This week in the library

We are continuing our Google Search activities in 4th grade classes, using the laptop cart computers so students each have their own for searching themselves.  I used part of the Google Search Education lesson on Beginning Search, working on identifying keywords in questions, so students aren't typing entire questions into the search box.  My favorite example comes from the Google A Day website (where anyone can test their online searching skills), modified a bit for our use:

How long was Galloping Gertie in miles, and where was it located?

Students had a lot of fun finding out that Galloping Gertie was in the place where the current Tacoma Narrows Bridge is located.  They also learned that Google can do math for them, conversions and other calculations.  We also watch a few minutes of a YouTube video showing Galloping Gertie collapsing , so a little local history was included in the lesson.

The big news of the week is that kindergarten students get to check out this week!  They have been looking forward to this for a few weeks.  We have been learning about book care, what not to do (let your little sister color on a book or leave a book out in the rain), and how to turn pages carefully.  We will read "Walter's Magic Wand" on Thursday and Friday and students will color and take home their own magic wand.  Magic happens in the library, you just need your imagination!

In 3rd grade I read "The Library Dragon" by Carmen Agra Deedy and wore my own dragon tail to reveal at the end of storytime.  I just can't read enough books about libraries and librarians.

We are all still learning how to find books that are a good fit for us.  I talked with the older students about Lexile (word frequency and sentence length, what it is and what it isn't, and why it is not the only measurement they need to use to choose a good book.  I showed three examples of books that on the surface didn't match their Lexile levels, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg that is 820L, and some fiction with over 200 pages that came in around 420L.  Don't judge a book by its cover was the message for the week.  Using all the things available to choose a good book is necessary: read the summaries, look at reviews, ask a friend, check the Lexile, and pick a book that interests or challenges you.  This is a lifelong skill, when I am at the library I am not looking for a book at my Lexile level, I'm looking for a book I want to read that will interest or challenge me.

Book talks

This week is a short week, with half days on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for parent conferences.  My goal this week is to get good books into kids' hands so they can read during their non-school hours.  I know they won't all do this, but the more good reading material they have around, the better chance they will pick it up on Thursday afternoon at 12:30 when they are done eating lunch.

In sixth grade classes I am booktalking books I read recently or have reviews from my Book a Day blog from the past two summers.  Notice I didn't reach my goal of reading a book a day, summer activities and family tend to get in the way of that, but I did read some good books that I can share with students.

For the 5th grade HiCap class, I booktalked Animal Fiction (defined as either being from the point of view of the animal, e.g. The One and Only Ivan, which they just finished reading as a read aloud in class; or defined as having animals as central to the story, e.g. Julie and the Wolves or My Side of the Mountain).  This was a genre I struggled with the past few weeks when students asked for recommendations.  I knew we had them, I knew I had read them, but I was having trouble finding them on the spur of the moment.  I really wanted them to move beyond the Erin Hunter series Warriors, which most of them have already read.

Once I started really doing some research and scouring the shelves, I found lots of books to share with them.  Some old favorites, some classics, some newer books, and a good variety that they all clamored to check out when I was doing booktalking them.  Some students ended up doing Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who got to check out Lion Boy and a few other popular titles.

My list for now (so I have a reference point next time this genre comes up!):

• Lion Boy by Corder
• Snow Dog by Kjelgaard
• Canyon Winter by Morey
• Owls in the Family by Mowat
• Julie of the Wolves by George
• The Incident at Hawk's Hill
• The Tale of Despereaux by DiCamillo
• The Guardians of Ga'Hoole series by Lasky
• Wolves of Beyond by Lasky
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• Whittington by Armstrong
• My Side of the Mountain by George
• Summer of the Monkeys by Rawls
• Where the Red Fern Grows by Rawls
• Old Yeller by Gipson
• Poppy series by Avi
• Call of the Wild by London
• White Fang by London
• Black Beauty by Sewell
• Misty of Chincoteague by Henry
• The Black Stallion by Farley

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.