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.
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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
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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.
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| 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/
4 comments:
I really enjoyed the video Citation For Beginners in your blog post. Your statistics on fiction vs non fiction in your collection is interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Bill Schlacht
Well done blog reflection blog post that highlights and shares all your new learning, awareness and understanding and it seems to have come just at the right time. I am happy to read this post about your new abilities and skills to be able to support your students and staff better. Your analysis of your own collection was very interesting and your goals moving forward sound excellent. Overall, a very well done look back at theme 1.
Hi Therera, my name is Karla Germaine and I'm a member of your blog pod for this course. It is great to read your first post. I notice you were also in LIBE 477 with Aaron.
Your reflection is great in helping me to see this course from an elementary teacher librarian point of view. I work at a 7-12 school, so there is some cross over. I found it interesting that you've noted your non-fiction collection needs some attention. I thought you might feel better to hear that when I ran stats, my library's collection is more than 30 years old. It leaves me wondering how many school libraries across BC actually meet the standards outlined by Riedling and in the AIL document.
Many of my students have used Bibme to create their Work Cited pages for research projects. I was happy to allow them to use this website application, but the director of an independent school I used to work at was adamantly opposed to it. I am wondering if any teacher librarians have discussed and encouraged or discouraged use of Bibme or similar tools with students.
Your post had me wondering about the writer's workshop program your school is using and what sorts of features the students are noticing in the non-fiction with mentor non-fiction texts. It is wonderful that you are able to make immediate use of so much of this course.
Hey Theresa,
It's nice to meet you (electronically) and be a part of your blog group in LIBE 461.
I enjoyed reading your reflection as I felt very similar starting this course. My knowledge of the reference resource section was really from my own experiences. I remembered there being encyclopedias in elementary school but I don't remember actually using them. Its been interesting to learn about many more different types.
I taught in Alberta for 3 years at the start of my career so again I felt the same in that I only knew the inquiry models we used in my district. I don't recognize the inquiry model document you posted. I mostly used the teaching effectiveness framework and attended some Galileo workshops which was about planning that hook and the backwards design. Out of all the research models we learned about in Theme 1 I also liked the Points of Inquiry the most.
Looking forward to reading more as the weeks go on.
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