School Librarians: Show Teachers Their National Standards Require Student Research

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Barbara Paciotti

School Librarians are excited when a research assignment brings classes to the library. For me, it was my love for helping students do research—finding and using information–that drew me to pursue my graduate degree in Library Science. Teaching research skills is my raison d’être.

When I began my middle school library position, few teachers did research with students, and of those, even fewer gave me the latitude to fully engage students in the research process. As I developed collaborative partnerships, Research Library Lessons—short introductions up through week-long units—became my trademark skill set, and after several years nearly every subject area teacher had some sort of research assignment with me, even PhysEd!

Then 2010 brought Common Core College- and Career-Readiness Standards and high-stakes testing. Our state had given standardized state tests since the early 90s, but with CC-CCRS came the pressure of teacher accountability in a way not seen before.

Suddenly, teachers abandoned research assignments en masse. In the next few years I was able to recapture some research partnerships, but my biggest disappointment when I retired was how short-changed our students would be in their future pursuits because they didn’t know how to do proper research.

COMMON CORE ELA STANDARDS REQUIRE RESEARCH

Recently I discovered a 2014 blog article by Dave Stuart Jr, a Michigan educator well-known for his expertise in Common Core. In his post, New Thoughts on the Non-Freaked Out Approach to Common Core Literacy, Dave lists 8 CCSS “anchors that deal with research-related skills.” I have his permission to list them here:

R.CCR.7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.
R.CCR.8: Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
R.CCR.9: Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
W.CCR.7: Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
W.CCR.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
W.CCR.9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
SL.CCR.4: Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
SL.CCR.5: Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.

Note that 2 writing standards use the term research and a 3rd writing standard outlines the same Information Literacy skills that the American Library Association promotes in its Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights:

School librarians work closely with teachers to integrate instructional activities in classroom units designed to equip students to locate, evaluate, and use a broad range of ideas effectively.

OTHER SUBJECT STANDARDS ALSO REQUIRE RESEARCH

Fascinated by Dave’s analysis, I looked at Common Core Literacy Standards for History/Social Studies and for Science & Technical Subjects. For middle schoolers I found 7 more “anchors that deal with research-related skills” including 3 listed under the specific heading Research to Build and Present Knowledge:

R.LHSS.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
R.LSTS.8: Distinguish among facts, reasoned judgment based on research findings, and speculation in a text.
W.LHSS8.1a: Introduce claim(s) about a topic or issue, acknowledge and distinguish the claim(s) from alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.
W.LHSS.1b: Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.
W. LHSSST.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.
W.LHSSST.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
W.LHSSST.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis reflection, and research.

Curious, I browsed the C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards and found this statement on page 17:

The C3 Framework offers guidance and support for rigorous student learning. That guidance and support takes form in an Inquiry Arc—a set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing ideas that feature the four Dimensions of informed inquiry in social studies: 1 Developing questions and planning inquiries; 2 Applying disciplinary concepts and tools; 3 Evaluating sources and using evidence; and 4 Communicating conclusions and taking informed action.

You can see that 3 of their 4 Dimensions deal with student Information Literacy skills, and within those 3 Dimensions, I found 9 Standards which specifically address student research or information literacy skills:

D1.2.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a compelling question.
D1.3.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a supporting question.
D1.5.6-8. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of views represented in the sources.
D3.1.6-8. Gather relevant information from multiple sources while using the origin, authority, structure, context, and corroborative value of the sources to guide the selection.
D3.2.6-8. Evaluate the credibility of a source by determining its relevance and intended use.
D3.3.6-8. Identify evidence that draws information from multiple sources to support claims, noting evidentiary limitations.
D4.1.6-8. Construct arguments using claims and evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging the strengths and limitations of the arguments.
D4.3.6-8. Present adaptations of arguments and explanations on topics of interest to others to reach audiences and venues outside the classroom using print and oral technologies (e.g., posters, essays, letters, debates, speeches, reports, and maps) and digital technologies (e.g., Internet, social media, and digital documentary).
D4.4.6-8. Critique arguments for credibility.

In addition, Table 4 on page 20 shows how Dimensions connect to Common CoreELA/Literacy in History/Social Studies Standards, where I count 27 CCSS Standards to which the C3 Framework Dimensions connect:

More curious than ever, I searched the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It’s a complex document, but a quick view of its Disciplinary Standards shows that 8 Standards address inquiry & research skills or align with the four CCSS Standards listed above for Science & Technical Subjects:

MS-PS1-3: Gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.
MS-PS1-6: Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.
MS-PS3-3: Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.
MS-PS4-3: Integrate qualitative scientific and technical information to support the claim that digitized signals are a more reliable way to encode and transmit information than analog signals.
MS-LS4-5: Gather and synthesize information about the technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.
MS-ESS2-2: Construct an explanation based on evidence for how geoscience processes have changed Earth’s surface at varying time and spatial scales.
MS-ESS3-1: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how the uneven distributions of Earth’s mineral, energy, and groundwater resources are the result of past and current geoscience processes.
MS-ESS3-5: Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.

I was on a roll…so I scanned Common Core College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Math, and even there, under Statistics and Probability, I found “Develop understanding of statistical variability,” with 2 standards related to research:

Mathematical Practices: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
- M6.SP.1: Recognize a statistical question as one that anticipates variability in the data related to the question and accounts for it in the answers.
- M6.SP.5b: Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by describing the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.

Now I was really intrigued, so I explored the National Core Arts Standards for Media Arts, Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts, where I found 8 standards related to research:

MA6.Cn10.1a: Access, evaluate, and use internal and external resources to create media artworks, such as knowledge, experiences, interests, and research.
MA6.Cn11.1a: Research and show how media artworks and ideas relate to personal life, and social, community, and cultural situations, such as personal identity, history, and entertainment.
MA6.Cn11.1b: Analyze and interact appropriately with media arts tools and environments, considering fair use and copyright, ethics, and media literacy.
MU.Pr4.1.6: Apply teacher-provided criteria for selecting music to perform for a specific purpose and/or context, and explain why each was chosen.
MU.Pr4.1.7: Apply collaboratively-developed criteria for selecting music of contrasting styles for a program with a specific purpose and/or context and, after discussion, identify expressive qualities, technical challenges, and reasons for choices.
MU.Pr4.1.8: Apply personally-developed criteria for selecting music of contrasting styles for a program with a specific purpose and/or context and explain expressive qualities, technical challenges, and reasons for choices.
(I’ve added these 3 Music Standards to my blog post for a performing arts make-up research assignment.)
VA.Crt1.2.6: Formulate an artistic investigation of personally relevant content for creating art.
TH.Cn11.2.6b: Investigate the time period and place of a drama/theatre work to better understand performance and design choices.

Finally I checked the Career & Technical Education Core, where I found 4 standards related to research:

CCTC.AG.1: Analyze how issues, trends, technologies and public policies impact systems in the Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources Career Cluster.
CCTC.AG-ANI1: Analyze historic and current trends impacting the animal systems industry.
CCTC.AC.4: Evaluate the nature and scope of the Architecture & Construction Career Cluster and the role of architecture and construction in society and the economy.
CCTC.AC-DES.1: Justify design solutions through the use of research documentation and analysis of data.

PROMOTE RESEARCH ASSIGNMENTS WITH EVERY TEACHER

Perhaps you are as surprised as I am to find no less than 46 National Standards for middle school subjects that either require or align with students doing research. And that doesn’t count the 27 that connect C3 & CCSS. The conclusion is inescapable: in order to comply with all of the National Standards, students need a research assignment within every content area class! School Librarians to the rescue!

To help you approach teachers for collaborative Library Lessons, here’s a printable PDF document listing the above National Standards. Click this link to download the FREE document National Standards Requiring or Aligned with Student Research Assignments.
(It’s also available on my FREE Librarian Resources page.)

It is imperative that we School Librarians design a variety of lessons for research assignments, in order to appeal to every teacher in our building. I’ve given an overview of how I do some of these lessons in my blog post about Information Literacy, one of the 5 Essential Literacies for students.

Let’s Expand Our View of “School Library Orientation”

Posted on August 19, 2019 by Barbara Paciotti

School Librarians know the importance of our students’ first library visit, so at the beginning of each school year, “school library orientation” becomes a hot topic on library listservs, social media, and blogs. Folks request ideas, asking, “What can I do differently this year?”

A couple years after I simplified and customized my school library orientations with English Language Arts classes, I came to an astounding realization:

EVERY subject-area’s “first” library visit of the school year is a “library orientation” for THEM!

I’m suggesting that you don’t need to keep trying new things every year with the same subject class. Rather, expand your view of what “library orientation” means and customize an “orientation” lesson for every grade level and subject area in your building!

Allow me share how I developed a series of “library orientations” that brought 6th grade ELA, Social Studies, Math, Science, and Elective classes into the library at various intervals during the first several weeks of school. Once you try this, I know you’ll love it, and your subject area teachers feel pretty special having their very own unique library orientation customized to their content. (Even an elementary librarian can focus each class’s visit on new library materials or features, so it’s a like another orientation.)

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS “ORIENTATION”

I’ve written about how I simplified my 6th grade library orientation, so students aren’t overwhelmed with too much new information. Keep in mind that for lowest-grade-level, new-to-the-school students, our school library is completely new to them, and our lesson is “fresh” for them, even if we’ve done it a dozen times! Because each new year is a totally new group of students, I’m as enthusiastic about this lesson as I was the first time.

Our ELA classes begin the year studying narrative text, so we focus on how to choose one good book from the new-to-them Fiction area. My lesson is followed by plenty of time to browse the Fiction area of this “new” library, after which we have extended silent reading while I do a quiet invited checkout. This standard procedure establishes a reading culture for ELA’s every-other-week library visits for the rest of the school year.

SOCIAL STUDIES “ORIENTATION”

After the ELA visit, we can bring in other 6g subject-area classes and do a “library orientation” customized to their particular content. I’ve written about my Special Collections for Social Studies, so I have 6^th grade Social Studies classes visit a couple weeks after ELA to learn more about their “new” school library: the GlobeTrekkers Special Collection of fiction & Dewey books that support their study of World Cultures.

The first part of the lesson is returning books and a library expectations lesson, giving students a few policies & procedures for their “new” school library. Then I introduce Content Area Reading and why it is important.

Educators have learned that reading comprehension isn’t so much about word recognition as it is about conceptual understanding in context. That is, students become better readers as they accrue background knowledge of various topics, so the more they read, the more they know.

Yes, Dr. Seuss instinctively told us this years ago in his book
“I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!” and it just took brain researchers a while to confirm that.

Now I don’t tell all this to kids…I just tell them that the more GlobeTrekkers books they read, the better they’ll do in Social Studies and get better grades!

I show them how to identify GlobeTrekker books in the search results from our online book catalog, and when they hear they can check out a GlobeTrekker Dewey book and, if needed, a new fiction selection for their ELA class they are excited to begin browsing. We follow the same procedure—silent reading & invited checkout—which reinforces with Social Studies the reading culture that was established with ELA.

MATH “ORIENTATION”

I’ve also written how it makes sense to do our Dewey lesson with math classes which has students locate decimal numbers on the bookshelves. When 6^th grade Math classes enter the library, students are so puzzled about what they are doing here…with their math class? That, in itself, sustains engagement for students—who apparently have never done anything like this before.

Keeping the lesson focused on numbers makes it easy for students to relate the Dewey number they see in a book search to a location on a shelf, regardless of the topical content of the book. After the lesson there is plenty of time for students to browse for up to new books, either Fiction or Dewey depending on what they already have checked out. The 6g boys are especially eager to find their favorite informational books in this “new” school library: aliens, cars, sports, and drawing, as well as the Guinness and Believe-It-Or-Not books. And we continue our standard reading & checkout procedure, which reinforces with Math the reading culture we established with ELA and Social Studies.

Three customized lessons with 3 different subject area classes have progressively given our “newbies” what they need to effectively use their “new” school library.

We have imparted our policies & procedures when applicable, so students are not overwhelmed with too much new information to remember.
We have established our school’s reading culture of silent sustained reading (we call ours DEAR—Drop Everything And Read).
We have gradually built up the number and type of books students can check out, so during the early weeks of their new school experience they needn’t keep track of too many books.

SCIENCE “ORIENTATION”

By now our 6^th grade Science classes are well into their unit on Energy and are ready to begin their project on alternative energy resources. The timing is perfect for an introduction to our online subscription services for middle school, which are completely different from those in elementary school.

Most “newbies” come to us from feeder elementaries, but many are new-to-district students. Thus, I begin this “online library orientation” with Digital Citizenship and direct students to our online library resources webpage to prepare for the WebQuest lesson.

I’ve written about my guided WebQuest that introduces just 3 subscription services to 6^th graders—an encyclopedia, a periodical database, a topical reference e-book—with each segment looking only at the specific features of a service they’ll need for the project.

This is a full-period lesson, and each segment has students reading for content information and citing sources as they fill in the WebQuest worksheet (or HyperDoc). Students come away well-prepared to research their project, and I also provide a cart of books for the classroom to supplement the online tools.

To illustrate how favorably teachers respond to customized lessons, shortly after this, 6g Social Studies has an “online orientation” WebQuest using our countries of the world databases. Students gather country data into a spreadsheet app for comparison, and then learn to automatically generate a graph.

ART & SPANISH “ORIENTATION”

By this time we are through the first 9-week grading period, yet I’m not quite finished. Remember, any subject-area class that visits the library for the first time gets a “library orientation.” So, I begin the second grading period with a customized orientation for 6g Art and 6g Spanish. Because these 2 subjects alternate semesters, all 6g students receive this lesson during the first semester.

Both these lesson visits introduce Cloud Computing & Netiquette featuring our online email service. It is a guided lesson, similar to the WebQuest, that examines 3 features of the service: email, blogging, and discussion forums. I always let the other 6g teachers know when I do this popular lesson, so they can begin using the service for their own courses.

INFORMATIONAL CONTENT “ORIENTATION”

I’ve written, too, that making ELA and Math orientations about location allows me to bring other subject areas into the library for content-specific lessons. During the second grading period, 6g Science returns to the library during their Classification & Organization unit.

The lesson allows students to explore the Dewey 590 Animals section, whose disciplinary organization mirrors that of scientific classification, thus reinforcing content for both science & library. The lesson also reviews the parts of informational books so students learn ways to dig into a book’s content to find and extract what they need.

HIGHER GRADE LEVEL “ORIENTATIONS”

Lest you think I ignore our 7^th and 8^th graders, here’s a list of the “library orientations” I’m providing for them during this same time period:

7g & 8g ELA – Narrative Fiction & first book checkout
8g Social Studies – The American colonies, a U.S. History project
7g Math – adding/subtracting decimals & locating Dewey numbers
7g Social Studies – First Texans, a TX History cooperative learning activity
7/8 Theater – Multicultural folktales, creating one-act plays
7g Social Studies – WebQuest on European explorers, a TX History project
8g Spanish – Weather reports & introduction to video broadcasting
8g Health, 8g Careers – books, ebooks, online services & websites

I know you may not think of these as “orientations,” but if view each library visit as an entirely new experience for that group of students in that subject class, all our lessons become “library orientations.”

THE POWER OF “SCHOOL LIBRARY ORIENTATIONS”

I’ve discovered it doesn’t matter how good a librarian students have had before they arrive in our school. These “library orientation” lessons are always powerful because they are bite-sized pieces, scaffolded over time, helping students gradually learn—and remember—how to use every aspect of our library services.

To make successful, carefully crafted lessons, we must have a comprehensive view of each grade level’s total library experience, for both subject-area curricula and the library curriculum. I created my Curriculum Matrix for just this reason, and I keep it updated so it is always ready to be referred to.

Our attitude toward “library orientation” is a reflection of our mindset about our entire School Library Program. We want every student experience with us to be a memorable one, offering meaningful lessons that never get old.

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