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Thanks to all of you who responded. You'll find some great ideas contributed here for involvement in literacy at your schools! Best, Toni HIGH SCHOOL My last school was in FL and we were a Florida Reading Initiative high school- basically it was whole curriculum reading program. Everyone from gym teachers to science teachers to media specialists were expected to teach reading. The things that we did in the library were: vocab word wall, reading out loud to our regular classes (a short story from Chicken Soup, etc.) and starting a book club. It was a cool program. *** I'm so proud of my administrators! As a result of our self-study for our Middle States re-accreditation process, our school formulated goals to improve literacy. Our administrators formed a literacy committee and named me, the librarian, chairperson. There is at least one member from each department on the committee. I just assumed they would appoint me to the technology committee, because that's where the library fits in the Middle States process, but they are smarter than that. We are a parochial girls' 9-12 college preparatory school. We have been given all our staff development time to meet and work on promoting our literacy goals. I'm happy to provide any other information you want. **** Kinko's donates a monthly 24x36 full-color "READ" poster (like the ones in ALA Graphics), featuring one of our students. I take their pictures and format the poster file; Kinko's does the rest! Students select a few of their favorite books from our library for the display case, and I type up their paragraph (describes why reading is important in their life.) This case is outside the door of the library, which is near the front entrance of the school, so it is very visible. *** I just wanted to respond in two ways. First is that here at my high school, I promote reading through making the library a pleasant place to be and purchasing high interest material for my students. We are currently working on developing some kind of "drop everything and read" program, as well. Second, however, I'd like to say be careful what you ask for. Although I understand your desire for librarians to be deeply involved in the education of students, unfortunately many elementary school librarians are now being forced to teach reading groups every day during their "free time", meaning the time they don't have classes scheduled. Meaning the time they need for collection development and maintenance, collaboration with teachers, development of programs, lesson-planning, and other managerial and administrative functions as well. I personally am "sick" of seeing the role of the librarian undervalued and misunderstood and seeing professional librarians forced to carry out tasks which are not appropriate to their positions while necessary functions go undone due to lack of time. *** Glad you sent this out! My high school is one of 4 schools in the state of Virginia to receive a HUGE 3 year grant to improve content literacy. We're working with the University of Kansas' Center for Research on LEarning. Anyway, I'm one of the teacher/leaders for the school, ensuring that we are supporting literacy instruction throughout the school in every way possible. We are using the same instructional models as the other teachers when we do instruction with students. I'm on the planning committee that is intensively involved in training teachers. We've helped with technology solutions where nobody thought there was even an issue to be fixed but technology made it so much better! I've share the Scholastic document "School Libraries Work" with the University of Kansas people (they didn't know there was any research on libraries and student achievement and they're VERY in to everything being backed up with research). The latest in the ongoing saga of this project (it just started in May) is that librarians are going to be added to the teacher/leader team in ALL schools involved in this project. The end result is that we will become demonstration sites for other schools in the state (and nation) when it comes to improving content literacy. *** MIDDLE SCHOOL I am in 7-12 building. I am on PD committee. Last year and this year one of our focuses is reading comprehension. I have acquired a nice group of books on the subject specifically for use in middle and high schools. I have helped model the reading strategies for staff members at our in-service days and also help teachers use reading strategies in collaborartive lessons. Writing to text and multi-step problem solving are our other goals and I likewise help model strategies and techniques at in-services for improving student achievement in these areas as well. I also present lessons to students to address all the above goals as do all other professional staff members. As a library media specialist, I not only have lessons on reading comprehension but also math multi-step problem solving. It certainly helps students and faculty to see me as a real teacher. *** Some of the things that I do 1)I'm chair of the professional development committee at my school. We help plan faculty meetings and inservice days. I often present things at the meetings. 2) I attend many literacy workshops, including a great one last summer that included Jeff Wilhelm, Laura Robb, and Jim Burke. 3) I'm on numerous listservs for middle-level literacy. 4) I put myself in the language arts department and attend their meetings. 5) I volunteered for the district-wide Blue Ribbon Committee to examine reading in grades 4-8 in our district. I'm the only media specialist on the committee. None of this would be helpful without bigtime SHARING! I try to do more than just bombard people with emails, articles, etc. Sometimes less is more=a brief mention or example of a technique or book to use can be very valuable to a harried teacher. I've also boosted the titles in our professional library. I use Scholastic points to get some of their worthwhile resources from book order forms, etc. Then you have to let the teachers know you have them! We have bought some other great titles through the professional development committee, many of them from Stenhouse. Last year I even went to the NCTE convention-and I taught science for 23 years. Was that ever weird. Teachers are teachers, but the English bunch was much different from science! ELEMENTARY I have been the director of the AR program for 15 years. This year I am also a reading intervention teacher for 8 periods a week. I have no training as a reading teacher, but I am picking it up and getting better. It is interesting to have the same students one period every day (grade 5) as I have never done that before due to providing planning time. Although it was not my choice to get involved with reading intervention (they needed a body, as we say in the trade), I do believe that the media specialist should get involved in as many aspects of the school as possible. And if one has to do something, one may as well try to do it well! I wish that I had time to read more novels, but I spend so much time fundraising to buy said novels, that I just have to depend on the reviews. Going to AASL will certainly make it easy for me to spend the money this year! So I am very involved in my school, but a bit tired after 29 years. But it sure beats having two or three schools a week like I did for the first 11 years of my career! *** Well, I am left out of the literacy mix officially. This year I decided to focus on making reading and books FUN. We have a new reading program and in the training we were told, and this is a direct quote, "It's not about the story, it's about the skill." The teachers have actually asked us to have fun with the books - do holiday stories and such because they can't. Is my approach scientifically based? No - it's common sense (gasp!) If they don't LIKE to read, they won't read. What good is a skill if it is never used? We adopted the Harcourt Trophies series, as have many schools across NYS as a result of receiving the Reading First grant. Apparently it is one of few "scientifically based" programs out there. The quote came from the Harcourt trainer. The analogy I like is piano playing. My kids were taught the SKILL of playing piano, but not the fun. Today they don't touch the thing. What good is that skill for them? I don't know if this helps because, as I said, I am contributing despite being left out of the mix., but it's the best I can do. (Actually, it may be better that I am out of the loop - I have more freedom!) *** We have taken our state's (MO) GLE's (Grade Level Expectations) for Communication Arts and turned them into a chart that we use to document the ways we teach literacy in the library. I truly feel this is my most important function and I have prominently displayed the poster that states "The more you read, the more you know....." in my library. The main ways I support literacy is with read alouds and SSR. Our classes come for two 30 minute periods per week. We have one 30 min.SSR period per week for our 5th grade. My assistant and I read aloud to all the other groups at least one time a week and we encourage and sometimes have to enforce! SSR after books are checked out. We are beginning to teach even the littlest Kinders about sustaining time with a book. They are doing this in the classroom also. As we do readalouds we build background especially with historical fiction. For example we are reading Saving Grace to 4th grade. This book is set in 1932 during the depression and mentions an icebox. So, we found pictures on the Internet of an icebox. We also ask students to predict at all levels, inference is also addressed. I feel that we are a major part of our balanced literacy program at our school. Jane E. Danielsons, Library Media Specialist Veterans and Stowell Elementary Schools Hannibal, MO 63401 <mailto:jdanielsons@hannibal.k12.mo.us>jdanielsons@hannibal.k12.mo.us This has been a big issue for me, too! In fact, 3 years ago, as part of my evaluation, I wrote a short document about how we can support the literacy instruction in our schools here in Ann Arbor. Right now, I'm involved in a new project that connects literacy and the library. I'm working with all the K-2 teachers and special ed. teachers to acquire lower level texts for our beginning and struggling readers. These will be added to the library and classes will come to the library every day so students can check out a book for independent reading at home that night. The idea behind it is that students need LOTS of Just Right books to read and the library has very little, or nothing, at the lowest levels for beginning readers. The teachers and I have lots of issues to work out with this, but we're all quite excited and eager to see how this benefits our students. This is all still early in the planning stages. Perhaps I'll have more to share about this when I see you. You're right that we often are left out when it comes to literacy support. That's why, when our district moved to Balanced Literacy a few years ago and began training classroom teachers, I pushed (with the support of my principal) to be involved in that training. Currently, I am the only "demonstration teacher" that is a media specialist. I make it clear that I am not a reading instructor, but that through my role as a media specialist, I can and do support the reading instruction in my building. With my new project, I'm hoping to prove that the support I offer makes a difference in student achievement for our students. Toni Buzzeo, MA, MLIS <mailto:tonibuzzeo@tonibuzzeo.com> Maine Library Media Specialist of the Year Emerita Maine Association of School Libraries Board Member Buxton, ME 04093 http://www.tonibuzzeo.com HIGH SCHOOL -------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note: All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. You can prevent most e-mail filters from deleting LM_NET postings by adding LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU to your e-mail address book. To change your LM_NET status, e-mail to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL 3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * Allow for confirmation. * LM_NET Help & Information: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ * LM_NET Archive: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/archive/ * EL-Announce with LM_NET Select: http://elann.biglist.com/sub/ * LM_NET Supporters: http://www.eduref.org/lm_net/ven.html --------------------------------------------------------------------