Interview #4 What does Explore mean in the Library? What do you do with students in your library to help them explore?

 My fourth  interview was with Mrs. Wilcox   on how she has her students use problem solving throughout library time. Mrs. Wilcox  talks about how her school became STEM certified which created an urgency to look at things that were out there for library appropriate lessons. She has a makerspace that she has had for years which the students love to look at and create things out of paper and blocks. When I asked her how does she EXPLORE in her library, she answered MAKERSPACE is my exploration and Book Journeys. 

I was very excited to hear about book journeys. She said they take a book and normally is a non fiction book and explore the area it is describing in the book. It could be somewhere hot like California or somewhere in the Mid West. They use mapping skills, data skills such as look up crops and food eaten there. She tends to use this as a three week lesson for students to journey through the book, read the book and do some research with these. She used one during Christmas time like this Sara J Creation one to tell the story of the gingerbread man. She was able to make cards and they researched cookie dough and how to make gingerbread cookies. She used this with a fiction book. 

Within this project they had to self assess themselves about making a recipe and creating toppings for the gingerbread. They had to come up with ways to make their gingerbread different she said. 

Exploring through her makerspace as a student she says, helps students with inquiry and knowledge. Many times students work in groups and have to listen to each other before they can begin to find a solution. 

I enjoyed her makerspace and her ideas and want to use some of them in my library one day. 

Interview #3 with a Librarian at the largest high school in our district!

 It has been such a wonderful experience getting to interview and do a Zoom Virtual Tour of many libraries within my district. I was able to walk through our largest high school in our district, Sumter High School. I was able to speak with head librarian Ronda Speed and was able to ask her what her life is like being in a large high school and here is what she had to say.

Mrs. Speed has been a librarian for the past fourteen years. She has been in education for over 19 years. She enjoys reading and helping other students. Her favorite part of her library is her collection of over 25, 000 books and her technology area upstairs full of technology for students to use. She is an avid love of teaching students how to find a just right book. Within the shared foundations, INCLUDE is one that Mrs. Speed and I talked about. We talked about how to create an enviroment where students could learn more about different cultures through stories and books. She does a Book Taste PreCovid where she has different snacks she gets from grant from other countries and uses Books by Authors and Books about different countries to get her students involved and include all students. Through the books and taste of snacks, students get involved in learning about traditions and how others are different and live different in their culture. She has normally a speaker from Zimbabwe which talks about his culture and how he includes others in the learning process. 

As I virtually Zoomed with Mrs. Speed, I could see the love on the walls she had from others making different things from around the world. I love her use of flags hanging around the library to give the students a sense of many different cultures and loves. 

Interview #2 Librarian from the Elementary world .... What are some fun things you do to teach INQUIRY skills?

 

Meeting Up with Mrs. Louise Kay who has been a librarian for the past fifteen years. 

     When thinking about the word INQUIRE, Mrs. Kay says many things pops to mind in her home at her school library. Many of her students are curious to what type of books she has in the library. They have a chance to explore on their own with passes given from their teachers in small group settings. She loves to create posters with her students on subjects that interest them. With this, they build upon a list of books in the library that they could use to make this a four week long project.  It might be subjects like historical fiction, butterflies, technology and things like real world connections. Within these posters, they learn to use different types of software and programs such as see saw, poster my wall, and canva. The teacher has set up virtual lessons and videos through google classroom for students to use to create their posters. 

Here is an example of one of the students from her class last spring and one of the posters they created. With this, students are responsible for their own learning and reading of books they would enjoy from what they chose in a subject. The students she said are able to INQUIRE through generating products that illustrate learning. 

Interviewing a few Librarians and guess what I found out.....

 Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a Librarian in a school setting? What does your day look like? What do you do? How do you Reach Students. For my new post, I was able to speak to four different librarians from my school district and here is what they had to say!  Happy Reading from Mrs. DeLavan.. 

  Every Librarian has AASL standards that must be addressed in their library during the school year just like teachers. Here are four shared foundations I am going to address through my interviews.

The first one is COLLABORATE!   INTERVIEW #1 

I was so excited to meet up with Lessie Bernshouse from Millwood Elementary school in Sumter, South Carolina. She has been a librarian for eight years and has been in education for twelve years. I talked to Mrs. Bernshouse about how she collaborates in her school with her teachers, students and staff. 

Mrs. Bernshouse talked about how she has created many forms such as google forms, padlets for her students to reach out with ideas about what they would like to see in the library. With her teachers, she tries to meet with grade levels to think and work together in a collaboration of ideas to form one main goal for projects, research and reading. Pre Covid, Mrs. Bernshouse would have meetings before the classes began to work on building relationships. Within this morning meeting, library lessons are set to strengthen a skill set that the teacher has requested more support for. 

With Covid19 being a different mind set at school, Mrs. Bernshouse has set several collaboration goals that she is hoping to implement. She wants to provide tutorial videos on different tools that she thinks would be beneficial for teachers and students. Also she is going to try and provide tutorial videos on different tools for teachers they may not have time to research due to the overwhelming part of their job teaching virtually and face to face. 

Mrs. Bernshouse has collaborated this year with two fourth grade teachers on padlet and how to use flipgrid with stories. She has provided each teacher a google form with things they may be interested in learning about. 

Her main collaboration she says each year (in a normal year) is collaborating with students and asking their input on purchases in the library. She sends out surveys and ask them what they want to read about the next. She also ask them at the end of the year what changes could be made to make the library program better the following year. I thought this was an excellent idea on collaborations and will use this for my library.