Day 15: Teaching 3rd, 4th, and 5th

Today was a marathon! I taught all three of Mr. Dent's English classes about how to search using WebPath Express and why using Google and Wikipedia isn't the best method for searches. As I was planning, I tried to create a logical approach as to why these simple-to-use resources weren't the only easy resources out there. Here is the PowerPoint that I used to outline the reasons why Google's exponential results and Wikipedia's authors aren't the smartest ways to research.

Third grade was up first. They were excellent at taking notes and focusing on what I was telling them through the lesson. Especially for a group of all-but-three eight-year-old boys, the students stayed on task with very little prompting. About halfway through, we did an activity on GoNoodle to take a mini brain break to help them stay focused. I was glad I planned this into the lesson because they definitely needed it! When I got to the portion that the students were practicing searches on their own, the students really struggled with following the directions and replicating the results. After seeing the other groups, I think this is because the students aren't developmentally ready to do this sort of research on their own. Their follow along papers and answers in class showed that they knew what I was talking about, but then they still needed the step-by-step instructions to complete an individual assignment.

The fourth graders were the best to work with. They were excited before I even got started, but were also focused and prepared to do this work. I think these students got the most out of the lesson. These students had recently completed a research project for a wax museum. Their resources were pre-selected books from the library as well as informational websites pre-posted on the library's homepage. This made the students familiar with the research process, but not knowing all the things about how to search on their own. When they got to the independent practice portion, the students could complete the activity with little assistance. A few of the students would struggle with one step or another, but the rest of the table group was really good about leaning over and giving an extra hand or direction. They were definitely the most fun group to teach, and I think they got the most out of this lesson.

The fifth graders were attentive and added great experience and knowledge to the class discussion and lecture. On the other hand, the students thought they already knew what to do with research, so their follow along papers and independent practice was the least accurate of the three classes. When I said this to Mr. Dent, he also suggested that since these students are gifted-labelled they can sometimes act this way with lessons on any day. Despite this, I think that the concepts I was teaching were both well received and well understood. This lesson took the shortest of the three classes, but the students had independent reading they continued once my lesson was over.

Overall I thought that the lesson went well, especially considering I had not taught any third, fourth, or fifth graders before. I would definitely break up the lesson for third graders and make sure the lessons developed over more time and multiple units. I think this way would help the students learn better and more effectively. Clearly, this lesson was best appropriate for fourth grade. I think that all of the students got something out of the lesson, but the fourth graders definitely benefitted the most from this message. By doing the same lesson with multiple grades, I learned a lot about the ability levels of each age as well as the sort of emotional/presentation tactics that appeal more to younger or older students. Even though there are less than three years difference between most of the students' ages, the outlook on learning, social habits, and performance ability were vastly different for each grade level. Mr. Dent's only constructive criticism was the length of the lesson--not that the students were engaged for too long, but that most teachers would be unwilling to "sacrifice" that much of their instructional time to give for the LMS. Especially as the only students that come to the LMC on a regular basis are K4, K, 1, and SPED, I was not surprised by this comment. However, in my own LMC, I will want to make my instruction a regular part of the curriculum and growth for the students year to year. 

Day 14: Finalizing Plans

Today I spent more time than I expected finalizing the lesson for tomorrow. A big reason this took longer than expected is to prepare for the guests Ravenel will be hosting tomorrow. Literacy coaches from the district are coming to observe in several classrooms for the day to see practices and behaviors of the students and teachers. I asked if this required me to teach on another day, but Mr. Dent insisted that they were interested in all aspects of the curriculum. Thankfully, I teach the same and am comfortable regardless of who is in my room! (Not that I'm not a little extra nervous to have a few more intelligent adults present for my first lesson to eight, nine, and ten-year-olds!) Because they are visiting, I created a more detailed rationale lesson plan to have available for these visitors.

I had also planned to teach the students via real-time modeling. The internet had been having connectivity issues earlier in the week, so i decided to add screenshots to a PowerPoint to make sure that the students could at least see the portions of WebPath Express that they would be using. This was an easy addition to the lesson, but did take some time to create and crop screenshots.

I also wrestled with the copier for a bit. Such inevitable moment of an internship! Though I had had some problems with copying the bookmarks/book handouts during my booktalks in February, I again struggled with sending a document digitally to the copier. Between all the drawers and passwords, it is one of the most complicated systems in the library!

Unfortunately, finalizing the lesson and pulling resources for teachers was almost all I got accomplished today. I was thankful that Cindy recognized this need and allowed me to focus my work. I also apologized to Toni for not being able to help with the books' circulation. This is something I will have to work toward as a full LMS: not feeling guilty for doing my parts of the job while an assistant shelves books, etc, and better using my time to prepare for lessons and curriculum development.

Battle of the Books: Promoting Literacy

Oconee County holds an annual "reading incentive" program called the Battle of the Books. This program is based on the national program as a tournament of knowledge and experience with a set book list. The Oconee program uses ten of the South Carolina Children's Book Award Nominees for the year as a reading list for these teams. This year's list included a range of titles, of which I read The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare.

The tournament in Oconee works that several teams are formed in September-ish by volunteers from fourth and fifth grades. Each team is made up of five students, chosen by the students themselves. Ravenel had about five teams by the time I began my internship, but some teams had already been eliminated through lack of participation and readership. Throughout the first semester, these students read the books listed, completed Accelerated Reader tests on the titles, and met on occasion for practice questions and discussion of the titles.

In January, the students competed at the school level to decide which team would be competing at the district level. This is a big readership and literacy night for the school, as the competition is very much a point-based "sport" that results in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams. Once all of the elementary schools in the district have competed within their schools to determine a winner, each schools' #1 team is sent to the district competition, held at one of the elementary schools. On the day of the competition, the student teams go for two rounds against a different randomly-drawn team each time. Once all the teams have competed two rounds, the total number of points earned determines the top three competitors for the final round. Out of ten schools, this three is rather elite! Finally, the three schools compete in the final round to determine the overall winner of Battle of the Books and to receive a trophy for the library and medals for each student.

This program is a huge community event for the librarians at each of the schools. The librarians and students have been prepping for months: first selecting the books and generating questions to the final moments of team practices and the school-level competition night. Yesterday after school, the librarians all met at the assigned elementary school (Blue Ridge Elementary) to set up rooms, chairs, paperwork, and other details to ensure the success of the event today. Once we all arrived this morning at 7:30, we finished set up of snacks for volunteers and technology for presentations and record-keeping.

The students were clearly excited to compete, arriving to their team t-shirt and waiting coaches/librarians. The rounds themselves were respectfully tense, in a good way, and very few teams were overly upset about the results. One reason for this is the hidden nature of the scores for each of the teams. You really only know how you and the team you are singly against are doing. Though Ravenel's team lost both of the individual rounds, we ended up placing fourth in the competition overall. I really like the ambiguity so no one gets so down feeling in last place or feeling so far behind. After these two rounds, all of the teams were given a participation medal before the emcee announced the final three teams competing. I was a little disappointed that so many of the "losing" schools left after the announcement of the final three, but I suppose busy lives with children can only allow for so much.

In the end, Orchard Park Elementary won the competition for the first time since the Battle of the Books Inception six years ago. I only saw one with tears and too many of the others were still excited for having read the books, competed, and won their own school's Battle. During the practices at Ravenel, you could clearly see the students discussing the books and the experiences they had reading each title. Overall, this seems like a giant win for promoting reading and literacy on a recreational, extracurricular level.

After the event, the librarians were discussing potential improvements for next year's program. I began taking notes on this document for the clearly exhausted librarians. They will be discussing this (and other topics) at their next district-level meeting within the month. One of the biggest areas for improvement I saw as an outsider is the limited use of the questions, reading, and effort put into each year's competition. For each year, the librarians have entirely changed the booklist based on the SCASL awards. At their meeting, I would like to suggest two from each of the previous years, cycling in two new titles each year. This way, the titles are still rotating, but good books and hard work are still used and reused for the program. Ultimately, the list could become strong with high-interest novels that would even further promote literacy and recreational reading.

Day 7: Book Talks LIVE!

The Ravenel Library is set up with a section for popular series, to make frequently circulated books easy to locate and shelve. Many of the students go first to this section which contains series titles such as:

• Big Nate
• Spirit Animals
• Magic Tree House
• Geronimo Stilton
• Series of Unfortunate Events
• Junie B. Jones
• I Survived
• Bad Kitty
• etc.

While this is an excellent system for helping kids easily find titles and interesting books, the series with less books or with less familiarity are often overlooked by the students. Cindy asked me to conduct book talks over some of those series that she felt could be well-received by Ravenel's upper grade population.

Using Amazon’s Editorial Reviews sections, Goodreads reviews, the book jackets themselves, and the upcoming Book Fair previews, I combined some information to present to the students live in Mr. Dent’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade "gifted literature" classes. I tried to vary the books I presented within the list that Cindy suggested of less-circulated books, appealing to both boys and girls, offering shorter and longer stories, and ranging story contents. I decided to pick four titles per grade level, using one title to mention the Book Fair availability.

I first generated mini "speeches" that I would give during the book talks and then created handouts to go along with each presentation. My original intent was to create bookmarks with these titles on them; however, my computer and copy skills did not quite follow along! You can see that my handouts became more like my original vision as the grade level (the day's schedule) increases. Despite my tech-flubs, the students did not seem to notice one way or another the way the pages were written.

Booktalk Handouts 3rd
Booktalk Handouts 4th
Booktalk Handouts 5th

Once I was in the rooms to present, I found that the script I had created was too rigid to "perform" live. I still plan to record these book talks, so the scripts can still be useful; however, the reactions/interaction with the students required more flexibility. In this situation, I found the students both engaged and potentially excited in response to the titles. In the moment, I realized that the students needed some interactive piece to these book talks: STARS! I directed the students to draw one to five stars based on their interest for the title. This spur-of-the-moment thought worked exceptionally better than I expected, as the students enjoyed trying to draw stars, added twenty-two stars for some they were VERY excited about, and talked with their table-peers about which book interested them the most. Both the students and the teacher seemed excited about at least some of the titles which had them talking even as I was leaving the room!

I knew that the book talks were at least some success when several students came to the library to either check out or reserve the titles I had suggested. One student even came in with the handout to remind him of which one he wanted! Though a little intimidating and requiring a good bit of energy to hype the books up, this seems like a practice worthwhile for a few times over the year in my own library career.