussed main ideas and themes and then students wrote a short organizer and began creating their stories on Storybird. The paid version of Storybird allows you to print out the stories as PDFs. We utilized the free version of Storybird.





Here are some screen shots from their Stories. This first story is an example of some of the topics and images available on Storybird. The idea behind Storybird is to take inspiration from the pictures available. Part of our struggle is to show the kids that their story needs to evolve from the images. Some students do struggle with this. We are lenient in that in the case of the story below this is a killer whale image not a Beluga.

This story discussed Beluga whales. 

Here's a second example. Again I'm showing just the cover page and one page from inside the story. 

The students seemed to enjoy this project and gave us lots of good feedback. The advantage to this project was our ability to combine language skills with research for science. In the end it was an effective way to integrate subject matter. 

Grade 8 Cell Projects

Three classes of grade 8's recently visited the library in order to complete a research project for science class. They were learning about various types of cells. Students were expected to work with a partner to research a particular type of cell and then create a presentation which would explain their learning to other students in their class.

Mr. Warr and I worked to coordinate class time for students to complete the projects. I then helped Mr. Warr to introduce the project. We discussed with the students the importance of taking good jot notes so that the information would be easy to utilize when creating their presentations. Students were given several options for creating their presentations. Some utilized PowerPoint or the free version of PowerPoint called Open Office. Most decided to utilize PowerPoint. Students were required to completed a project in which they researched the life cycle, and the anatomy of a particular cell.

They utilized our digital library, print resources from our non-fiction collection and also other websites from the internet. For this project Mr. Warr and myself decided to use the mobile WiFi cart. We learned a great deal during the implementation of this project about the use of our mobile cart. Here at Lagerquist our mobile WiFi cart contains 12 iPads and 12 Netbooks. Students can access and use the cart in their classrooms. At first the use of the cart for research was difficult to master. Mr. Warr is admittedly not tech savvy and required a considerable amount of assistance with in utilizing the cart for the completion of their projects. The iPads were more awkward to use because the could not utilize PowerPoint on the iPads so we had to coordinate who was using which device. Also, the Prezi app on the iPad did not have many of the capabilities of the desktop version of Prezi so this made it difficult for students to utilize. However the students and myself worked around these limitations and overall the projects were very successful. We have learned that there are limitations to the usefulness of the iPads. The Netbooks are certainly useful for certain types of assignments and the iPads have their place in the creative realm for producing things like music, videos, photography and certainly surfing the web. The most effective projects were completed using Prezi. I've included a link to this Web 2.0 tool here. I've also added this little YouTube video that explains how Prezi works. It's a fantastic tool.

The Twits by Roald Dahl and using Imovie to Summarize!

Having recently purchased Imovie for our iPads, Mrs. Camarda and myself decided to utilize the pre-made trailers within Imovie as a tool for teaching students to summarize a novel. Mrs. Camarda utilized an audio book version of "The Twits" by Roald Dahl to read the story to students, in class. They then completed several comprehension activities with in the classroom.
Mrs. Camarda and I then sat down to plan how we would introduce the idea of creating a movie trailer to the students. We decided to have the students create a storyboard that showed, in detail each scene they would film. We asked them to think about the important events in the book and how those events would look were you to view them in movie format.  Each trailer comes pre-made with background music and captions which students could edit. The students were told to choose a particular style of trailer and then to plan out their scenes using the storyboard we provided to them. Students were given two periods to create their storyboards and to plan out their props, etc.
The filming was completed in the library. The different groups were able to spread out and utilize different areas of the library for their scenes. Many of the students created some pretty impressive props which included wings for the bird and a real pie. Students were then given three class periods to film their scenes, and edit their work. Students were very excited about the project and worked well with each other. They began to get creative with their work. In one instance students made balloons out of construction paper then laid them on the floor and a student pretended to hold on to them to create the appearance that he was flying. Other students utilized the screen shot feature in the iPads to take images from the web, edit them using our photo editing app, then insert these images into their trailers. One group asked to utilize an app that puts beards on people to insert an image of Mr. Twit into their work. There were very few conflicts, etc.
The end result has been extremely positive. The trailers are well done and students have shown a general enjoyment of the project.

We asked several students what they feel they have learned from this project. The following are direct quotations from the students.

"I learned that in a group you can't use all of your own ideas you have to compromise."
"Things have to get cut out sometimes or changed if you want to finish the project."
"There's a lot we can do with an iPad."
"Summarizing is hard you really have to focus on the important parts because not everything can fit in the trailer."

Mrs. Camarda and I talked about these comments after the students had left and we were impressed with their perceptions of the learning. They weren't interested in reciting facts to us rather the students mentioned learning life skills like creativity, flexibility and the ability to cooperate. We feel the project has been very successful and hopefully we will post several of the trailers here for people to view.

Photo Essays on Migration

Recently, students in Mrs. Naidu's grade 8 geography class completed a research assignment on the push and pull factors that affect human migration. Students utilized smart ideas to organize and map out information which compared the quality of life in Canada to life another country. Students utilized The CIA World Factbook, and many other sites to find information about birth rates, literacy rates, unemployment rates, etc. Students then took this information and synthesized it into a photo essay with captions for their chosen images. Students had many different options available for creating the photo essays. Some used the iPad or their Mac book, others used Prezi or PowerPoint. We gave them many options for creating their photo essays.
Students were given several periods to research their topics and Mrs. Naidu and myself guided the students through the numerous facts and information as they built their webs on Smart ideas. All in all the results were pretty successful. Students learned a great deal and had to do a lot of thinking about their topics. Some found that their countries weren't very different Canada in terms of health care, education, etc. These students really had to think about what might draw a person here to Canada if their home country was so similar to our own. We watched the students think they're way through the project and learn a great deal about life in other countries. Many of the students were surprised by infant death rate in many countries. It's fairly unheard of here in Canada to lose a child so this statistic surprised them quite a bit.
The project was an enjoyable experience for both teachers and students and the results were valuable. We look forward to working together on the same project next year. Of course there will be items that will be tweaked and the amount of data will probably be lessened. Student feedback on the project mentioned that this was a difficulty they had with the project.

Below are some links to examples of the project and the finished photo essays.
Jordan's Photo Essay
Nesha's Photo Essay as a website
Amy's Morocco Photo Essay

A Fall Report on our Library

I just wanted to write up a little progress report on the activities occurring here in the library over the fall term. There’s been a lot and I’ve learned a lot. We have a lot to do still to keep building this place into a learning commons.

My Goal to build this library!!!

1. A welcoming, service-oriented, tech-rich environment that is open on a regular basis and that invites students in to find resources and services that support their work.
2. Comfortable reading areas that attract students to books and to developing the lifelong habit of reading.
3. Comfortable working areas that enable different groupings of students to work, from independent learners, to pairs and small groups to whole-class instruction.
4. 24/7 access to digital resources as well as a collection of dynamic print resources all supporting curriculum and reading.
5. An area that would invite teachers, and guests to work with a class or group, with the support of the teacher-librarian to present multimedia or other performances.
6. A place that would provide students and teachers with opportunities to learn more advanced technology skills and create more complex digital products.
7. A place that is available for teachers to work in groups in workshops/lunch n’ learns to build new skills or collaboratively develop new resources, tools, etc.
8. provide a multitude of literacy initiatives and reading programs

Total number of Forest of Reading Books - 160
Total number of students participating in Forest Voting - 194 signed up
Activities for Forest of Reading

• Book Club
• Award Design Contest
• Talks with Expert Teachers
• Voting
• Imovie for the blog

Library Helpers
Currently 17 students come to the library regularly to shelve and restock books and help with maintaining the library

Study Hall
This runs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - 99% of the time I’m full and have to turn people away


Total number of checkouts to date - 2971
grade 6 total = 567
grade 7 total = 847
grade 8 total = 784

Total new items purchased by year
2011 - 503
2012 - 788

Total number of items in the library
Books - 2594
easy read/picture - 246
Graphic novel - 210
Magazine subscriptions - 8
Prof reference - 334
encyclopedias/reference - 180

Age of Books
Average age of books is 11 years old by publication year
2004 - 1111 total books published this year these are fiction and non-fiction
2001 - 887 total books published this year these are fiction and non-fiction
2008 - 442 total books published this year these are fiction and non-fiction

Graph Age of books by Dewey system

Teacher Research/Collaboration

• grade 6 research for Biodiversity - students researched and created presentations using poster board or prezi or powerpoint
• group research on Aboriginal peoples - students created a presentation for class on a specific group of native people
• completed Dare Arts cards
• research for grade 8’s completed Island City project
• grade 7 french project to create comics using Bitstrips
• utilized Tumble books
• website creation with live reenactment utilizing twitter for confederation
• recording radio advertisements in french for restaurants
• utilizing ipads and screenchomp for explaining websites for a charity “Shattered” novel study
• utilize computers to work on gizmos for science
• utilizing Imovie to create TV ads for a French Restaurant
• utilizing Ipads to film skit for french
• research project on mixtures and solutions end product was powerpoint or prezi
• research project with students on Canadian Artists
• research project on famous musicians students create a presentation for the class, like Prezi, powerpoint, frames 4, or jeopardy
• research project for migration students are creating photo essays on push and pull factors
• robotics project
• collaborating with me to train students on premier

Upcoming Projects/Plans

• using both the cart in class and the lab students will do research for cells
• will use Imovie to create trailers for the book the Twits - we will split the class and do storyboards then alternate filming times
• students will research water then create children’s stories about water utilizing Storybird
• utilizing audacity to make podcasts in music

6 Teachers bring their classes for regular book exchange

Fundraising

• Book Fair - 250$ - store credit
• Chapter’s night - 400$ - gift card
• Dare Arts - 95$ - cash
• Adopt a School - 500$ - gift card

Major Expenses for library budget

• Purchasing Fiction titles appropriate for grade 6’s - 1500
• Purchasing Graphic novels - 500
• Purchasing replacement book tape - 150$
• Repair books - 195$
• Magazine subscriptions 275$
• Incidentals like barcodes, magazine racks and board games took up the rest

Lessons learned from this year so far

• I can’t let teachers book regular weekly periods for computer use. There isn’t enough flexibility to schedule around them in 4 period day
• I needed to purchase more than 8 copies of Red Maple for Forest - they’re very popular
• The cart is a huge maintenance issue - reliable students should be trained in September to help with upkeep
• Cell phones are too small for BYOD to be useful awkward for kids to read
• The cart needs to monitored every period to ensure everything is back
• If Ipads are constantly plugged in to charge the battery dies
• Netbooks must be shut down with each new user or you can’t get on the network
• Each Wi Fi hub has 30 logins
• The cart is heavy
• Not everyone knows that you can sign out books from the library
• Not everyone knows that they can bring kids to the library to do research and collaborate/team teach with me
• Many teachers aren’t aware of the need to scaffold research so students of all levels are successful
• I have a lot to learn :))))

Bitstrips for Schools and Learning French!

Part of my job here at Lagerquist is to work as a resource person for other teachers. Part of my job is to have a fairly wide base of knowledge about technology, curriculum, and teaching strategies. Hopefully, I have fulfilled this role by helping Mrs. Albrecht to plan and learn how to use Bitstrips for Schools. Bitstrips for Schools is a fantastic little resource which allows teachers to create virtual classrooms and structure assignments for students in which students create comic strips to display their learning. Mrs. Albrecht has chosen to have students create a comic strip for her grade 7 french class.

Here's a link to a video about Bitstrips. Bitstrips on Vimeo


Mrs. Albrecht came to see me in December to discuss the project. She wanted to try and add a technology component to her french program. She admits to not having a strong knowledge of technology but very much wanted to try a new activity and to learn some more about technology. I took her to the Bitstrips website and showed her all the features available on the site. We talked about setting up an account for each students. This is a fairly daunting task as Mrs. Albrecht has 6 french classes and it was a going to take a fair amount of time to set up individual accounts for approximately 150 students. She was committed to the project however and seemed very eager to start setting up the virtual classroom. Mrs. Albrecht was fantastic she was open to suggestions and really wanted to learn. We discussed the length of time it would take to introduce the program to the kids, get them set up and then an appropriate amount of class time for the project. We booked the students into the library computer lab for 3 periods for each class. It was refreshing to discuss a french project with her as most activities I work on are science, history or language based.

The assignment required students to use their reading comprehension skills to read a collection of sentences and choose 15 sentences to order into a cohesive story. Students were then brought to the library and I instructed students on how to use Bitstrips. Students were given the option to create an electronic comic or a hand drawn version. Most students chose the electronic option. Bitstrips is fantastic because students can also access their virtual classroom from home. This means that most students can complete their work here at school or at home. For those with limited Internet access Study Hall provides that extra time to work on computers.

It's been a lot of fun working with Mrs. Albrecht and her 6 classes of french. I look forward to another partnership in the near future and will certainly post some of the students comics as they complete them.

School Library Staffing is on the Decline

In an earlier entry I discussed staffing and formulas used to decide just how much staffing a school library receives  The reality is that funding for school libraries is in heavy decline. Funding for libraries has been decreasing. Statistics and many different studies say this is a bad thing. A recent article by CBC News discussed a report by People for Education. The report discusses the decline of school libraries and the important role libraries play in student success.

The report by the group People for Education found 56 per cent of Ontario elementary schools in 2010 have at least one full- or part-time teacher-librarian, an accredited teacher who has library training. That's down from 80 per cent in the 1997/1998 school year, according to the report, which was released Monday morning.

Meanwhile, 66 per cent of secondary schools across the province have at least one teacher-librarian, down from 78 per cent in 2000/2001, when the group first started tracking data for high schools. CBC News

Libraries play an important role within the school. It offers a place for work to be completed, literacy to be encouraged and perhaps its most important role is as a support resource role for teachers. Quite often I meet with teachers to discuss teaching strategies and ideas for promoting literacy and content understanding, in their students.

Annie Kidder from People for Education also sites the importance of Libraries in helping to improve student achievement.

Teacher-librarians play an important role in helping children find information, evaluate and thinking critically about it and then applying it, said Annie Kidder, the executive director of the group in an interview.

"These kinds of skills that sort of help kids in what we are calling these days the knowledge economy are incredibly important," she said.   

When I first arrived at Lagerquist,  9 years ago, as a classroom teacher we had a full time Librarian who supported teachers through many different initiatives including the Forest of Reading and a research skills program. She was reduced to 80% the following year and then as years passed the job was again reduced to 50%. It was only this past year that the allocation was increased due to the arrival of grade 6 students at our school.

The state of our library is pretty good all things considered. We have new computer and work tables as well as well as Wi-Fi and a full computer lab available right in the library. We have a supportive principal who believes in the importance of a library and she has given me a lot of freedom to encourage use of the library. Students are free to visit during the day to complete work and to utilize technology. We are extremely short on books though. We're about 1000 titles short for a school our size but fundraising efforts are helping this. Visit our adopt a school site. I enjoy having the library open as much as possible in order to help students and teachers. I notice an excitement in the kids when we discuss books and kids are flocking to the technology we are offering students in the library.

There are many schools that can't say they have this much, I know that but this doesn't mean we can't keep building towards something even better. This is my goal to build up the library to make it the hub of the school.

What Does a Teacher/Librarian Actually Do?

What Does a Teacher/Librarian actually Do?

Good question! 
A lot of people ask me that and some people make assumptions about the job. Others just have no clue and well lots of people don't like libraries so they don't care. They see the stereotypical library where the librarian is crabby, grumpy and insists on complete silence.

Kind of like the image you see here.

This is the way lots of people picture us. Talk about  stereotypes.

Television shows and movies enforce this stereotype. If you have the time there's a whole you tube series on librarian stereotypes. You can find the link to the first movie in the series right here.

So lets dispel some myths. Lets talk about what I really do. In another entry I'll discuss the grand vision for this library. So let's stay focused on the job itself, at least for today. Please keep in mind that there is a significant difference between Teacher/Librarians and Public Librarians. Teacher/Librarians are teachers who operate libraries located in schools and have a teaching degree with a Library qualification. Public Librarians have library sciences training from a college or university. My list discusses the role of the Teacher/Librarian. Depending on the person and the school this list may vary. The list is a description of what I do on a daily basis others may have different items on their list but it would be similar to my own. 

1. Keep staff up to date with available programs for student learning.
2. Run library orientations, at the start of the year in order to familiarize students with the resources available. 
3. Collaborate with teachers and help them to build research unit for students.
4. Manage the library collection. This includes purchasing, weeding out damaged or out of date books.
5. Create and implement programs which promote literacy like the Forest of Reading program.  
6. Provide assistance to teachers when planning units.
7. Provide staff with resources for the classroom.
8. Provide a schedule of available times for book exchange, teaching periods, etc.
9. Work with teachers to coordinate optimal use of library time.
10. Run a library leaders program that involves students in the maintenance of the library collection.
11. Instruct students on techniques for successful research projects.
12. Consulting with teachers in order to provide teachers with materials for their classrooms. (For example, I recently put together a collection of Gothic novels and Frankenstein resources. A teacher is planning on using these resources for her novel study unit.)
13. Keep the printers supplied with paper.
14. Manage overdue lists. This includes following up with students at the end of the year and getting them to pay, for or replace lost and damaged items.
15. Maintain the library lab which is usually a bank of 25 to 30 computers. This includes calling techs. for repairs and managing the network. (note: not all librarians have this added position. Some libraries don't have labs)
16. Catalogue and shelve library materials. 
17. Provide work spaces for students to complete work.
18. Assist students with finding resources within the library and on the web.
19. The list is endless I'm pretty sure I could list 50 more things but I'll stop here before this entry gets too long. 

I would like to end this entry with a different image of a librarian. 

For orientation this year, I created an avatar of myself and posted it for kids to view. I used a website called The Hero Factory. The kids thought it was pretty funny and wanted to know how to use the site. Some have since made characters and are using these characters for creative writing projects. 

Gone (I hope) are the days of the stiff, unforgiving, cranky, nerdy librarian. I want everyone to view the library space as a hub of activity in which the space reflects the needs of the student body. The library should encourage students to read for pleasure and for learning. 

I want students here researching, practicing drama skits, utlizing technology to build a presentation for class, and 100 other things. 

This library and many others like it should be a place where kids love to learn. 

The beginning of a new Blog

I wanted to start this blog for several reasons. The first being that I want the public to find out about all the great things going on at our school and to realize the value of a library. So many people see the library as just a place to pick up a book. At Lagerquist this isn't the case. Students at our middle school can do so much more in this space. Funding is tight I won't hide that but I have a supportive Principal who seems to trust me when I come up with different ideas for programs to run in the school. Not every principal would agree to taking 170 kids to view the movie, "The Hunger Games". Thank you.

As the librarian I work everyday to do more than shelve books and recommend books. I think it's time others knew this. Given our current political climate here in Ontario I think this is more important than ever. In a time and place when teachers are being seen as overpaid, and well a bit lazy because we do not work in the summers I think it's high time people know what we do. I mean what we really do. Not just all the report cards and pushing play on the video we're about to show.

To be honest I would be starting this blog even if I were in a classroom because I think it's important for everyone to know what we do. I believe respect is earned. We earn respect from the kids at our school, we earn respect from our peers, our bosses and of course the parents.

Hopefully, this blog will let all of these individuals see the value of the library and the amazing work our students do complete here at the school. We as teachers are here to guide and help and I won't take credit for the awesome stuff kids do. I just want everyone to know our role in its creation.

Annie Kidder put it best, (She's so much more eloquent than I am), she said "We need to re-embed the value of public education.... The deep value of it. Not just the facts in, facts out value but that it actually changes who we are.... It's not enough to close the (classroom) door and say trust me. That doesn't work ...... You (teachers) have to tell us. You have to let us (the public) know.... You have to help us understand what it is you do and why it's so valuable."

So that's my goal to show everyone what it that we do in the Lagerquist Library and the value of  it to our kids.