The past four weeks of this course have been a learning journey for me. I started this course thinking about the reference materials which I remembered as a student which consisted mostly of just rows and rows of encyclopedias. I don’t even remember a class as a student learning about reference materials or even the purpose of reference materials. I just remember when a research project was assigned the first thing every student in my class would do is go to the library and fight over a certain letter from the encyclopedias.
However, this course is happening at exactly the right time for me in my learning journey as well as my new role in the Library Learning Commons. After the Winter Break, many of our classrooms have begun the non-fiction information writing, in Lucy Calkins Writer’s Workshop. Through these various units, students are asked to look at various non-fiction mentor texts. These mentor texts are used to help develop the students as writers so they can then transfer it into their own writing. Also during their Reader’s Workshop time they are needing quality non-fiction resources to help understand text features. Since students and staff are looking for these resources and services this course could not have come at a better time to review reference materials and services.
 |
Alberta Learning. (2004). Focus on Inquiry: a teacher's guide to implementing inquiry-based learning [Ebook]. Edmonton. Retrieved from https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/032c67af-325c-4039-a0f3-100f44306910/resource/b7585634-fabe-4488-a836-af22f1cbab2a/download/29065832004focusoninquiry.pdf
|
Since I became a teacher in Alberta, I have really only ever been exposed to one inquiry model. This inquiry model has been in place since 2004. Although very popular when it was first released, I have seen the use of it decline over the years in classrooms and schools. After reading Chapter 1, I became very interested in the variety of models available, of particular interest to me was the Points of Inquiry model shared in the course. As an educator, I specifically like the detailed benchmarks which were also attached. It seems very user friendly and makes sense to elementary aged children.
 |
| The Points of Inquiry. (2011). Retrieved from https://bctla.ca/resources/point-of-inquiry/ |
This is my first year being a teacher librarian in the Library Learning Commons. I have been working hard to share the reference services available and the role I can play. As my district does not have teacher librarians, the reference resources in a Library Learning Commons were chosen by library technicians often without consultations from administration or classroom teachers. Additionally, library technicians are not required to provide reference services so this has been a shift in thinking within my school. As I become more familiar with my role and my colleagues continue to see the services I can provide, I hope they will access me more regularly for reference services. As Riedling, Shake and Houston (2003) suggest “what the school librarian does with regard to reference services is fundamentally to assist students in finding the answers to questions and helping them become independent users of information and ideas” (p. 4). I have been beginning to teach lessons on showing students where to locate our district's online databases through our Learn Alberta site and using the Online Reference Centre. I have also shown the students how to access and use our Online Public Access Catalog. In conjunction with these lessons, we have begun to focus more on copyright, citations and plagiarism. As a young student, I don’t even really remember conversations about copyright, citations or plagiarism. I remember something about ensuring we don’t copy word for word but that was about it. Now with the access to information and the simple ability to copy and paste or hold to save to camera roll, this is more important than ever. Recently, I just showed this quick little video to grade three students, although it is an ad for EasyBib, it set the stage to have a conversation with the students about citing their work.
From the journey I have taken so far in these past four weeks, some challenges have arisen in providing reference resources to an audience of elementary students. The evaluation and selection of materials has to meet the diverse needs of the students in elementary school. Division One students (Gr. 1-3) do not have the capability to read large amounts of text and Division Two students (Gr. 4-5) range greatly in their reading abilities so it is important to select appropriate materials considering the complexity of the text and their ability to read it on their own. Also when looking at online versions of reference materials does it offer the feature of reading to the student so that “the school library provides access to information in all formats, at all levels, and to all members of the learning community” (Asselin, Branch, & Oberg, 2003, p.24).
One of my major takeaways from this theme is looking at the successful reference services teacher librarians can provide and the importance of ensuring the collection meets the needs of our students. According to Achieving Information Literacy (2003), "for both primary and high school grades, the ratio of fiction to nonfiction including reference should range from 15-30% fiction and 70-85% nonfiction/reference" (p. 28). After reading this, I decided to pull our Titlewave analysis from January 2018. Our stats show that we really need to work on our non-fiction section. I am looking forward to sharing the Achieving Information Literacy information with my administration in conjunction with our Titlewave analysis to develop a plan of action to address our non-ficiton collection.
In just a few short weeks in this course I have explored many different avenues of reference sources and services. I look forward to what the remainder of this course will explore.
References
Alberta Learning. (2004). Focus on Inquiry: a teacher's guide to implementing inquiry-based learning [Ebook]. Edmonton. Retrieved from https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/032c67af-325c-4039-a0f3-100f44306910/resource/b7585634-fabe-4488-a836-af22f1cbab2a/download/29065832004focusoninquiry.pdf
Asselin, M., Branch, J. L., & Oberg, D. (2003). Achieving information literacy: standards for school standards for school library programs in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian School Library Association: Association for Teacher-Librarianship in Canada.
Citation for Beginners. (2014). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=CDGdqoCyAtw
Riedling, A., Shake, L., & Houston, C. (2013). Reference skills for the school librarian(3rd ed.). Santa Barbara, California: Linworth, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC.
The Points of Inquiry. (2011). Retrieved from https://bctla.ca/resources/point-of-inquiry/
