New Media Storytelling - Give and Take

I recently was invited to participate in a pilot course created by KQED, called "New Media Storytelling" which helps teachers learn how educators and students can use new media formats to tell stories and communicate information.


New media includes many digital platforms used by teachers and students already: Twitter, Facebook, Vine, YouTube, Instagram, and blogging platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr, and Wordpress.   Many are currently used as personal communication tools, but this course focuses on the educational uses of the tools and how to engage students and teachers in their use at school.


The question posed in one module is

"How will embracing the role of producer (of new media storytelling) impact your teaching?"

I think the biggest result of my becoming a producer of digital storytelling in different formats will be to encourage students to use these types of media in school, because I know they are already using it in their personal lives.  They may not think to use it at school, or there may be barriers to using it at school (filters or the reluctance of teachers to accept this format of storytelling).  I have students as young as first grade creating videos and posting them on YouTube.  These children know how to use these tools, and if they don't know how to use something, they are not afraid to learn.

I look forward to a give and take between teachers and students, learning about tools and how to share information that is well-researched and thought out using new media.  Students can teach teachers about the applications and tools, and how to not be afraid to take risks with storytelling.  Teachers can teach students about how to tell a good story, how to reach an audience, and how to have high quality content within their storytelling.

Organizing the library by Dewey Decimals

An article was just posted in School Library Journal, "Are Dewey's Days Numbered?" one of many recently stating that they were doing away with the Dewey Decimal system to mirror a bookstore organization by subject, saying "we felt as if our library was focused on finding materials rather than actually using them."  Whenever I see these articles I think again about our library's organization and if it is meeting the needs of staff and students.  The interesting point to ponder, I think, is not necessarily whether this reorganization helps circulation and reduces student frustration, but does it help our students to think about how they search for information?

We want to teach inquiry and critical thinking skills and foster an appreciation of literature, as well as a love of books and libraries in general.  I feel that teaching students how to locate books using a system teaches the skill of finding information.  "Locate and access" is the third step in our Big6 approach to information literacy teaching.  If we make it easy to find books in the library, will students understand that sometimes they have to work hard to search Google or a database for the right website or article that answers their question?  An OPAC search is another opportunity to teach how to identify and answer their information needs.

It's not as if the books in our library are hidden away so no one can find them.  First of all, there are only 10,000 of them, which sounds like a lot, but 7,000 are Everybody and Fiction books, so that leaves 3.000 nonfiction books on about 60 shelves.  Students who want books about cars search for "cars" in the OPAC and find them on the shelf in the 629s.  I remind them that they know how to count to 999, which gives them the ability to find the book numerically.  Students who are too young to search the OPAC or count to 999 ask me where to find the books and then help each other when someone else has the same information need. I usually add a little information as we are looking (as short as ten seconds) showing them that similar subjects are grouped together with the book they are seeking, or pointing out the spine label.  Over seven years of mini lessons I hope I impart little bits of wisdom that add to the lessons we do about library organization and the OPAC.

I don't teach the Dewey Decimal System as separate lessons, in fact I barely mention Melvil Dewey, the creator of this admittedly imperfect system, at all.  Trying to fit everything perfectly into a system based on tens is impossible, but libraries need a common system so people can transfer skills and find information in any library.  People use numerical systems around the world, including money, weights and measures, etc., to provide a common language and understanding of relationships.

My students learn that Dewey is a numerical system for grouping like books together.  For example, all the big cat books can be found on the same shelf, so you can find books on lions, tigers and cheetahs all nearby.  This system can be searched online, but the numbers are for putting similar books together, and gives us an address for the book to easily find it and similar books on the shelf.

The article mentions that it would be difficult for a student to find a paper craft book and a sewing book together, because in Dewey they would be in different hundreds sections.  The limitation of Dewey and every system for organizing books is that you can't put every book that relates to another book together.  It is not three-dimensional.  The computer allows us to bring similar books together electronically that can't be physically together.  If you search "crafts" as a subject heading, you will find all those craft-related books, even if they aren't on the same shelf.  If we can't put all the books together on one shelf so we can browse easily, the computerized virtual version of the books can do this for us if we can search keywords and understand the results.  That is the focus of my teaching, to teach the searching skills and how to evaluate those results.

As long as my library mirrors other libraries, public and academic, in having a similar numerical order, my students will be able to use any library easily.  And they understand that if they have an information need, they know how to search for the answer to that need and how to locate information to answer their questions.  The "locate and access" step is one that eventually doesn't take much thought if students have practiced it in a variety of situations, and using the OPAC and Dewey Decimal System in my library give them that opportunity at least once a week for seven years.

Normal library classes!

I told a class today that we were finally having normal library classes after a week of expectations and teaching about the Ridgecrest Way (PBIS), then a week of SRI testing, but there really are no normal library classes.  I think I meant that we could do what I wanted us to do, whether it was reading stories and discussing them, learning how to use programs, or just having time to talk about the books we have been reading.

This week I am teaching some classes how to access the Scholastic Reading Counts quiz program.  Some teachers use it to help monitor independent reading, but over the past six or seven years we have slowly decreased our dependence on computerized testing when evaluating independent reading.  I'm proud that our teachers take the time to get to know their kids and help them set reasonable goals (not always point-based, but based on other factors, such as how many books they might be able to read in a trimester, individualized).  But I'm most proud that our teachers have found alternate ways to monitor their students' reading, allowing them multiple ways to show that they read and understood a selection of books, not every book they read, but a selection, as a formative assessment.

We have talked a lot about formative assessments in our pre-school building meetings, and I think we are all speaking the same language now when it comes to this type of assessment.  Being able to see AR/SRC quizzes as one type of formative assessment reduces the impulse to use it exclusively as an independent reading measure, and decreases the chance that teachers will want students to take quizzes on every single book they read.

I read many articles and books about student motivation this summer, hoping to find a way to reach every student and help them to be better readers, and one idea stuck with me all summer:  Think about how we read and discuss books as adults.  We don't take a quiz after we finish reading a book, we find other people who have read it or who are interested in that book or author or subject, and we discuss what we have read.  We recommend books to each other, we talk about what made us sad or happy or scared, and what other connections we made with the characters, settings, plot points, etc.  This is how we expect our students will interact with books and people as adults, so let's encourage them to interact this way as students.  Knowing whether or not they comprehend their reading is a key part of knowing if they are effective independent readers, but how we measure that is flexible and formative, not never-ending and summative.

I look forward to seeing how teachers use Reading Counts this year, and how we can help each other find even more ways to know how our students are choosing and reading books.

Thanksgiving: Week of November 21-25

The theme this week was Thanksgiving and beginning primary sources for 4th and 5th grades.

Kindergarten: No classes due to holiday.

1st grade:  Read Over the River: A Turkey's Tale by Derek Anderson.

2nd grade:  Read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and looked around http://www.pilkey.com, where the author/illustrator has sketches and shows the drawing process for this book.

3rd grade:  Read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and looked around http://www.pilkey.com, where the author/illustrator has sketches and shows the drawing process for this book.

4th grade:  Read Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson.  This book introduces Sarah Hale, who wrote letters to presidents and governors, trying to get Thanksgiving named as a national holiday.  Abraham Lincoln finally agreed, after 38 years of her persistence.  We move from this book to the Library of Congress website, where we look at Sarah's letter to Lincoln and discuss primary sources.  We will continue on this topic for a few weeks.

5th grade:  Check out.

6th grade:  Check out.

SRI & Thanksgiving: Week of November 14-18

The theme this week was Thanksgiving for the primary grades, SRI testing for the intermediate grades.  The increased testing that classroom teachers are asked to do also impacts teaching in the library.  I give several assessments throughout the year, including the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), STAR (which gives students their AR zone, not used by every class), and TRAILS (Tools for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills, given by me to inform my own instruction).  Assessment does give us information to drive instruction and focus on areas of need, but sometimes it seems that with so much testing, we struggle to find enough time to teach the skills needed to be successful on tests.

Kindergarten:  Thanksgiving books are so much fun to read, they are warm and fuzzy and almost always make me hungry.  Kindergarten students heard Over the River: A Turkey's Tale by Derek Anderson, based on the song with another story told through the illustrations.  Kindergarten students are the perfect audience for books like this because many are not reading yet, so they rely on pictures to tell them the story.  They notice when the illustrations share a story not included in the text, more so than older readers who read the text and pay less attention to illustration.  Kindergarteners love to show you something you might have missed in an illustration.  Jan Brett is another author and illustrator who includes subtexts in her illustrations, and students can spend long periods of time poring over her books.  Jan Brett's books include The Mitten, The Hat, The Three Snow Bears, Hedgie's Surprise, Trouble with Trolls, and Gingerbread Baby, among many others.

1st grade:  In 1st grade classes this week, we read Thanksgiving books, includig I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, which is a funny take on I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  It's familiar to them, and just as outrageous.

2nd grade:  Some 2nd grade students took their first turn at the SRI this week.  We start 2nd graders taking this now because it can take up to three times to get used to taking the test online (logging in with a username and password is difficult and takes practice).  After the third time, we feel we have an accurate score.  The SRI tests for reading comprehension, giving students a passage from a book and then asking them a multiple-choice comprehension question.

One 2nd grade class will test after Thanksgiving, so we read The Sniffles for Bear by Bonny Becker and Kady MacDonald Denton, part of the series that started with the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book nominee A Visitor for Bear.  I love the language used in the books, it is not limited to words known by primary students.  It is realistic and difficult, and prompts them to use context clues to figure out meanings.  If they aren't sure what a word means, they always ask.  Examples of fabulous new vocabulary words we discovered include:  decency, "gravity of the situation", mournful and "last flicker before the dark."  Bear is convinced he will not survive his illness, but as usual, his over-exaggeration of everything and Mouse's never-ending patience with him is hilarious to the listener and reader.

I found a nice blog post interview with the illustrator of the Bear books, Kady MacDonald Denton, including rough sketches of some Bear illustrations and other books she has illustrated.

3rd grade:  Students took the SRI.

4th grade:  Students took the SRI.

5th grade:  Students took the SRI.

6th grade:  Students took the SRI.

Book Fair preview: Week of November 7-11

The theme this week was the preview of the Scholastic Book Fair, which will take place next Friday, November 18th, from 3PM through the end of The Wizard of Oz, which is the movie showing during Movie Night starting at 6:30PM.

All classes viewed the Book Fair preview video, which includes interviews with authors and illustrators, including Nick Bruel, the writer and illustrator of the Bad Kitty books, Megan McDonald, the writer of the Judy Moody books, and Daniel Angelberger, the author and illustrator of the popular Origami Yoda books.  I enjoy discussing the interviews with students and showing them the real people behind the books they love.

Pumpkins, good books, information literacy: Week of October 31-November 4

The themes this week included pumpkins, finding good books, and finding out what students know about information literacy skills.

Kindergarten:  I read the Kindergarten students Mousekin's Golden House to support their field trip to the pumpkin farm.  It concerns a mouse who finds a discarded jack o'lantern in the woods and decides to make it his winter home.  The language is engaging for the listeners and it connects with the idea we discussed last week in Pumpkin Circle about the life cycle of a pumpkin.

1st grade:  Read Superdog by Mark and Caralyn Buehner, focusing on the ideas of bullying and how to respect and forgive others.  This theme connects with our Ridgecrest Way themes of respect, responsibility, kindness and safety.

2nd grade:  We read Pumpkin Cat in honor of the season.

3rd grade:  We continued our individual practice in the lab about library shelf order, and I noted down how many games students completed at 100% as an assessment.  All but two students completed at least two games, which was my goal.

4th grade:  I gave the 4th grade classes the TRAILS (Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) assessment to help me focus on specific areas of need over the course of the 35 library classes they have over the school year.  There are five main topic areas tested, including developing topics, identifying sources, developing and using search strategies, evaluating sources, and using information responsibly and ethically.  I will devise my class lesson plans and collaboration with teachers based on the results of this assessment.

5th grade:  We had a long checkout period today to allow me to connect with more students individually. Both 5th grade classes come to the library at the same time, so managing to connect with 60 students in 30 minutes is difficult, if not impossible.

6th grade:  I booktalked titles from the classics genre this week to the 6th grade classes.  The 6th grade HiCap class has it as one of their choices for their monthly projects, and all the 6th grade students gravitate towards the latest books, rather than classics.  I discussed the definition of a classic with the students and showed them some titles, including books by Twain, Kipling, Stevenson, Alcott, Travers, etc.

Finding good books & Halloween: Week of October 24-28

The theme this week was a continuation of how to find a good book, with some Halloween thrown in for fun.

Kindergarten:  I showed the Kindergarten classes the video for the book Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson, narrated by Danny Glover with music by George Winston.  It is a lovely book about the circle of life of a pumpkin, from seed to plant to fruit and back to seed again.  The music is lively and the video is engaging for all students.  The Kindergarten classes are going to the pumpkin patch on Monday, October 31, so this ties in with their curriculum.

1st grade:  Continuing the theme of how to find a good book, I read the 1st grade classes Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians by Jackie Mims Hopkins.  Goldie Socks finds herself in the bears' house while they are out doing their jobs as libearians, and she finds books that are too big, too hard, too easy, too little, until she finds some that are just right.  The book includes the Five Finger Rule, which I teach students to help them find a good book.  Choose a book and turn to the first page, read it to yourself or out loud and every time you come to a word you don't know, put up a finger.  At the end of the page if you have zero fingers or one finger up it may be too easy, but is still a fun book to check out; two or three fingers means it is just right and you'll be challenging yourself to be a better reader; four or five fingers mean it will be difficult to understand but it might be a good book to read with someone at home.

2nd grade:  We read Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians as well, and talked about choosing AR books that were in our zone as another way to find a "just right" book.

3rd grade:  We played the Order in the Library online games again, but instead of doing it as a whole class, we went into the computer lab and students practiced alphabetizing books individually.  I challenged students to get through at least two games before we finished in the lab and went to check out books.

4th grade:  I purchased some new fractured fairytales and folktales at the end of last year and I've been waiting to share Cinderella Skeleton with a class ever since.  It is a wonderful version of the story with appropriately creepy Tim Burton-like pictures, with Robert San Souci's well-written verse sharing the story of Cinderella Skeleton and her wish to go to the Halloween Ball, where she meets her Prince Charming and loses not her shoe, but her whole foot while running away.

5th grade:  We looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.

6th grade:  We also looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.

Finding good books: Week of October 17-21

The theme this week was how to find a good book.  With the primary grades, this generally means discussing what a "good fit" or "just right" book is for them, and how to find those kinds of books.  With the intermediate grades, I introduce some tools they can use independently to find books that appeal to them.

Kindergarten: This is our first week to check out a library book!  After several classes discussing book care, how to choose a good book, and the procedures to use in the library (how to check out, where to read, where to line up, when to bring books back, etc.), we are ready!

1st grade:  We read Mo Willems books (writer of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Leonardo the Terrible Monster) and Ella the Elegant Elephant by Steven and Carmela D'Amico (local author and illustrator) as examples of what might be a "good fit" book for 1st graders.

2nd grade:  We read Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt, using the document camera to look at the wonderful detail in her illustrations.

3rd grade:  The focus for 3rd grade for the next few week is how students can find books on the shelves, so we began with a whole-class shelf order game on the interactive whiteboard.  We dragged books into the correct order and discussed how books are organized in the Everybody, Fiction, and Nonfiction sections.  This will lead to actual practice finding books on the shelf.  Students can practice this at home using the same online games: Order in the Library.

4th grade:  We discussed the Global Reading Challenge during the 4th grade classes, since this is the first year they are eligible and it is new to many of them.  All 4th and 5th graders are encouraged to join one of our seven teams, read at least two of the ten books determined by the KCLS childrens librarians, and meet to discuss the books once a week during lunch recess.  For more information, visit the GRC website.

5th grade:  I showed the 5th grade classes how to use Lexile.com to search for books in genres that interest them that are at the level of the Lexile score each student earned on our Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) test earlier this fall.  Students who read books near their Lexile level are more likely to comprehend what they are reading.

6th grade:  I also showed the 5th grade classes how to use Lexile.com to search for books in genres that interest them that are at the level of the Lexile score each student earned on our Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) test earlier this fall.  Students who read books near their Lexile level are more likely to comprehend what they are reading.