Curriculum and Common Core State Standards

I have been reviewing my library benchmarks in anticipation of studying and revising them based on Common Core State Standards.  I'm happy with them, but I have to remind myself that I need to revisit these regularly.

Tracking seven different grade levels and whether they have achieved my expectations for a school year is not easy.  My teaching is not always a spiral, or thematic, or a progression from one skill to a slightly more difficult skill.  Lessons can change weekly depending on current units being taught in the class, outside events such as field trips, collaboration with a teacher, or requirements from the district.  Making sure I meet each of my own expectations is an ongoing process.

I struggle with the balance between my own curriculum that I want to teach, often in less than thirty lessons a year per grade, once testing and activities and vacations impact teaching time, and supporting teachers and students.  I think that I have a reputation of dropping my curriculum in place of helping students choose biographies or learn how to a bibliography, or any other way I can support classroom teachers and their students.  I am glad I am known for this and I like that people feel they can come to me for help.  However I sometimes interrupt my own units or plans to provide this support.  How do we find that balance within our limited teaching time?  I'm still not sure and there probably isn't an answer.

• Ridgecrest Library Standards/Understandings/Benchmarks
• Ridgecrest Simple Library Curriculum Standards/Understandings

Washington Children's Choice voting this week!

All K-3 classes are reviewing the twenty picture books we read for the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award, and students are voting using a Google Form while they are finding and checking out books.  It works well for 1st through 3rd grade, though Kindergarten voting is still done with a token to mark their choice.

I will tally up the votes and mail them off to the WLMA WCCPBA committee today, where they will be added to 100,000 other votes from around the state.  We should know the winner within a couple of weeks!  My prediction is Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes or Snow Dog's Journey from my students' reactions.

In 4th grade we are continuing to talk about the importance of reading in our lives.  This week we focused on how to find books that interest us in the nonfiction section by doing a quick survey of the subjects in the nonfiction section.

Students looked at titles within each hundred (000-099, 100-199, etc.) and inferred some subtopics included in that category.  I am entering them all into Wordle by group and we will continue the exercise next week.  In small groups, students will examine the most common topics and find ones they are interested in pursuing.  We will also discuss the "weird" things they found and questioned me about, including:

• "Why are graphic novels, poetry, fairytales and folktales in nonfiction?"
• "What does "Generalities" mean for the 000-099 range?"  
• "Why are biographies in 92 and collective biographies in 920?"

Here is the first Wordle word cloud for the 000-099 range, created from subjects the students found themselves:

Book Fair

The Ridgecrest Library held its semi-annual Book Fair from Wednesday, March 6th through Friday, March 8th.  It was a success in terms of getting books into kids' hands and raising money for the library program.  We gave away over $100 in books to students who needed them, which always feels like a huge win.  The library will receive $1600 in cash to purchase new books, and I was able to select $1300 in Scholastic-published books from the book fair, both for the library's collection and to give away as part of our popcorn book giveaway once a month.

Students are always excited about having the book fair in the library, and I am grateful for the support that our families and community show for reading and the library.  I'm always a little torn, because it does take over the library for a week and make it difficult to do regular business.  Trying to do a thought-provoking lesson or read a serious book is not something to plan for Book Fair week.

I also, in all honesty, have trouble using library teaching time to promote selling anything to students, and using that valuable time to raise money for the library program.  I think that if any other classroom teacher was asked to put their curriculum on hold for a week to raise money to buy their textbooks and paper and classroom library books, there would be an outcry and an outright refusal.  I wish that a book fair could be an optional thing and that adequate budgets were provided to all our school libraries.  Inequity between programs and budgets is the single biggest issue we face as school librarians, I believe.  Students who don't have access to many books at home or public libraries often are those in schools with lower budgets in their library.  The gap between libraries with budgets and those without can be thousands of dollars, which translates to hundreds of fewer books being purchased each year.

In addition, schools with financially struggling families will not benefit as much from a book fair, solely because their families are choosing between putting food on the table and medical care, or gas for their car to get to school and work.  Buying a book for their children is often not going to be at the top of their list, so their students do not have as many books at home and their library does not earn as much from the book fair to put more books on the library shelves.  The gap widens more.

I am very lucky that I feel well-supported both by our building budget and by our PTA, plus we have opportunities to apply for grants from our wonderful Shoreline Public Schools Foundation every year.  However, even with these sources of funding, I find it a struggle to buy enough books to support the curriculum, such as the new science curriculum this year and the upcoming new social studies curriculum, not to mention a new reading curriculum with an emphasis on nonfiction with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards.  A new nonfiction hardcover book will cost more than $20, with cataloging, sales tax, and shipping included.  To purchase one new hardcover book for each students would be a cost of over $10,000 (500 students x $20).  My budget, including grants and book fair money, is less than half that amount, and I still have to buy fiction and everybody books to support reading for pleasure and in-class expectations for fiction.

I want to provide as many books as I can that students will want to read and teachers will find useful in their classrooms, while staying within a budget that allows me to spend approximately $10 per student. This tightrope is one I walk every year, deciding how to best spend my funds to support everyone and make this library functional and attractive and available to all readers and staff.  How someone does this without a healthy budget is beyond me, and I wish that my library program did not have to shut down two weeks a year to help provide those funds for our program.  Two weeks out of 36 weeks may not seem like a lot of time, but it really means two classes out of thirty-six total library sessions each year.  When I describe myself and my job as a teacher-librarian, I do not include the fundraiser part of my job, because the teaching is the core of why I am a teacher-librarian.

Caldecott and Newbery Awards 2013

It was time for, as one teacher friend put it, the Oscars for librarians this morning, with the webcast of the American Library Association Youth Media Awards live from the ALA Midwinter conference in Seattle, of all places!

The last few years I have put the webcast up on the TV (donated by our lovely PTA) and watched, whether there was a class in the library or not.  Today the 58 5th graders arrived for checkout partway through the webcast, but before the Caldecott and Newbery Awards were revealed.  It was a lot of fun to have some students standing around watching with me as the winners were announced.  At one point one of my 5th grade boys was oohing and aahing with every book announced just like me, as his teachers were laughing at us cheering in stereo.

For once in my librarian career, I had highly recommended the book that won the Newbery, The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate, as a read-aloud to several teachers who took me up on my suggestion.  At least three classes read it aloud at the beginning of the school year, and students loved it.  They learned all about Ivan and his life at the Tacoma shopping mall, then at the Atlanta Zoo.  We watched excerpts from National Geographic's special about urban gorillas, which showed how very small and concrete Ivan's enclosure was at the shopping mall.

I quote the first chapter to anyone who will listen.

I am Ivan.  I am a gorilla.  It's not as easy as it looks.

I am also a huge fan of Jon Klassen, the author and illustrator of This is Not My Hat, the 2013 Caldecott winner.  Last spring I read I Want My Hat Back to every 2nd-6th grade class, and laughed out loud every time myself.  It was a fabulous text for inference, and the reaction of each class to the end of the book was priceless to watch and listen to.  I highly recommend reading his books to intermediate classes for the reactions alone.

Congratulations to all the winners of the Youth Media Awards, I look forward to reading and sharing all of the titles with my students!