This past month we've been able to coordinate more of what's happening in the library with what's happening in classrooms at various grade levels, which has meant some more effective learning and support for classroom teachers! As always, I try to weave in general library and research skills with what kids are already learning, to provide just in time library instruction instead of just in case instruction.
Kindergarten/1st Grade
Our kindergarten classes are now all experts on the "Secret Code" for picture books ("It's the letter EEEEE!"), so we've begun talking about the other codes in our library. We've taken a look at some nonfiction books, and compared them with picture books about the same subject. For example, here are two books about bears - which one will tell a story, and which will give us information? We then talked about things we already knew about bears, and used the text features in the nonfiction books (the table of contents, the glossary, and the index) to find out what we wanted to know about bears. Aftewards, we read A Visitor for Bear and compared what we'd learned about bears to how the bear acted in the story - what was the same? What was different?
| Click to find this in the Stevens Memorial Library catalog! |
| Click to find this in the Stevens Memorial Library catalog! |
2nd Grade
The second graders got a chance to try out some old-fashioned library detective work as we used nonfiction books to explore information about animals. Some of the older grades had used the databases to look up information on different kinds of animals, so I figured having the second graders practice with books was a great transition!
Most of our school libraries have animal encyclopedias, so we talked about how an encyclopedia is a different kind of nonfiction book - it's a reference material that we use to quickly look up information, and we don't have to read the whole thing to get what we need! I was very impressed by how excited the kids were about choosing an animal, and using the text features to figure out what that animal ate and where that animal lives.
Most of our school libraries have animal encyclopedias, so we talked about how an encyclopedia is a different kind of nonfiction book - it's a reference material that we use to quickly look up information, and we don't have to read the whole thing to get what we need! I was very impressed by how excited the kids were about choosing an animal, and using the text features to figure out what that animal ate and where that animal lives.
3rd Grade
The third graders and I have been doing a bit of research online, and that's lead to a discussion about plagiarism. While certainly not a huge problem in grade school, plagiarism is a concept that even high school and college students struggle to understand; therefore, it's important that we get kids thinking early about what it means to give credit to sources, and to make sure they understand the difference between learning and copying information. For this lesson, I used a lot of resources from Common Sense Media, a wonderful website for parents and teachers that includes information on age-appropriate media for kids and digital safety!
4th & 5th Grade
The oldest grades have been working on practicing using our online databases to do research, as well as creating Google Presentations and Organizing our Research. We've also been getting a sneak peak at creating Works Cited pages, something that's required of all 6th graders. The idea is, the more we reinforce the importance of proper citations, the less trouble students will have in middle and high school.
Here's the citation page they use at the middle school:
Here's the citation page they use at the middle school:
