Greetings!
I have had a few requests lately for policies for the library. Some of you are getting ready for school evaluations. I feel your pain! I have sent this in past years, but it is always good to be reminded of this point.
I just looked up the word ‘policy’ in the dictionary and found that it means ‘a plan or course of action’. That is exactly why we all need policies in our schools. You all have policies for your school and having a policy in place for the library is also a wise move. You may not ever use it, but it is there in the event you need it. You won’t have to scramble to quickly make up something and then be accused of showing partiality toward or against a student or parent. The policy is there and in place already.
I have a policy for the selection of books, the maintenance of the collection (weeding), and a reconsideration policy.
My Reconsideration Policy is important because there are times that someone may challenge a book that you have in the library. The policy gives you time to reevaluate the material and also time for the person who has challenged the book to also explain why he or she feels the book is inappropriate. I heard of a person who searched a school library catalog online and sent a list of books that he felt should be removed from the library. He had searched the terms “witch” and “magic” and found books on optical illusions and a historical novel titled “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” about a woman who was accused of being a witch but was not. He had not read the books and did not know what was in them, but immediately jumped to the conclusion that the books were inappropriate by simply reading the titles.
There is a Reconsideration Form that the person who has challenged material in the library must fill out explaining what is inappropriate about the book. This gives you time to reevaluate the book and also gives assurance to the challenger that he or she will be heard and given respect for his or her opinions.
I have had books challenged in the past and most of the time, I immediately realized that the book was not worth fighting for and removed it from the collection. Later I put the Reconsideration Policy in place so I have it ready just in case I need it.
I will attach both the Selection Policy and the Reconsideration Form to this email. If you have any questions, please let me know.
Have a great week.
Audrey
Monday, January 28, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Silent Reading
Greetings!
When I began teaching in a two-teacher classroom, I had 15 students in grades 5 – 8 and only about 3 of them enjoyed reading for pleasure. All of them could read, but they just didn’t. I don’t remember when I learned of Sustained Silent Reading (at that time it was called Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading or USSR for short), but it sounded like a time where I could read silently in school without feeling guilty! I began to implement this with the guidelines I learned about. The students each had self-selected reading material and when everyone was settled in their chairs, I set a timer and we began. I began with 10 minutes and we worked up to 20 minutes a day. It was on the schedule and we very seldom skipped the time slot. At first, students reluctantly pulled out their books, but soon they started looking forward to this time slot. “Time for Russia!” one boy would call out jokingly. By the end of the school year, 14 out of 15 of my students enjoyed reading for pleasure.
A few years later I taught a self-contained third grade class and implemented Sustained Silent Reading there. (I left off the “Uninterrupted” word.) I began in third grade with 5 minutes a day for about a week until they had the hang of it, then increased the time to 10 minutes for a few weeks, and finally went to 15 minutes a day. Again I set a timer and we all read our books. When students left my third grade classroom they were all reading well above grade level. The only thing I did that the other teachers did not do was to have the silent reading period daily.
A daily silent reading period helps students learn to enjoy reading. Think about it. All the other reading students do in school is for schoolwork , but this is the one time that THEY can choose what to read and they don’t have to do a report on it. Some teachers ask students to read for a certain amount of time at home, and this is good, but they most likely don’t see the modeling they see at school.
The following guidelines are the ones I used.
1. Explain what silent reading is. Explain what sustained means. During this time no one is talking or moving around the room. Everyone has a book or enough reading material to last for the time without having to get up and distract everyone in order to find another book. If you have a multigrade classroom or non-readers, consider having baskets for younger students to fill with enough books to browse through silently.
2. During the silent reading time, everyone is reading silently. This includes the teacher and any visitors to the room. I have had adult observers or guests in our room and we explain that everyone reads. Since I tend to lose track of time while reading, I set a timer for the time period. I quietly ask if everyone is ready and start the timer. We all are settled and all are reading. At first you may need to gently instruct those who whisper or get up to get another book. I stop the timer and remind everyone that this reading time is silent. I also stop the timer if someone gets up and moves around. Then the next day, I double check to make sure that everyone has enough to read for the time period before we begin. Make sure that students have had bathroom breaks before you start.
3. This program must be regular. Daily is best. If you have it sporadically, it will not have the impact on reading it should have. Think about having math once in a while. What kind of math skills will the students learn? You need to make time for this.
It generally takes a few days, but they catch on very quickly and within a week or two, we are quickly settled and ready to read. After a week or so, I tell the students that we are now going to read for 10 minutes, then later increase it to 15 minutes.
After a couple of months of SSR, I plan a Read-In. I tell students they can bring a healthy snack and a pillow or blanket and we will settle in on the floor and have SSR for 30 minutes. They love this! After a few weeks, they are begging to do it again. Sometimes the class is working toward a reward and we vote to have a Read-In for our class treat. I usually have a Read-In only about about 4 – 5 times during the year and always choose a Friday for it. It is a great way to end the week.
So to sum up my guidelines for SSR:
1. DAILY
2. SUSTAINED
3. SILENT
4. Teacher modeling reading.
5. Call it what you want: SSR, DEAR time, etc., just DO it!
I believe you will be surprised and pleased with the results after even a fairly short time. I’d love to hear about your Silent Reading Plan.
Have a great week.
Audrey
When I began teaching in a two-teacher classroom, I had 15 students in grades 5 – 8 and only about 3 of them enjoyed reading for pleasure. All of them could read, but they just didn’t. I don’t remember when I learned of Sustained Silent Reading (at that time it was called Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading or USSR for short), but it sounded like a time where I could read silently in school without feeling guilty! I began to implement this with the guidelines I learned about. The students each had self-selected reading material and when everyone was settled in their chairs, I set a timer and we began. I began with 10 minutes and we worked up to 20 minutes a day. It was on the schedule and we very seldom skipped the time slot. At first, students reluctantly pulled out their books, but soon they started looking forward to this time slot. “Time for Russia!” one boy would call out jokingly. By the end of the school year, 14 out of 15 of my students enjoyed reading for pleasure.
A few years later I taught a self-contained third grade class and implemented Sustained Silent Reading there. (I left off the “Uninterrupted” word.) I began in third grade with 5 minutes a day for about a week until they had the hang of it, then increased the time to 10 minutes for a few weeks, and finally went to 15 minutes a day. Again I set a timer and we all read our books. When students left my third grade classroom they were all reading well above grade level. The only thing I did that the other teachers did not do was to have the silent reading period daily.
A daily silent reading period helps students learn to enjoy reading. Think about it. All the other reading students do in school is for schoolwork , but this is the one time that THEY can choose what to read and they don’t have to do a report on it. Some teachers ask students to read for a certain amount of time at home, and this is good, but they most likely don’t see the modeling they see at school.
The following guidelines are the ones I used.
1. Explain what silent reading is. Explain what sustained means. During this time no one is talking or moving around the room. Everyone has a book or enough reading material to last for the time without having to get up and distract everyone in order to find another book. If you have a multigrade classroom or non-readers, consider having baskets for younger students to fill with enough books to browse through silently.
2. During the silent reading time, everyone is reading silently. This includes the teacher and any visitors to the room. I have had adult observers or guests in our room and we explain that everyone reads. Since I tend to lose track of time while reading, I set a timer for the time period. I quietly ask if everyone is ready and start the timer. We all are settled and all are reading. At first you may need to gently instruct those who whisper or get up to get another book. I stop the timer and remind everyone that this reading time is silent. I also stop the timer if someone gets up and moves around. Then the next day, I double check to make sure that everyone has enough to read for the time period before we begin. Make sure that students have had bathroom breaks before you start.
3. This program must be regular. Daily is best. If you have it sporadically, it will not have the impact on reading it should have. Think about having math once in a while. What kind of math skills will the students learn? You need to make time for this.
It generally takes a few days, but they catch on very quickly and within a week or two, we are quickly settled and ready to read. After a week or so, I tell the students that we are now going to read for 10 minutes, then later increase it to 15 minutes.
After a couple of months of SSR, I plan a Read-In. I tell students they can bring a healthy snack and a pillow or blanket and we will settle in on the floor and have SSR for 30 minutes. They love this! After a few weeks, they are begging to do it again. Sometimes the class is working toward a reward and we vote to have a Read-In for our class treat. I usually have a Read-In only about about 4 – 5 times during the year and always choose a Friday for it. It is a great way to end the week.
So to sum up my guidelines for SSR:
1. DAILY
2. SUSTAINED
3. SILENT
4. Teacher modeling reading.
5. Call it what you want: SSR, DEAR time, etc., just DO it!
I believe you will be surprised and pleased with the results after even a fairly short time. I’d love to hear about your Silent Reading Plan.
Have a great week.
Audrey
Monday, January 14, 2013
Google Power Searching Course
Greetings!
This past fall I took an online course from Google called Power Searching. The course teaches some tips and tricks to searching for material on the internet. Some of what was taught I knew, but I learned a lot of useful information and some things that were just plain cool! I had a great time, learned a lot, and was able to do this somewhat at my own pace. The course lasted for two weeks and the lessons needed to be completed in that time slot. At the end of the course when I completed the coursework, I received a certificate from Google.
Here is some of what I learned in the course.
1. Weather: If you want to know what the weather is somewhere, type “weather Portland, OR” or “weather London” and press ENTER. You will then see the weather for the next 5 days.
2. Calculator: type a calculation and press ENTER. You will see the answer in the results window.
3. Google Images: You can filter the results by using the sidebar information. If you want pictures of red frogs, click on the red square. If you want line drawings to use for a coloring page, you can do this, also.
The whole course was really interesting and took only about 10 – 12 hours. I really learned a lot of stuff and then, because I am a teacher, I wanted to share it with everyone. Plus, it is FREE! Plus, educators in the North Pacific Union Conference can count this for clock hours if you keep track of the time you spend on the course. Plus, you can do it at your own rate. A fun course that is FREE where I can get technology clock hours is worth a few hours of my time and I thought that many of you might feel the same way. And did I mention that it is FREE?!
So here you go. Go to www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com and scroll down a bit. You will see two courses. The top one says “Advanced Power Searching” and the lower one says “Power Searching”.
The Power Searching course is the one that I took in the fall. The lessons were revealed a few at a time during the two week period for the class. For each part of the lesson I watched a short video and completed an activity. Each lesson had multiple videos/activities for different parts of the lesson. Each video was less than 10 minutes and the activities were fun and interesting. I could stop any at any point in the lesson and return later to complete it. There were opportunities to communicate with others taking the course from all over the world. I did not choose to do this. Now the Power Searching course is self paced. There are six lessons and each took me approximately 50 minutes to an hour to complete.
The Advanced course begins on January 23, 2013 and you can sign up to take this class. I would imagine it is similar to the Power Searching course I took. Even though this is ‘timed’ it is still self paced during the two weeks the course lasts.
I hope some of you take advantage of the Google Power Searching course or courses. I showed some of the techniques I learned to our faculty in a staff meeting and got a lot of ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Ahhhs’ which was really fun.
I hope you have a great week.
Audrey
This past fall I took an online course from Google called Power Searching. The course teaches some tips and tricks to searching for material on the internet. Some of what was taught I knew, but I learned a lot of useful information and some things that were just plain cool! I had a great time, learned a lot, and was able to do this somewhat at my own pace. The course lasted for two weeks and the lessons needed to be completed in that time slot. At the end of the course when I completed the coursework, I received a certificate from Google.
Here is some of what I learned in the course.
1. Weather: If you want to know what the weather is somewhere, type “weather Portland, OR” or “weather London” and press ENTER. You will then see the weather for the next 5 days.
2. Calculator: type a calculation and press ENTER. You will see the answer in the results window.
3. Google Images: You can filter the results by using the sidebar information. If you want pictures of red frogs, click on the red square. If you want line drawings to use for a coloring page, you can do this, also.
The whole course was really interesting and took only about 10 – 12 hours. I really learned a lot of stuff and then, because I am a teacher, I wanted to share it with everyone. Plus, it is FREE! Plus, educators in the North Pacific Union Conference can count this for clock hours if you keep track of the time you spend on the course. Plus, you can do it at your own rate. A fun course that is FREE where I can get technology clock hours is worth a few hours of my time and I thought that many of you might feel the same way. And did I mention that it is FREE?!
So here you go. Go to www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com and scroll down a bit. You will see two courses. The top one says “Advanced Power Searching” and the lower one says “Power Searching”.
The Power Searching course is the one that I took in the fall. The lessons were revealed a few at a time during the two week period for the class. For each part of the lesson I watched a short video and completed an activity. Each lesson had multiple videos/activities for different parts of the lesson. Each video was less than 10 minutes and the activities were fun and interesting. I could stop any at any point in the lesson and return later to complete it. There were opportunities to communicate with others taking the course from all over the world. I did not choose to do this. Now the Power Searching course is self paced. There are six lessons and each took me approximately 50 minutes to an hour to complete.
The Advanced course begins on January 23, 2013 and you can sign up to take this class. I would imagine it is similar to the Power Searching course I took. Even though this is ‘timed’ it is still self paced during the two weeks the course lasts.
I hope some of you take advantage of the Google Power Searching course or courses. I showed some of the techniques I learned to our faculty in a staff meeting and got a lot of ‘Ooohs’ and ‘Ahhhs’ which was really fun.
I hope you have a great week.
Audrey
Monday, January 7, 2013
Plagiarism
Greetings!
I hope you all had a good vacation and are ready to tackle the next half of the school year.
I am giving library and study skills lessons to the students in grades 5 – 8 and last week I talked about plagiarism. I gave a definition of plagiarism and mentioned that the word comes from the Latin word for “kidnap” which is a good way to explain this to kids.
I also talked to them about how teachers can tell if you have copied and pasted.
1. It is usually obvious.
2. Teachers suspect if there are words in the selection that students do not normally use.
3. Sources can be quickly checked.
One student mentioned that it is OK as long as you cite your sources. But I told them that this is still not OK. They DO need to cite sources, but they also need to put things in their own words. Then, I gave a little demo of how to paraphrase.
First I found a short paragraph in the internet.
“An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth, called a fault. Within seconds, an earthquake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.”
Then I highlighted (shown in bold below) the words and phrases that are unlikely for students to be using. Your students can most likely help you find these, too.
“An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth, called a fault. Within seconds, an earthquake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.”
Next, I made small changes to the paragraph.
Paraphrase (Not acceptable)
An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by a shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth called a fault. In seconds an earthquake lets go of stress that has slowly happened inside the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.
The parts that are in bold lettering are the parts that are not changed and still copied and plagiarized. The students can see immediately that not much has changed and understand that the paragraph is still not in their own words.
I then showed them how to take simple notes on the paragraph.
Notes:
Earthquake – shaking of the ground
Causes – sudden movements of the rock, fault line moves,
Stress builds up in the rocks over long periods of time
Finally I showed them a paragraph rewritten in my own words and an acceptable paraphrase.
Paraphrase (Acceptable)
When the ground suddenly starts shaking, you know an earthquake is happening. This is caused by the sudden movements of the rocks near a fault line. Over long periods of time stress builds up in the rocks and when they move, the ground shakes.
If I were doing this in a classroom setting rather than a 15 minute library lesson period, I would have the students help with each part, and I would also do this with a few paragraphs until I felt that the students had the idea.
Please feel free to use my sample in your lessons if you would like to. I believe that it is important to teach this in elementary school. Somehow I never got this lesson. Teachers would tell us to put it in our own words, but I really didn’t understand until much later.
Have a great week.
Audrey
I hope you all had a good vacation and are ready to tackle the next half of the school year.
I am giving library and study skills lessons to the students in grades 5 – 8 and last week I talked about plagiarism. I gave a definition of plagiarism and mentioned that the word comes from the Latin word for “kidnap” which is a good way to explain this to kids.
I also talked to them about how teachers can tell if you have copied and pasted.
1. It is usually obvious.
2. Teachers suspect if there are words in the selection that students do not normally use.
3. Sources can be quickly checked.
One student mentioned that it is OK as long as you cite your sources. But I told them that this is still not OK. They DO need to cite sources, but they also need to put things in their own words. Then, I gave a little demo of how to paraphrase.
First I found a short paragraph in the internet.
“An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth, called a fault. Within seconds, an earthquake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.”
Then I highlighted (shown in bold below) the words and phrases that are unlikely for students to be using. Your students can most likely help you find these, too.
“An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by an abrupt shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth, called a fault. Within seconds, an earthquake releases stress that has slowly accumulated within the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.”
Next, I made small changes to the paragraph.
Paraphrase (Not acceptable)
An earthquake is the shaking of the ground caused by a shift of rock along a fracture in the Earth called a fault. In seconds an earthquake lets go of stress that has slowly happened inside the rock, sometimes over hundreds of years.
The parts that are in bold lettering are the parts that are not changed and still copied and plagiarized. The students can see immediately that not much has changed and understand that the paragraph is still not in their own words.
I then showed them how to take simple notes on the paragraph.
Notes:
Earthquake – shaking of the ground
Causes – sudden movements of the rock, fault line moves,
Stress builds up in the rocks over long periods of time
Finally I showed them a paragraph rewritten in my own words and an acceptable paraphrase.
Paraphrase (Acceptable)
When the ground suddenly starts shaking, you know an earthquake is happening. This is caused by the sudden movements of the rocks near a fault line. Over long periods of time stress builds up in the rocks and when they move, the ground shakes.
If I were doing this in a classroom setting rather than a 15 minute library lesson period, I would have the students help with each part, and I would also do this with a few paragraphs until I felt that the students had the idea.
Please feel free to use my sample in your lessons if you would like to. I believe that it is important to teach this in elementary school. Somehow I never got this lesson. Teachers would tell us to put it in our own words, but I really didn’t understand until much later.
Have a great week.
Audrey
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