The Certified School Librarian Is and As a Teacher

Posted on December 15, 2023 by Barbara Paciotti

In why every school needs a real librarian and in guest post, what a school librarian can do for teachers, I touched on roles performed by a certified School Librarian. Then, in a post about leadership, I specified the 5 facets of a School Librarian: experienced teacher, curriculum partner, information specialist, program manager, and education leader.

In this series of blog posts I’ll examine each facet individually, to elaborate on it and to offer how we can best fulfill that role. This first post explores what I consider our most visible and powerful role, yet the one often overlooked, which is the school librarian is/as an experienced teacher.

THE CERTIFIED SCHOOL LIBRARIAN IS A TEACHER

All 50 U.S. States require a certified School Librarian to have a teaching certificate/license and at least a year of teaching experience. (My state, Texas, requires 3 years experience as a classroom teacher.) The reason for this requirement should be apparent: we have close personal contact with every single student in the school, so if we haven’t already had experience working with students, how effective could we possibly be?

Additionally we need the respect of our education colleagues, and we’ll only get that if they see us as an experienced teaching peer. So, whether elementary or secondary, a certified School Librarian is an experienced teacher, just like other teachers in the school.

As a secondary School Librarian, I observed that most SLs had been English Language Arts teachers. It occurs to me that, since literature and books are their forte, it’s why there’s so much talk among School Librarians about promoting independent reading for students and finding “just the right book” to hook them into becoming a reader. If this is the only input other educators get, it might be why they only view us as the person who checks out books.

Perhaps that limited view is also why certified School Librarians are being replaced by paraprofessionals with no education nor experience as teacher nor librarian—often in schools that most need the benefits of a certified School Librarian. So, we must ask ourselves, what can we do to affirm our role as an experienced teacher?

THE CERTIFIED SCHOOL LIBRARIAN AS A TEACHER

I’m a secondary School Librarian with a science, social science, and technology background, so—as I’ve said before—I view pleasure reading as a hobby. Consequently, I believe our goal as a School Librarian has to be supporting reading literacy by teaching students how to read with purpose. That is what students will need to do in their future to accomplish such tasks as:

Completing schoolwork in higher grades and after graduation, whether vocational school, community college, or university.
Filling in important life-based forms, such as a driving license test, a job application, an income tax form. (Have you seen the 1040 instruction book?)
Seeking information from a health plan, an insurance policy, a corporate newsletter, a political action brochure, or any kind of website.

To make “reading with purpose” apparent to everyone in the school, School Librarians need to be seen teaching students as often as possible. We need to have frequent library visits with short, simple lessons that include a student activity which supports and enhances their classroom content learning.

With so many resources at our disposal, it’s really very easy to incorporate “reading with purpose” into a library lesson. Here are some strategies I use that can help you do that:

Make each visit a complete, stand-alone lesson with a single focus, ideally something which students are learning or practicing in that teacher’s classroom. Even a 10-15 minute lesson needs to be thorough in order to be relevant. Use my Library Lesson Planner Template to ensure you meet Standards and lesson flow.
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Use the full range of textual formats as reading sources: picture books, chapter books, short stories, speeches, informational nonfiction books, print and online magazine and newspaper articles, online subscription services including encyclopedias and e-books, hand-picked content-related websites.
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Teach students to always ask themselves while reading, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘how’. These cues help them look more deeply at what they’re reading and they provide a quick way to create a summary of the text.
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I’m a big fan of graphic organizers for lessons. Teachers also love graphic organizers for library visits because it gives them concrete evidence for a daily grade when visiting the library. It’s also our proof of assessment for our lesson when professional evaluation time rolls around!
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At each grade level, begin with a simple source and task that activates prior knowledge, then use each subsequent lesson throughout the year to scaffold toward more complex sources and skills.

This may seem to be a lot to cope with for a simple, short lesson, but as I began being more comprehensive with lesson planning it became much easier to plan for even a short visit. If you need some ideas or guidance, here are some of my efforts.

TEACHING EXAMPLES & INSPIRATION FOR YOU

I’ve written about several ways to implement classroom learning into library visits. Here are a few:

Here are successful lessons I’ve presented that are available in No Sweat Library, my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Creating a Book Quick-Talk for Accountable Talk in the School Library

Students review classroom learning about the 5 elements of narrative fiction–setting, characters, plot, conflict, theme–as they use a 3×5 index card to enter descriptive phrases and put them together to create a 30-second booktalk to share with other students as accountable talk while browsing for a new book to check out.

School Librarians can help students practice classroom learning on the 5 elements of narrative fiction by using them to create a quick booktalk to share with other students as accountable talk in the library when browsing for a new book to check out. | No Sweat Library

Comparing Multicultural Cinderella Fairy Tales to Support 6g ELA

Students review classroom learning about plot elements through an interspersed read-aloud of the original Perrault Cinderella story. For their activity student pairs read an alternate cultural rendition of the story, and compare/contrast cultural elements (studied in Social Studies World Cultures) using a double-bubble graphic organizer.

Students know the Cinderella story, but examining its story elements through an interspersed read-aloud gives it new meaning. Students then read other cultural renditions of the story, and make comparisons to identify the diversity of cultural elements. | No Sweat Library

Exploring Print Magazine Articles with Citing & 5W1H Summarizing

Students choose a print informational magazine and learn the research skill of citing a magazine article. As they read, they practice their classroom learning on summarizing informational text using a custom graphic organizer to record what, where, when, why, who, and how phrases from the article, then summarize from the phrases.

Stimulate students to read your print informational magazines and at the same time prepare them for research by citing an article and refining the skill of summarizing informational text. | No Sweat Library

A School Librarian‘s most purposeful endeavor needs to be as a teacher, which is why classroom experience is needed to become certified. Yet that is not the only role we are called upon to perform. Read my next blog post in this series, which looks at the Certified School Librarian Is and As a Curriculum Integration Partner.

A Better Way for School Librarians to Teach Media Literacy

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Barbara Paciotti

School Librarians know that literacy is more than just reading and writing. It includes disciplinary, information, digital, and media literacies. Media Literacy is especially important because it incorporates all other literacies and directly impacts us through news, films, television shows, websites, music, and social media.

My concern about media literacy lessons is that so many focus on the negative side of media and communication. It leads students to believe they must be suspicious of everything, and perform intricate analyses of every media message. Such stress can result in the opposite reaction than we want—students turn off and ignore caution completely!

I believe students learn far more—and better—when we focus on conceptual understandings and give them a positive activity to demonstrate those concepts. When they use their learning to create something original, concepts become deeply embedded into their knowledge base and they will then automatically gauge the intent of any media message. Such is the thinking behind my Library Lesson Unit for teaching Media Literacy.

MEDIA LITERACY CONCEPTS

The Center for Media Literacy, which has 25 years of experience in this field, puts forward key questions students can ask when viewing a media message, and core concepts that emerge from those questions:

Categories	Key Questions	Core Concepts
Authorship	Who created this message?	All media messages are ‘constructed.’
Purpose	Why is this message being sent?	Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.
Format	What creative techniques are used to attract my attention?	Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
Audience	How might different people understand this message differently?	Different people experience the same media message differently.
Content	What values, lifestyles, and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?	Media have embedded values and points of view.

For my middle school media literacy units I plan my lessons based on age appropriateness and topical content of the grade level. For 6th grade lessons I introduce, what I consider to be, the three foundation questions and concepts—on Authorship, Purpose, and Format. I add Audience for 7th grade because that age/grade is consumed with identity, and add Content for 8th grade because it embodies power & influence, a focus of 8g ELA. In this way we cover all 5 questions and concepts during a student’s time in our middle school.

INTRODUCING MEDIA LITERACY

One thing I’ve discovered about middle schoolers is that they will watch a video of a slideshow more attentively than listen to me show it. So, to introduce Media Literacy and the first 3 Key Questions & Core Concepts to 6th graders, I created a short, 3-minute video.

(If you like this, feel free to use it with your students to begin their exploration of media lit.)

MEDIA LITERACY PERFORMANCE TASK

Since media literacy has fairly complex concepts, I choose a performance task related to something students are already familiar with, one that extends their prior knowledge. My first two 6th grade units (fiction books and informational resources) are closely aligned with English Language Arts content, and focus on reading and summarization (a low-performing area on state reading tests) through graduated forms of booktalks. The media literacy performance task builds on those previous units by having students create a media message in the form of a visual booktalk, which aligns with their ELA study of persuasive text.

It’s important for each library visit to have a hands-on activity that practices what students are learning. So, I use the questions & concepts from the video to introduce students to the visual booktalk project. A Combination Notes activity helps them visualize their library book’s story through a summary, descriptive words and image sketches, and a persuasive appeal.

I also believe students need to have choices for assessment products, so I offer 3 options for the product: an 11×17 Book Preview Poster, a letter-sized trifold Graphic Booktalk Brochure, and a Timed Slideshow Booktalk that utilizes technology.

DEVELOPING THE MEDIA LITERACY UNIT

Since my media literacy unit is project/product oriented, I introduce students to a very simple problem solving model (incorporating information literacy) called PACE: Plan, Acquire, Create, Evaluate. It provides a structure for the unit lessons, with each step of PACE as a library visit that advances the project’s development from start to finish.

This unit also conforms to my personal strategy for all Library Lessons: “teach only the information or skill they need for the task at hand.” Consequently each lesson’s instruction is short enough to give students plenty of time to work on each step of their chosen project during the class periods. This consideration assures equity, in that no student is disadvantaged by a home situation or economics, and I (and the teacher, if a collaboration) can assist individuals throughout.

I weave the questions & concepts vocabulary into instruction, and directly revisit them in the fourth “Evaluate” visit. This quick review helps students apply their conceptual understanding by evaluating two media message booktalks that are a different type than the one they chose.

FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVE

My positive approach to media literacy lessons has the same effect on students as my Academic Honesty unit. Students are more relaxed about learning and eager to work on their assignment; they don’t exhibit the anxiety induced from emphasizing negative aspects of concepts, principles, and practices.

I’m confident that when School Librarians use an affirmative method for teaching the 5 essential literacies, they will build better relationships with students and with teachers. That surely fosters more collaborative opportunities with teachers and higher achievement for students.

Get the 4-lesson unit for 6th grade from No Sweat Library, my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

How to Design School Library Lesson Performance Tasks that Engage Students

Posted on October 15, 2023 by Barbara Paciotti

How do we know if students are really engaged in a lesson? Well, are WE engaged?

We must be as excited about our lesson at the end of the day as we were during first period, or there’s something wrong with the lesson. A truly engaging lesson has us continually fascinated with how students—even our toughest ones—are focused on performing the task we ask of them.

And that’s the secret to an engaging lesson: the performance task. It must be one that goes beyond recalling information; it requires students to apply their learning, and then transfer the learning to a new situation.

So, how can a School Librarian design a performance task that captivates student interest, yet meets standards, fulfills lesson objectives, and supports classroom activities?

UNIT PLANNING, NOT LESSON PLANNING

It’s rare that students visit the school library for days in a row, which is why we’ve become accustomed to planning a single visit lesson. Knowing we may not see them again for a while, we try to cram as much instruction as possible into a lesson, which results in student burnout before they even get to a task.

Instead, we need to take a unit approach to library visits so that each individual lesson builds on what we’ve already presented, adds a new element that is crucial to the task students will perform, and then gives students a purposeful exercise they can transfer to any content area. This holistic view of school library visits allows us to:

Scaffold National School Library Standards over multiple units, so we gradually meet benchmarks during each school year for each grade level.
Learn more about long-term, scaffolded planning for library lessons by reading about my Library Lesson Curriculum Matrix.
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Incorporate Essential Literacies into each unit to give students the skills they can apply to any content area and into the future.
Learn more about the 5 Essential Literacies by reading my series, starting with Reading Literacy.
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Use a comprehensive Library Lesson Planner, specific to the School Librarian, to backward design the unit for maximum impact.
Download my FREE Library Lesson Planner and learn how to use it.

When we expand our planning in this way, a unit can also include multiple content area collaborations. Since each individual lesson activates prior knowledge of a library lesson, we can invite in any subject area class whose current classroom activity naturally aligns with the performance task of that lesson. The combination of continuity and transfer promotes higher level student learning and achievement.

ELEMENTS OF A LIBRARY LESSON PERFORMANCE TASK

Performance tasks need to focus on student learning, not responses to our teaching. The GRASPS elements set out by Wiggins & McTighe in their book, Understanding by Design, provide a guide for creating such tasks.

a clear GOAL	calls for understanding, extended thinking, and transfer
a meaningful ROLE	the student’s “job” within the situation
an authentic AUDIENCE	not just the teacher, but other students & the community
a real-world SITUATION	establishes a purposeful content application of knowledge and skills
a PERFORMANCE or PRODUCT	goes beyond surface features, recall, or a formulaic answer
STANDARDS	NSLS & those from a subject area, along with criteria that state what different students are going to achieve: ◦ All students will… (lowest-achieving students) ◦ Most students will… (a majority of students) ◦ Some students will… (most able students)

If we keep these elements in mind during unit planning, we can provide a series of lessons with intermediary tasks leading to a final, complex task. None of the performance tasks need to be copious or lengthy; in fact, the simpler and shorter they are, the more likely students will grasp the concepts or skills and use them for other assignments…while thoroughly enjoying them during the library visit.

The beauty of being in the library is that, if students finish before the period ends, they have time to check out and begin reading a new library book…which is a good purpose for every library visit—to promote reading related to what students have just learned!

EXAMPLE OF A UNIT-BASED SET OF LIBRARY LESSONS

Teaching informational resource lessons are often dreary presentations of Dewey Subject numbers and lists of the school’s online subscription services, with little connection to classroom learning. Applying unit-based lesson planning changes that.

In my unit Reading Informational Resources, I incorporate subject content and literacy skills to create a purposeful, transferable performance task for each lesson. First I identify the 3 main types of library resources students are likely to use—print nonfiction books, print magazines, and online subscription services. Next I contextualize the lessons with what students have learned and are likely to use in their content area classes, in this case ELA and any subject area class that asks students to read and gather information. Finally I design tasks that allow students to build up skills to a final shareable product.

Here is the overview of my “Reading Informational Resources” unit for 6th graders:

Visit 1 gives students a historical view of information books for youth, then has them identify the organizational structure of selected library books using expository text features they learn in their ELA class, then apply that by inferring Dewey Subjects from the books they’ve analyzed.
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Visit 2 uses a simple process to help students extract information, summarize, and cite a short print magazine article. This information literacy skill can transfer to any content area when students need to retrieve information, whether from a textbook or other informational resource.
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Visit 3 introduces students to selected online articles from a school subscription service in order to create an index-card poster comprised of expository text paragraphs with citations. This lesson can be customized for any content area assignment or any online resource, and it uses the ELA and information literacy skills they’ve already learned during the two prior lessons. Should a librarian not have a pertinent subscription service to use, I provide an alternative set of online articles from free student news sites to create a Technology News poster.

How do the performance tasks align with GRASPS?

GOAL	Learn skills for extracting, summarizing, and citing information
ROLE	Be a partner or group member for discussion and production
AUDIENCE	Fellow students and visitors to the school
SITUATION	Use acquired skills to present content in abbreviated form
PERFORMANCE/PRODUCT	Each performance builds skills to create final product
STANDARDS	NSLS clearly defined at beginning of planning process

While this unit’s performance tasks may seem rudimentary for sixth graders, they are the start of the scaffolding needed to bring students up to benchmarks by the end of their stay in middle school—especially if students have not had a strong library program during their elementary years.

ENGAGING TASKS FOR FLEX OR FIXED SCHEDULES

Having used these performance tasks with my own students, I know they are engaging. They provide interaction between students (an important consideration for middle school), they are short enough to “stick,” and they all provide a product for teachers to give a daily grade, something I have for all of my library lessons.

The adaptability of unit planning allows these lessons to also be used by a School Librarian who has a fixed schedule of library classes with students. In fact, my Essential Literacies units could comprise several weeks of scheduled library lessons with sixth graders!

Excite 6th grade students to read a variety of Fiction books with this 3-visit Library Lesson unit focused on Reading Literacy and aligned to National School Library Standards & ELA Common Core. Can be used with fixed library classes or as a flex-schedule collaborative unit with ELA study of narrative literature. | No Sweat Library

Engage 6th grade students with informational books, print magazines, and online information services using this 3-visit Library Lesson Unit focused on Reading & Information Literacies. Aligned to National School Library Standards & ELA Common Core, this can be used with fixed library classes or as a flex-schedule collaborative unit with ELA study of expository text or with another Subject area on a chosen topic. | No Sweat Library

This ELA Common Core- and National School Library Standards-aligned unit of Library Lessons introduces media literacy and is coordinated with the study of Persuasive Text in the 6th grade ELA classroom. Each of 4 lesson visits follows the PACE problem-solving model, helping students to create one of 3 options for a Visual Persuasive Booktalk. | No Sweat Library

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