We returned to the district from Christmas break on Wednesday, January 2nd.
Wednesday was a professional development day for all teachers. The morning was spent in cohorts. We picked these groups back at the beginning of the school year. I am quite pleased with my cohort which is technology. All the cohorts got books to read and discuss…all the groups except ours…we got 1 gig thumb drives!!! The first meeting we learned how to use the Classroom Performance System (CPS). Our homework for Wednesday’s meeting was to design a quiz. When we arrived Wednesday the first item on the agenda was to “show-off” our tests. The quiz I designed was on book care and I used it with my kindergarten and first graders before they started checking out books.
The next part of Wednesday’s agenda was to learn how to take a CD from the math series and download a quiz from those into CPS. I did not have a CD to practice with, as I am not a classroom teacher, but I hope that payed attention enough to be able to help my teachers with it if they should ask.
The last part of the agenda was to learn the ins and outs of Smart Notebook software. This software is used with Smartboards. The idea explained was we are now to create a lesson using Smart Notebook that ties into the quiz we made previous. This will allow us to use backwards design-we created the assessment first and now will create the lesson from that. Since I already taught my lesson, I asked if I could have permission to create a new lesson and they are fine with that. I will be creating a lesson on the Dewey Decimal system for third and fourth graders. We will be showing of these lessons at our next cohort session in April.
During the second part of the day, the elementary school librarians (four of us) met at one of the other libraries.
We discussed a variety of topics. We had a discussion about leveling books in the library. Another librarian, M, had gone to see a librarian in another district who had leveled all of her books. M has a teacher that would like this done. We talked about how much work it would be and we also talked about how Destiny (our catalog system) has many features that would allow us to level books and create lists of all the books at certain levels for teachers. I’m not sure I’d want to physically level all the books in the library, for a variety of reasons, one being I feel that censors the books a bit and two being that I would not want to discourage older students who might need to read a book, but not want to check it out for feat that classmates will see it as a “baby book”.
We also discussed the new library that will be opening with the new elementary school in our district next year. We don’t know very much about it yet, but I suspect that the new library will come up throughout this practicum experience. My own library assistant is applying for it herself.
Tags: Professional Development
January 16, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Renee, I agree with you comments on leveling books. I don’t like how it censors books either. However, it seems that here at BH’s the Instructional Assistant feels that doing so would create a strong bridge between the library and her reading program. That combined with requests to do so from 1st grade may be enough to convince me to do so. Organizing books from levels A-G would not be as bad as might seem. We’ll see! I have trouble comprimising my “library morals” but there are times when it might be appropriate. The shhhhing lady image some have of librarians can be broken down by being flexible. It’s a hard balance to achieve though…..