January 25, 2012

We try to offer as many reading incentives as possible at OCS.  The Accelerated Reader program is used extensively by all three grade levels.  We use the Renaissance Place web-based version that allows students to have access to every AR quiz made.  I am responsible for maintaining the Renaissance Place account as well as recognition of students who earn points and point club levels.  I also maintain the AR Wall of Fame on a bulletin board outside of the library:

The lists contains names of students in each of the Point Clubs (25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000) and is updated at the end of every term and each mid-term.  I also create an announcement with the same names that is announced on our morning announcement program.  Students LOVE to hear their names on the "news" and are eager to look at their names posted on the wall!

Since our LMC is very limited on space (900 square feet including storage & restroom), I have minimal wall space to display reading posters.  However, I do have several of the narrow posters that I display to encourage reading.  I have also given out the matching bookmarks as well as plenty of other bookmarks to students checking out books.  For special events (such as "Library Lovers Month" in February) I make bookmarks on colored paper which the students LOVE!  I also shared the bookmark template with LMSs in the district.

 

January 18, 2012

Over the last few weeks since Winter Break, 7th grade students have been coming to the media center on a regular basis to work on their Social Science Fair projects.  They have been doing research both on the computers and in our print collection.  Unlike past years, the new teacher in this class decided not to bring the students down for information skills classes to kick off their research.  So as the students come to the media center in groups of eight, (sometimes more as both the social studies and language arts teachers are working jointly on the SS Fair), I work with them to help them find print resources as well as online resources using our World Book Online, GALILEO, NetTrekker, Infotopia, and, their favorite, of course, Google.  Our director of instruction also came down most of last week to help them as I do not have a clerk to cover the other LMC duties which would allow me to give them my full attention. They've done pretty well considering their topics are so broad and varied.  They each get to pick their own topic so no two are alike. I was unable to create a pathfinder that would cover so many different topics, but students did refer quite often to the school Students Online page I created that has lots of helpful links.  Overall, this was a great collaborative teaching project between the LA and SS teachers, the director of instruction and me as library media specialist.

January 11, 2012

As a library media specialist with provisional certification, I will be blogging about my learning and library activities at the school where I am employed, Oglethorpe Charter School (OCS), here on my Practicum Blog. 

Today, I, along with the reading teachers, the 'skills for adolescents' teacher and our director of instruction, decided on our Read Across America activity for this year.  Since Dr. Seuss is an author more generally suited for an elementary school setting, it is sometimes difficult to find activities appropriate for middle school students. However, since Accelerated Reader is a large component of our reading program, we decided to be a part of the "Read the Most from Coast to Coast" challenge sponsored by Renaissance Learning which will take place on Dr. Seuss's birthday, March 2, 2012.  The challenge is to break the national one-day record for taking Accelerated Reader Quizzes. The current record is 2,177,586 quizzes in one day which was set last year on Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Although it is still in the planning stages, we discussed having refreshments and prizes for students participating in the challenge.  We are hoping the students will be excited about participating and can feel they are part of a national initiative.

Our reading program at OCS is unique to our district.  We are the only middle school in Chatham County that divides the Language Arts cirriculum into two components.  Every sixth, seventh and eighth grader takes a LA class which focuses on writing, grammar and usage and a LA enrichment class which focuses on reading and literature components.  In the Reading class, students are required to read 30 minutes each day in class, read a certain number of books each quarter, and also take a certain number of Accelerated Reader quizzes and/or earn a minimum number of AR points.   This has proven quite effective, as our 6th graders scored 97% meeeting or exceeding, our 7th graders scored 98% meeting or exceeding, and our 8th grade students scored 100% meeting or exceeding in Reading on the CRCT in 2011.