Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That WorksLooking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works | Practical Answers to Questions You Didn’t Know to Ask

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 the most visible and essential role, yet the one most 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.) 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.
linespace
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.
linespace
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.
linespace
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!
linespace
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 primary 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.

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!

Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works

Practical Answers to Questions You Didn’t Know to Ask

The Certified School Librarian Is and As a Teacher