Several months ago, I happened upon a post in a school librarian Facebook group that caught my eye. The original post was from a librarian who had recently had a visit from one of the detectives involved in the case… Read More ›
Student Engagement/ Teaching Models
Tackling Senioritis through Engagement
Anyone who has worked in a high school is familiar with senioritis, the syndrome that causes seniors to relax their academic efforts with the justification that they’ve worked hard for the past four years and deserve a break now. For… Read More ›
Picture Books and Primary Sources: Interview with Chris Barton, Author of All of a Sudden and Forever
Authors of historically based picture books typically focus on one set of primary sources to tell their story, a set of materials connected with one moment in time. In his new book, All of a Sudden and Forever, author Chris… Read More ›
Adding the Fun Angle (or How to Make Information Literacy Engaging)
In my last post, I wrote about how to make the instructional shift from content to process to have students critically think about what they learn. At a recent workshop, a participant made the astute point that students will be… Read More ›
12 More (mostly cheap) Teacher Tricks that Work in an Elementary Library
In 2017, I wrote a blog post titled “12 (mostly cheap) Teacher Tricks that Work in an Elementary Library.” What I did not realize when I wrote that post was the positive response it would receive. The goal was to… Read More ›
“Survey Says…”
Four years ago, I gave my first user survey to students. Still new to my position as librarian/technology integrator, I inherited a traditional library that had fallen out of use, and was desperate to understand what students wanted from their… Read More ›
Thematic Teaching with Kindergarten in the Library
As any elementary librarian knows, kindergarten teachers deserve a special place in heaven. Out of all the grades that I teach, nothing makes me as nervous as the kindergarten classes, especially in September. Forty-five minutes with tiny humans wandering around… Read More ›
Organizing High School Research Using Database Tools
High school students often get a bad rap. They’re accused of being lazy, wasteful, immature . . . the list goes on. Through my experience working with adolescents, however, I’ve found that what most people interpret as irresponsible behavior is… Read More ›
2020 Vision – Goals for My School Library
Happy New Year Hello from the library at the Highland School of Technology in Gastonia, NC. January provides us with a wonderful opportunity to take stock of library services and evaluate their effectiveness. As with personal goals for a new… Read More ›
Picture Books and Primary Sources: A Place to Land by Barry Wittenstein and Jerry Pinkney
Earlier this school year, I interviewed Barry Wittenstein about his newest book, A Place to Land. In the interview, he shared stories about his use of primary sources in the research for his book and the role that they played… Read More ›