studentachievement | Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works

Giving feedback is one of the most misunderstood aspects of teaching. Many teachers confuse feedback with grading. Feedback is not a grade, nor written comments on an assessment rubric or finished project. Feedback is what we give a student before grading an assignment.

Feedback can be in many forms, but whatever the method, it’s main purpose is to guide a student toward overcoming misunderstandings and errors as they work to achieve the learning goal.

BACKGROUND ON FEEDBACK

Before I became a school librarian I taught Biology, Chemistry, and Physical Science for 8 years in an at-risk alternative high school. In order for students to receive high school credit in a course, they had to get at least a B grade on every single assignment. Believe me, when you take a 14-year-old with a 3rd-grade reading level through 2 semesters of high school biology and end up with one of the best culminating essays you’ve ever read, you’ve developed a lot of feedback strategies! What I learned about feedback during my years with these discouraged students is exactly what researchers have confirmed:

Feedback focuses on specific knowledge and/or skills.
Feedback shows a student how to improve to get to where they need to be—and the how may need to be different for each student.
Feedback comes regularly throughout the learning process.
Feedback is upbuilding and interactive between student and teacher.

I admit that the alternative setting allows for a lot more direct, hands-on feedback and guidance than a regular classroom setting, but there are a number of feedback strategies that can be used with larger groups of students without overwhelming a teacher. You may not realize you are already using the feedback mechanisms on this short list of direct student-teacher interaction and between-students interaction (so you can observe & provide direct feedback as needed):

Direct Student-Teacher Interaction	Between-Students Interaction
Content-Literacy Graphic Organizers Shorthand List of Codes for Comments and Student Responses Single-Point Rubric (I reject standard rubrics!) Student Comments Rubric Answer Stations	Think-Pair-Share Chat Stations Reciprocal Learning

FEEDBACK FOR LIBRARY LESSONS

It may surprise you that I still use the same feedback strategies for my Library Lessons. It’s a little more challenging to provide feedback within a single class period, and maybe not interact with those students again for awhile. So the most important point about feedback is that it isn’t just from student to teacher, to see what they’ve learned; it requires the teacher to respond back to the student with some specific guidance.

For example, in some lessons I ask students to locate a resource in the library, like a particular book on a shelf. They raise their hands when it’s located, and a teacher or I tell them if it’s correct or we guide them toward figuring out why it’s not, then allow them to find the correct location. Specific, timely, direct. And quickly done even with two full classes of students.

I use a lot of graphic organizers, hands-on interactives, and student discussion for Library Lessons. The teachers and I can roam the library tables listening and guiding students during the activity to make sure they’re achieving the purpose of the lesson.

An Exit Ticket is a great ending to a Library Lesson—and a great daily grade for the teacher—but it isn’t feedback unless we do something with it by responding to students about it at their next visit. Even a quick quiz can be feedback if it’s checked and discussed in a timely manner.

FEEDBACK FOR OVERDUE BOOKS

School Librarians can consider an overdue notice as feedback, if done as such. Many librarians run overdue notices on a regular basis—weekly or every other week—to be handed out to students in a class or homeroom. I abandoned that practice. I do run overdue notices at the end of each semester in order to clear students for exams, as required by my principal, but otherwise, I have a better solution.

I created a set of funny overdue notice bookmarks. When a student comes to check out a book and I see they have an overdue:

I grab an overdue bookmark
I write the title of the overdue book on it
I put it inside their current book

all the while chatting them up about finding and returning that overdue book. With a bookmark, the student sees it every time they read their current book, and whether at school or home, it reminds them to find and return the overdue book.

You can download my overdue bookmark template
from the FREE Librarian Resources page.

Another strategy is to invite the student to use my phone at the circulation desk to call their home or their own phone and leave a voice message about the overdue. When they or their parents get home and check messages, the reminder prompts a search for the overdue book to be returned the next day. The bookmark or the phone call takes a little more time, but both are specific and timely, direct between the student and I, and upbuilding rather than demoralizing. The knowledge/skill I am building with these two strategies? How to be organized and responsible.

GAME IT!

In an article from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s (ASCD) article on Feedback, the author writes:

According to Prensky (2007), the addictiveness of video games can be partly attributed to the constant stream of feedback they provide. At each level of the game, players learn what works and what doesn’t, and they can immediately use that knowledge to advance to more challenging levels. And researchers have found that the same dynamic applies in education: One of the most powerful keys to unlocking student motivation and perseverance is feedback.

If we tackle feedback as if making a game of it, we can design innumerable pleasant and productive strategies to use in the classroom or in the school library.

Here’s another excellent article that can provide some insight on feedback: Why Giving Effective Feedback Is Trickier Than It Seems.

With so much research support for feedback, it makes sense for every educator to use feedback, and, more importantly to use it correctly, to build student knowledge and skills!

Despite overwhelming evidence that school librarians positively impact student success, fewer schools than ever have them. Recent articles have revealed:

Fewer than 50% of New York City public schools have librarians.
Fewer than 40% of Chicago Public Schools have librarians; only 32% of the high schools have them, and when the majority of a school’s population is African American, the figure falls to 15%.
Fewer than 10% of California public schools have librarians.
The worst: Philadelphia’s public schools have 8—that’s not 8%, that’s 8 librarians. One of the nation’s largest school systems—a district with 220 schools and 134,000 students—has only 8 certified, full-time school librarians. The State of Pennsylvania doesn’t require K-12 public schools to have libraries. Prisons must have them. Barber and cosmetology schools must have them. They are compulsory in nursing programs. But in public schools they are optional.

RESEARCH ON SCHOOL LIBRARIANS

At a time when schools are expected to produce 21st century citizens capable of competing in the global economy, these situations are ignoring one simple fact: more than 50 years of research demonstrates a high correlation between student achievement and having a certified school librarian. The School Library Impact Studies show a positive relationship between libraries and student achievement in 21 different states for over two decades, especially between school library programs and students’ reading test scores. Here are some specific findings:

A certified school librarian impacts student achievement more than:
- per-pupil spending
- teacher/pupil ratio
- minority education
- adult education level
Only poverty has a higher correlation to student achievement, and there’s evidence that school librarians can even prevail over poverty:
- Students who are poor, minority, and have IEPs, but who have full-time librarians, are at least twice as likely to have “Advanced” writing scores as their counterparts without full-time librarians.
- Hispanic students with a full-time School Librarian are three times as likely to earn “Advanced” scores on writing tests than their peers without access to one.

Other school library factors that directly influence student achievement are:

Flexible access to the library during the school day and extended hours before & after school
Collaborative lesson planning between the school librarian and teachers
Increased library visits for whole classes & for individual students
Currency & range of book collections and online subscription services
Digital literacy training from the librarian for both students and teachers

You can download a PDF of the “Did You Know?”
presentation of research from my FREE Librarian Resources page!

WHAT IS A CERTIFIED SCHOOL LIBRARIAN?

School librarians are often the most misunderstood and least appreciated folks in a school. Their colleagues and principals don’t realize that they must have teaching certification and teaching experience before they can even enter a school library graduate program. Most secondary-level school librarians also have a master’s degree in Library Science. Then they must pass a rigorous state test to be certified as a School Librarian.

Why would a school librarian need a master’s degree? Having a teaching certificate and years of experience just isn’t enough to manage a whole-school library program:

We must have an in-depth understanding of national/state curriculum standards to fully integrate library skills into classroom activities.
We must know how to build an extensive collection of library materials in a variety of formats to meet the needs of every teacher’s curriculum, and to meet individual students’ reading needs and preferences.
We must have a comprehensive understanding of intellectual property, copyright, and fair use guidelines for purchasing a variety of materials and to advise teachers & administrators on their proper use.
We must have the specialized technology skills to manage and use audio/video/digital equipment & applications.
We must have financial skills to administer a budget and take advantage of outside funding opportunities.

STUDENTS & TEACHERS & SCHOOL LIBRARIANS

Students need a certified School Librarian who can guide them in:

research & problem-solving skills
reading for information and for pleasure
safe and responsible Internet use

…as well as offering them the opportunity for:

design thinking and makerspaces
media production and technology training
some good old-fashioned hugs and conversation.

Because certified School Librarians are also certified teachers, they can help other teachers plan lessons:

based on curricular Standards and best practices
scaffolded to build knowledge and skills
using high-quality resources in print & digital forms
that seamlessly integrate new technologies
with meaningful activities to practice learning
that help increase student achievement

…and they can also offer teachers some good old-fashioned hugs and conversation.

Here are websites where the above information and more can be found:

Looking Backward – No Sweat Library Lessons & Management That Works

Practical Answers to Questions You Didn’t Know to Ask

Tag Archives: studentachievement

Feedback in the School Library