“Fun kits to check out”: Action packs in action

Last week, Matt Ball of Pace Academy sent a question out to our list about “Fun kits to check out.” Our library realized my dream of activity packs (named by my cooler colleagues: “Casti Library Action Packs,” or “CLAPs”) a few years back, and some back and forth on the thread suggested I should share some details here.

We find that the use of these packs fluctuates heavily in relationship to marketing and also school vacations, but we keep them going out of a commitment to outdoor and offline activities. I suspect that schools with elementary school students would have a much higher uptake.

My colleagues, Jole Seroff and Christina Appleberry, are spectacular at making things fun and engaging. I love the thematic papers they use! Students take a tag for the CLAP they want to check out and bring it to us at the circulation desk. We grab a pack for them.

We have five themes to our CLAPs at the moment, and the back of each check-out tag tells students what they will get with a given action pack:

In addition, these cards help everyone confirm that every item is there at both checkout and return.
Advancement gave us these cute knapsacks to hold our CLAPs. Each is tagged with a card showing the topic and a catalog bar code on one side.
Each CLAP tag again lists the items we can all expect to find in the bag. It helps us remember what is in the bag at checkout and return, and assists students as they prepare to return the bag to us. As a result, we have experienced very little loss of materials, making these packs a relatively inexpensive endeavor. Sometimes, there is an invitation to engage in a communal activity with the CLAP. (Note our inflatable pillow is a lice-proofable material…..)
The weaving and pompom kits include the choice of two colors of yarn. We bring students to this drawer to chose what they want. We have found our students to be responsible and return extra materials. In this drawer you can also see our extra looms, extra embroidery hoops, and the biggest investment from our CLAPs, Sashiko fabric with water soluble dots, by Olympus. Fun fact: you can also tell students are using these packs at school by the amount of artificial turf that has made its way into the yarn drawer!

While the CLAPs do not quite see the consistent use we would like, it gives us a lot of fun opportunities to connect with students, and also lets us extend active and passive programing (we had a stargazing event and we keep a simple loom warped and ready for us in the library) in a way that students can take with them.

Our larger loom, in between projects.
Examples of student watercolors of clouds. It took a while to get students to leave their images in, instead of ripping them out to hide them from others’ view, but we are starting developing a fun collection. Each one is dated, along with a location, type of cloud, and student name and grad year. It is really lovely to be building this visible history of relaxation within our community.
We also had a student design badges that students can collect as they complete each action pack. (We also love our button-maker!)

I know that other libraries are out there running similar programs. Please feel free to share in comments, and link to pictures or other information that you have. I still fantasize about putting together local literary outings (or even for other cities) — maybe walking tours of places that appear in MG and YA literature, or activities similar to those noted in books. I’d love to have Go-Passes, as well, that students could check out to attend different museums. Right now, we don’t have the traffic needed to justify those purchases, but I have my eye on the future!

Does your library offer something in this realm?

Making Books Easy

I recently read Daniel Willingham’s The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. The book leads readers through each aspect of cognition that contributes to being a successful reader. And, perhaps of no surprise for librarians, the constant message was that folks who are good at reading are folks who read a lot. So, I was particularly interested in Willingham’s suggestions on how to get students to read more. It boils down, in many ways, to this: kids need to have books in their space all the time, it needs to be easy, otherwise the things that are easy (tik tok, anyone?) will win their attention. What I’m sharing here is one small step I’ve taken to help smooth the path between “I have some time on my hands” and “I’m reading.”

There are readers who always have a full TBR queue, and then there are those who go deer-in-the-headlights when they close the back cover on their latest book. While some of us are skilled at articulating what we like about the books we love–intense worldbuilding, deep character development, particular storylines, found family, etc.–there are also those who have a harder time putting their finger on what part of a book caused a connection. What better way to help figure that out and find their next book than a bit of gentle prompting by way of a decision tree!

Another way to reduce friction is to find the right attention getters. When we meet our students where they are at, like getting excited to see the next installment of Dune, and guide them to options that they may not have considered, we make it just a little bit easier to get a book in their hands.

My goal for now is to build out decision trees and mind-map style book finding aids for each of our genres. Genrefication made it easier to get out students to a subset of books they might find interesting, hopefully these diagrams can help a bit more.

What are you doing to make books easy for students? What are the books that win your students’ attention?

Library Signage

I love a good labeling system, don’t you? Signage that works makes me so happy, and when our students “get” that our signs in the library are telling them what they’re looking at … ahhh, it’s so satisfying.

Because our library hosts kindergarten through twelfth-grade students, our collection reflects those age and grade levels. Due to the unique limitations of our historic space, our nonfiction collection is a mix of sources suitable for grades 5 and up. This means the DK Children’s Book of Philosophy could be found on the shelf right next to Cathcart and Klein’s Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. #SuperFunTimes 

There is something to be said, then, for simplified signage. When students get to the shelf, sure, they can take the book down, flip through the pages, and see if it’s “just right”. But on the way to the shelves, walking amongst the stacks, it would be lovely to have indicators that an 8-year-old and an 18-year-old can understand. Inspired by some brilliant signage I saw in independent bookstores last summer, I embarked on a little journey with my 5th graders through the wonderful world of library classification and signage to help make that dream come true.

Photo of fiction signage from some bookstore ... somewhere.
Fiction signage from … some bookstore … somewhere

What you need to make one-of-a-kind library signs

  • Books
  • Foam board or cardboard (I cut mine to 16”x7”)
  • Old magazines (book catalogs work best!)
  • LOTS of packing tape
  • Post-Its
  • Scratch paper
  • Markers
  • Scissors (don’t run with them!)
  • Fishing twine
  • Command hooks (I used these)
  • Hot glue gun
  • A way to make giant letters (we have a Silhouette Cameo)
  • forty-five 5th graders (or students of your choosing)

I get to see our 5th graders every 2 weeks for about 45 minutes. For the signs to truly reflect student voice, I wanted the kiddos to sift through a bunch of books from a certain area (like the 780s or the 910s), and come up with their own words to answer the question, “What are these books about?” I figured 2 class periods would be enough time for the students to come up with their own verbiage (visit 1) and then create a collage that represented that part of the collection (visit 2). In hindsight, 3 visits might have been ideal, as I ended up taping down most of the collages … but I really wanted the signs done by the time the students came back from winter break. Unrealistic timelines = more work for me!

Not only was this a fun art project that introduced students to titles they might not have known we owned, it reinforced the concept of classification (yes, all the books about the Titanic are on the same shelf because … call #s!) AND it encouraged students to use text features as they searched through the book catalogues for appropriate images. I wish you were here with me so I could walk you along the whole activity, but I’ll do my best to outline the process. 

Visit 1: Once the students (they worked in groups of 3) figured out what topics or themes their assigned books had in common, they came up with their own words/terms, which they wrote on Post-Its, and then collaborated to combine their ideas and reach a final word or phrase, which they wrote on a giant scratch sheet of paper. Admittedly, some piles of books were easier to define than others, but it was so gratifying to see their minds work to put concepts into words! 

Can you guess the Dewey section based on the students’ Post-Its? 🙂

Visit 2: Then they scoured old magazines to find images that illustrated their ideas. Book catalogs (think ABDO, Lerner, Capstone) proved to be especially useful because once a group realized they had books pertaining to, say, U.S. History, they could use the text features (table of contents, headings) to browse relevant images in the “Social Studies” section of that catalog! We turned those giant scratch sheets of paper from our first visit into envelopes in which they kept all their collage pictures, as well as their initial Post-It ideas. 

Tables of contents, titles, and headings were actually put to use as the kiddos searched for images!

So I had their collages and I had their words. All I had to do was print out their wording on the adhesive paper, and … everything else. 😆 As I type this, I realize that I could have had the students stick the words to their collage signs themselves … but again, I really wanted to surprise them when they came back from break! I used hot glue and fishing twine to make loops on the backs of the signs (where I also taped their initial Post-It ideas for reference and attribution), and then stuck the Command hooks above the appropriate shelves. The 5th graders get to see their work every time they browse the stacks – and not just them, but every student who peruses nonfiction can see the work of their peers!

I’d love to know how you’ve used student work in your library space. And if you have any ideas for crazy/crafty future projects, please share!

Things They Don’t Teach You in Library School…

Throughout my 15 years as a high-school librarian, currently at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, I have been systematically storing away tidbits I wish someone taught me in library school. Here’s a few tips from my list:

Budget for Tissues

Did I seriously start my first AISL blog post talking about tissues? Yes, yes I did. There are many of you who didn’t even bat an eye at this. “Yes, of course we need to stockpile tissues.” In fact, if this statement perplexes you, then you either are new to the profession, or you live in some alternate universe where kids’ noses don’t run 24/7.

Not only does this practice stem the spread of germs (when paired with a hefty bottle of hand sanitizer), but knowing how quickly your students go through said tissues gives you a helpful barometer to assess general illness in your community. One box this week? Low contagion factor. Three boxes? Time to put that mask on.

I’m lucky to work at a school that provides ample tissues for all, but I did work at a school where we had to purchase them with our budget, and it does add up. If you are starting at a new school, make sure you know if tissues are provided or you could have some unexpected “overruns” at the end of the year. Gesundheit.

A Lost Book is a Read Book

This may be controversial, especially if you have a tight budget, but if you can factor in a loss percentage each year, there’s liberation in not hounding students to return books. I automatically email all of them through Follett each week, but not until the end of the school year do I try in earnest to recover books. I then have face to face conversations with each student to try to sleuth where the book might be, but then I drop it. One of the reasons is that, due to the open design of our library, students can easily “borrow” books without actually checking it out. Furthermore, our self-checkout is a DIY tablet system that I cobbled together, and sometimes students genuinely think they are checking it out correctly, but not so. I can only blame myself for this.

My predecessor did ask the school to install security gates, but they said it was far cheaper to replace the lost books, so that’s the party line. I have a hard time punishing the student who legitimately checked out a book, but lost it, when there are plenty of others who illegitimately borrowed a book. Plus, at least I know these lost books were used at least once, and that’s my main point here. I have plenty of others in my 22K collection that have never been used, so it’s all relative. I tried a few times to link lost books with yearbook distribution, but this became a negative experience. We are not a punitive school in any sense of the word, so it felt wrong from the beginning. I choose to embrace the dissemination of information, and recover it only until it threatens my relationship with students.

Signage Works

Years ago, Sarah Levin (Library Director at the Urban School of San Francisco) and I were chatting about designating certain areas as “quiet.” She had a partially open room that she had tried everything keep quiet. Constantly patrolling it led to varying success. As a last resort, she posted a few printed signs designating it as a “Quiet Room” with some accompanying rules. She was shocked that the student behavior changed so quickly after posting them. Having a similar experience, I decided to follow suit.

The back of our large library is filled with eight double sided study carrels. The many stacks of books between the carrels and the main “social” study area provide a natural sound buffer, making it an ideal “Quiet Zone.” I created some signs and bought sturdy clips. For the first few weeks, I monitored and reminded students of the new rules, even including students sitting nearby in the stacks (they love this!). After that, I cannot remember having to quiet a student since implementing it six years ago. It is imperative that we provide a quiet study space for those who want it, otherwise what is the purpose of a school library? One of my proudest moments was when I witnessed a student walking away from the “Quiet Zone,” hand cuffed over the phone to her ear. Once she got to the “social” area, she said, “Oh sorry, I was waiting until I got out of the quiet zone to speak up.” Be still my beating heart….

Bean Bag Chairs are Never a Good Idea

Blasphemous you say?! My students love bean bag chairs, you say?! This all depends on the age of your students, so I am speaking to those of you surrounded by high-schoolers with newfound hormones. When I first purchased three bean bag chairs, I wanted to provide a more comfortable napping spot for students. It was innocent at first. They drug them into the stacks, which I thought was cute. Then, we found students “cuddling” after school and I’d have to give a short, yet loving, lecture about why this was inappropriate. Next, they started dragging them into the study rooms, and we’d find them doing a little more than “cuddling” behind closed doors. Yikes!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is BeanBag-768x1024.jpg

I decided to get rid of them, but what would I tell the kids? Then the Library Gods (notice the capitalization) shone upon me. “Lice Outbreak!” read the incoming email. I had found my scapegoat. Over winter break, we quietly got rid of them. I expected a throng of couples to come asking about them, but must’ve been too embarrassed to ask. The only student who asked was a boy who used them to take actual naps. When I told him it was because of lice, he said, “Eww, yeah. They were probably so infested.” While it solved one problem, I now need something non-mobile where individual students can nap. It’s better to keep trying than to punish all for the mistakes of a few.

What’s Something You Didn’t Learn in Library School?

What would you add to the list? I’m serious about the tissues though….

Snow-pocalypse, research, and change…

As I began drafting my first blog post, my weather app began showing snowflakes for the upcoming week. Snow warnings are not an infrequent occurrence, but my town usually does not get anywhere near the predicted amounts of snow and often we end up with no snow at all.  Not this time.  Snow started falling on Monday and we ended with 8-10 inches of snow and ice across our town.  As a mid-sized Southern city we are not prepared for this level of winter and the city basically shut down.  Last week was spent at home, all appointments canceled, and a total of 6 school days were canceled.  Coming so soon after our winter holidays, the extended break was not “needed,” but I did appreciate the slow days and ability to leisurely finish planning for this year’s research season.  My forced time at home, away from the distractions of my daily work and interruptions, allowed me to reflect on our current research practice and make some plans for improvement.

After six years of splitting my time between the high school and the middle school (and feeling like I was not fully successful in either building), I am now full time in the middle school library.  While change is always hard — and not always something that we choose — I am embracing the opportunities that I have to lay a strong foundation for information literacy and research skills.  My previous interactions with students were often limited to a few one shot info lit instructions, with an extra lesson or two during research time.  Students often viewed me as the one who popped in to tell them not to plagiarize, but not as a true partner in the learning process. This year, I am able to change that perception.

During the 2023 fall semester, I focused on working with our 6th grade team across the curriculum on a variety of lessons.  We talked about everything from the basics of the internet   (what is the difference between a browser and a search engine?) to where to find our library databases to how to write a citation.  A lot of this work built upon the knowledge they received in lower grades so I was not starting from scratch.  As their research project begins in earnest around the middle of February, I scheduled a few more lessons for foundational work with the research process.

The other two grade levels start their research projects this week. Both projects are familiar ones and I have supported the classes in the work over the years.  I am looking forward to more daily involvement with the classes and the opportunity to have small groups and one-on-one work as needed. We planned staggered start dates beginning last week, to give both the students and myself time to work together over the course of a few days, but our snow event has compressed that schedule.

Small group work is the new piece for this year’s projects.  With almost 9 weeks to work on the various steps of the projects, I have time to meet with students in groups of four or five to fine tune keywords and to record the first two sources.  I plan to share a digital copy of the form below via Google Docs so that I (and the teachers) can see the work completed.  We will also use Noodletools for the citations and notecards so instruction for that part will be woven into our sessions.  Most of the 7th and 8th graders have used Noodletools on previous projects so my work will be mostly a refresher session.  Using a shared document with a rubric will allow both the classroom teacher and me to see the work in real time and provide guidance as needed.  As we move through the project the small group work will change as we approach new milestones. 

This has been a year of change in ways that I did not seek out or anticipate.  Embracing these opportunities means that I am more deeply involved in the classrooms and can make a stronger impact on my students’ learning. As we move through these projects I look forward to finding new ways to improve my work with students! I would love to hear more ideas about how you connect with students during the research process.

Moving on Up

“Moving Up Day.” The vocabulary might be unique to our school, but the idea is common. 

For us, it’s the day shortly before contracts go out when we invite students to proactively “move up” to their next grade. For our younger Falcons, this is about 30 minutes of their morning. Teachers read a book with the class, talk up highlights of the year, and tour their classrooms. The domino cascade stops after grade eight, which is a half-day adventure to the Upper School. When the 8th graders move up, they join a high school already full of our regularly-scheduled 9th-12th graders. We just add six sections of 8th graders rotating through eight twenty minutes sessions, an Upper School Spirit Activity, and the long-awaited morning cookie break. (When I interviewed, I thought this was a euphemism for a snack break. It is not. Our Upper Schoolers can purchase freshly-based Otis Spunkmeyer cookies each morning at 10am. Unless you are an 8th grader, in which case cookies just appear mid-morning, no purchase necessary.)  

one of the cookie tubs

It speaks well for the profile of our library that we are included in one of the time slots, along with academic subjects and college counseling. This is my first year with another librarian leading the activities. Planning together made me review what I had done in the past.

Keeping in mind that the ultimate purpose of the day is to get students excited about the year to come by giving them a preview of highlights, I can say now that I completely missed the mark in my early years. This is not the time to teach the intricacies of EBSCO or how to cite sources for a non-existent project. I allowed them to check out books one year, something they can do any study hall any day of the week. There was potential in the library orientation scavenger hunt. Except that it was 19 questions that spanned the print and digital collections and students don’t attend the day with technology. Luckily since it was an activity far too long for the time allotted, we could limit to the print portions.  

For two years we joined forces with student representatives of the Honor Council. They talked about teachers’ expectations for the Honor Code and broke into small groups for activities. There were a variety of potential “gray zone” infractions that groups had to order from least problematic to worst, justifying their reasoning. I love that this was a student-led activity, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted the library to be students’ first thought when they heard the phrase “Honor Council” rather than the variety of resources the library provides to all students.  Since the Honor Council had a dedicated presentation to the 8th grade later in the spring, we amicably parted ways here.  

Middle schoolers really REALLY hate “helpful Susan.”

In winter of 2021 the entire Moving Up Day was a brief walking tour of Upper School hallways. No one wants to revisit that year. Moving on…. 

Because we have a really strong research program that encourages student autonomy, some years we have adapted an activity we use with our Upper Schoolers that’s intended to get them thinking more generatively about potential topics. We preselect books on all manner of odd subjects and students grab one that looks intriguing. They have two minutes to look anywhere in that book to find the craziest piece of trivia. Then each student pairs off with a classmate to decide whose is more interesting. Winners move on to compete against other winners until we have the class vote on the final champion.

Toilet facts vs. ambergris origins – some popular choices for this activity

We tend to think of the library as the metaphorical heart of the Upper School, and as a combined Middle and Upper library, it should be one of the places Middle Schoolers feel most comfortable in the Upper School already. The last few years we have added the Visible Thinking Routine of a Compass activity with anonymous post-it notes on posterboard. What better ways to tailor time than to hear directly from 8th graders their perceptions about 9th grade?

North (N): Need to know              
Ex. How exactly does block schedule work?                      
Is there more or less homework?                      
How do you get selected for May trips?
East (E): Excitements              
Ex. Advisor doesn’t collect phone!              
Hoodies!               
Studying in the library!
West (W): Worries              
Ex. More homework                   
Keeping track of schedule                  
Getting into college
South (S): Suggestions                  
Ex. More manga in the library                  
Let you have your phones in every class                  
Start a trading card game club

When I graduated from library school, I felt like I had to manufacture a learning opportunity each time I engaged with students. Hence those content-driven early years. Now I think about building connections with people and strengthening the association of the library as a generally friendly, helpful space. Thinking back to their Compass questions, most will be answered naturally weeks into 9th grade, just by virtue of being a 9th grader. But as with ancient Roman toilets and medieval library cats from the trivia game, they don’t know what they don’t know about our library either.

While the slides used this year are simple, they reinforced the conversation taking place. This is your library. Study anywhere. Play chess at the back table. Put a piece in the endless 2000 piece Pixar puzzle. (Please do that—it’s been out for close to three months now and still isn’t complete.) Record your podcast in the Pod. Print. Hang out after school. The book poetry provided an immediate energetic exploration of our collection, along with setting the tone that this is not a library of silence. The slides, along with the Upper Schoolers using the library, demonstrated the variety of ways students can use the library as a space or as a resource. The Compass activity gave students a voice from day one.  

Turns out we excel at puzzles up to 1500 pieces. Not 2000.

I spent so much time when I was younger trying to maximize every minute. Thinking through years past, while some activities have been better than others, there’s no one right answer, no one ideal use of this time. I would love thoughts from others on how your instruction has changed over time or ideas you’ve used to get people feeling welcome in the library.

Building Book Recommendation Lists

I’ve been compiling booklists since I started out as a librarian. Currently, the two biggest lists I work on for school are our Holiday Reading/Gift-Giving Recommendations, and Summer Fun Reading Recommendations. How I compile the lists has morphed over the years, and I thought I’d share how I do it now, and would love to hear about others’ methods, too.

We divide our lists into three levels. Formerly we used Middle School, Upper School, and Adult, but changed that to Middle School (grades 5-7), Crossover (grades 7-10), and Upper School/Adult (grades 9-12/adult). We further divide each level by genre/category, which can be somewhat flexible; for instance, one year I found so many wonderful new short story collections that I added that as a category. Sometime genres that fit well for Middle School don’t fit so well for Crossover and vice versa. I use “Romance” as a category only in the latter, along with “Supernatural.” “Humor” as a category I use only in Middle School. MS and Crossover have eight t0 nine genres/categories, whereas we divide the Upper School lists into Fiction, Nonfiction, and Graphica. MS and Crossover genres/categories include six books each; US lists can run longer in each category.

As to how I build the lists, I start with last year’s lists, and do my utmost not to repeat a title. I have a database spreadsheet with columns for genre, main character gender(s), and diversit(y/ies). For each genre, I strive to balance the genders of main characters, and make it at least half diverse, preferably more to reflect our school population. I also strive to ensure the titles represent a diversity of diversities, including religious, disability, race/ethnicity, and LGBTQ.

When possible, I prefer to populate the lists with new or new-ish books, starting with titles from our new books lists. When I’ve exhausted those, I move to my wishlist database, best-books lists, library catalog, etc. Sometimes I struggle to find good, diverse books in every genre, and I do end up re-using older titles—occasionally even old favorites still in print—if I can’t find newer books to fill the lists.

We post our lists on our LibGuides, in tabbed boxes. Recently we’ve stopped creating new guides each year, instead shifting the older boxes to a general “Reading Recommendations” page and building the new lists in the same guides. Using our judgement about what will circulate, we buy many of the titles in eBook format. We also display print titles in the library, and advertise the lists through parent and faculty communications, among others.

How do you build your recommended-books lists?

Bringing Sources into Conversation: Teaching Literature Review to High School Students (Part 2)

As I mentioned in November, I have become a huge fan of having students read and write literature reviews before heading off to college. Working with students in those upper-level electives that use scholarly sources, I have found that they completely misinterpret what that section of papers is doing and how they are meant to interact with it. More importantly, I find that literature reviews help with basic and highly specific skill-building for which alums express appreciation when they transition to college. In addition, I have several highly collaborative colleagues now (in our AP-equivalent Advanced Topics Statistics, Biology, and History Research and Writing classes) who collaborate on teaching how to build lit reviews, and also invite me to hang around as students work, involve me in draft reading and feedback, as well as assessment.

For my first several years at this school, AP/AT Statistics was the only class that undertook functional literature reviews, and the teacher made time available some years for me to come in and teach students what a lit review was before they wrote it. So, I had several opportunities to experiment. I will admit that, in part, this process has gotten easier as students have had an increasing number of years building relationships with me prior to my appearing for this lesson (in year two, students stared at me stony-faced over a sample lit review about whether dogs feel jealousy and in year three the lit reviews on women and swearing got the same response – in years nine, ten, and eleven, the same lit reviews go over very well among my gender-diverse girls school students, because they are unsurprised that I plumb the Ig Noble award-winning papers for funny, readable, and informative examples).

In any event, over the years I found some methods that worked better than others at teaching students particular skills inherent in lit review writing, but I still found the outcomes of student work quite inconsistent. No matter how I explained the basic building blocks of lit reviews, not all students seemed to get it – or, at least it took more, one-on-one discussion over time to drive the concepts home. So, this year I took on a new approach – and this one seemed to yield much stronger results.

What is a lit review?

This year, I did not tell students what lit reviews are for or how they are organized. Working in pairs or table groups, students read sample lit reviews. Each student would have a different paper. Their task was to compare, discuss, and answer: 

1. What job the lit review was doing? and 

2. What are the building blocks of lit reviews? 

We would then work to synthesize their observations as a class, which gave the classroom teacher and myself opportunities to add observations, clarify details, answer questions, and correct misconceptions. We always pause to look at an example of a sentence that address a single study and one that reflects on several studies that arrive at similar findings.

We do this work on paper — lots of annotating takes place, and we want them focused — so most students had their computers closed. One student took notes for the whole class to refer back to ask they worked (examples). I also gave them Assiya’s (my dedicated Lit Review Research TA) FAQ that I shared back in November, of course!

Creating conversations

In the second round, students looked for signs of “conversation.” How could you tell that authors are bringing sources into conversation with each other? What words did they use to demonstrate a conversation was taking place? Students discovered signal phrases – a concept I learned from The Harker School’s Lauri Vaughan – and transitions in their texts, and I gave them hard copies of the transitions template from They Say, I Say, and a handout on signal phrases with lists of sample verbs. 

(Sidenote: I get these documents into the hands of students every chance I get. They really help students to bring sources into conversation. A former Research TA and I analyzed multiple grade-levels of History writing from the same cohort of students, looking for how they were using evidence and hallmarks of strong skills. We found that precise and varied verb selection was at least highly correlated with good use of evidence. Since then, I encourage those students who do not naturally jive with synthesizing from multiple sources to let verbs lead their way; it is really helpful for them to pull out the list and just ask themselves which fit what they are seeing: are these sources contradicting? building upon? supporting? advocating for? Classroom teachers love that students use more variety than “said….said….said.” I encourage students to keep these docs next to their computers for reference whenever they are working to bring multiple sources into conversation.)

I do not know why I did not try this method years ago. Clearly, having students observe for themselves and puzzle out the “rules” of lit review was so much more effective than telling them.

Organizational schema

The final step of the lesson, which I have used for the last eight years or so, was to give students a set of notecards and have them practice organizing lit reviews based on different prompts. (I have two sets I use, here and here.) For each set of cards, I have three questions, and students work in their groups to pile notecards into the paragraphs they would create to answer each. For dogs, the questions this year were:

  1. Do dogs feel jealousy only over “their person,” or any person?
  2. Do dogs distinguish between social and non-social recipients of their person’s attention?
  3. What method is most effective for testing secondary emotions in dogs?

For each of these questions, most of the studies conveyed on the cards could be used in a lit review. However, for each of these questions, how the sources would be grouped would vary. A lit review might be organized thematically, methodologically, chronologically, etc. This exercise reinforces the idea they discovered earlier in the class that lit reviews are not “serial book reports” (a paragraph going into depth on each source) but synthetic documents.

I’ve come to love working with students on lit reviews, and feel quite passionate about the feelings of agency and accomplishment that they engender. Do you collaborate on any lit review instruction or creation? How do you approach this work?

Blast From the Past: AISL Conference 1996

As I was thinking what to write for my December post, I thought back to when I was a baby librarian in my 20s, attending my first AISL conference. That was in 1996, when AISL was less than ten years old, and I was living in its “hometown” of Washington, D.C. As the conference also took place in D.C., that made attending it easy! At that time in my life, I wrote my grandmother long letters about everything I was up to, which included the conference. I dug up the letter that included my description, and what follows is a slightly-abridged version, with some added comments. I sadly didn’t find any photos I took at the conference, but here I am at my first school, Edmund Burke (rocking those 80s shoulder pads), along with a view of my library. Note the card catalog—it was the dark ages!!

April, 1996

The AISL (Association of Independent School Librarians) conference was a tremendous success; I’ve never had so much fun at a conference before! It began on a Wednesday at St. Alban’s, with continental breakfast in the library. At the local conferences I attend most people already know each other and don’t really talk outside their groups, but here, few people knew each other, so everyone talked to new people. People came from all over the country, and it was wonderful to discuss our libraries and find out we all have the same types of problems with students, faculty, teaching, equipment, budgets, etc. That’s the drawback of working at Edmund Burke as a solo librarian; no one really knows what I do so it’s rather isolating. I loved talking to people who not only understood but were interested in what I was saying! [2023 note: That conference, and the camaraderie, completely sold me on AISL, and I am so grateful I found the association at the start of my career.]

              The morning’s program focused on library facilities; planning a new one, moving, etc. An architect discussed the tendency of architects to ignore function in favor of looks, resulting in things like odd corners no shelves can fit in, solid railings behind which kids can hide, useless light fixtures, insufficient wiring, etc. They showed slides of lots of lovely libraries, and pointed out difficulties with all of them! Rather daunting, especially as the librarians who had undergone this process spent more time at their library than at home, and really immersed themselves in the project and the school. The dedication that requires!

              That afternoon we took school buses to visit some local school libraries. The first stop was Madeira. Their library is quite new and elegantly beautiful, though the lights are inconvenient. I spent much time talking with a local librarian about her automation system, which might work for Burke. I apprecited the chance to talk to someone from my local association without having dozens of other people clamoring for her attention! One thing I got out of the conference was many helpful suggestions and advice about CD-ROMs, automation, and technology in general. Since we’re just starting out with automation, I need to learn a lot more.

              Our next stop was an elementary school; Langley. They have a British librarian, and it was the only library we visited that had Enid Blyton books. Also, one of their librarians is a published children’s author. They have a wonderful story room; they painted all the walls as if you’re looking out over the parapets of a castle into a pastoral landscape. If you peer closely, you can even spot some unicorns. Apparently it was a real school community project, and took a long time (and some hair-pulling) to complete.

              Last, we returned to the cathedral and quickly glanced through the National Cathedral School’s library before heading to Georgetown Visitation, which has a spacious campus in Georgetown. They hosted dinner in the library, which used to be a barn. Again I was amazed that even though I was constantly talking to different people, everyone was pleasant and interesting and intelligent. [2023 note: I cannot imagine, twenty-seven years later, what on earth would have made me amazed to find that out! Now I just take that for granted with AISL!]

              The next morning we started again at St. Alban’s, with lectures on women characters in books for children, fiction and nonfiction. I heard the lectures on women’s history, women in music, women in math, and women in fiction. I was most impressed with the women’s history speaker; I guess I had never really understood before that women’s history was not just biographies of women, but the entire history of the gender, with entirely different landmarks from that of men. For instance, World War II was dreadful for men, but wonderful (in some ways) for women who were able to join the workforce. I’d never thought of it like that before.

              That afternoon included museum tours. As I live in DC I opted to go to work instead, but went out to dinner in Georgetown with several nice librarians from out of town.

              On Friday we left from St. Alban’s in busses and drove to the Library of Congress. After an orientation movie, we split into tour groups. My group visited the children’s section, located in an eyrie on a balcony above the incredible Jefferson reading room (circular). What an amazing place to work! The architectural details stand so close (arches, pillars, carvings), and bronze statutes perched on the edge of the balcony look out over the room. Michaelangelo and Bacon stood in the section where we were; larger than life. We discussed the children’s section and its various successes and problems (all LC has had funding problems like most government agencies), but I think the best part of the tour was simply the location.

              The children’s librarian had to take us back to the new building for our next tour, and to save time, we took the tunnels under the street. There were miles of them, all busy with people. We also saw a book tram–a tractor hauling bins of books on a special track.

              Our next stop was geography and mapping, which takes up an enormous amount of basement space. Acres, literally! We saw all sorts of maps, and most interesting, a scanner that could take antique maps and reproduce them so exactly on a massive color printer that from a distance, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. We also saw old fire insurance maps showing every house and street and building in every town in America; not possible to do anymore because people are afraid to go to the inner cities to measure buildings. Apparently the maps are still useful in that people can research the locations of old chemical plants, because the maps always list the products of particular buildings.

              That afternoon we went to the National Archives. My group took the walking tour first, through many sections the public never sees. Their stacks are narrow and dark and well hidden, and the building is honeycombed with levels. Originally they’d planned to build an atrium under the dome, but discovered they needed the space for documents. Of course we also visited the Constitution and the Magna Carta in the main public area. The lecture covered some school packets of primary source material the Archives has gathered. They have one on Jacksonian America, and are just working on a Women’s History packet. The speaker discussed the power of petitions before women could vote.

              That was alas the end of the conference for me, but I had a truly wonderful time!

Back to 2023. After having moved home to the west coast almost twenty years ago, I wasn’t able to attend as many AISL conferences as I used to, but each has still been a wonderful experience. Thanks to all those organizers who pour their heart and souls and time into creating those experiences.

Help me build a fantasy search lesson: Search instruction from popular fiction

While you might be surprised at how passionate I once was about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, you will become less surprised when you hear why. Below you can find a little post I wrote on my very short-lived blog back in 2010, entitled: “A Searcher’s Review of Twilight: Book Vs. Movie Through the Eyes of a Search Geek.”

Originally, I only had one idea for a research skills lesson analyzing search choices in MG and YA literature. But then, several years ago, I came across this little gem in Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles, in which Scarlet is trying to figure out what the deal is with Wolf:

(Scarlet, p. 171-172)

So — new fantasy: What if we had a dozen or more research-related quotes from popular novels and could design a class where students picked one and came up with a short real-world lesson based on the fictional account?

My ask: Can you think of a brief passage from a book in your collection that speaks to or demonstrates thinking about research skills? If you email me directly or put them in the comments below, I would be most happy to compile a list of useful passages for the group.

In case we do not get to this new lesson, here is what I wished I had a class to teach to back when I read Twilight:

A Searcher’s Review of Twilight: Book vs. Movie Through the Eyes of a Search Geek

Well, it is that time again—the Twilight New Moon video is now part of our lives. Pre-teens and teenagers spend untold amounts of time mooning over Bella and Edward… providing, believe it or not, a great example of better quality, iterative searching.

Of the books’ strengths and weaknesses, what annoyed me most wasn’t the endlessly repetitive conversations, or the thousand uses of the word alabaster, but rather Bella’s very poor online search skills.

Bella, the heroine, tricks a member of the local Quileute tribe into telling her about love interest Edward’s secret:

In her agitation over this revelation, Bella naturally decides to hop online to verify the vampire claim. And that is what she searches: [vampire].

Bella reads though the site, “looking for anything that sounded familiar, let alone plausible,” (134) and comes up blank.

Meanwhile, my mind is fairly screaming, not about the revelation of Edward’s true identity, but rather about the fact that her friend gave her a perfectly good, highly specific and potentially powerful, search term, [cold ones], and it does not even occur to her to use it.  By sticking with a more general term, she not only opens herself up to many irrelevant hits, but fails to uncover pages that might have information matched to her specific information need. Like searching for [plant food] when you want to know what to feed your Venus fly trap. She ends up frustrated by her search process, feeling that it taught her nothing of use.

By contrast, movie-Bella has a search style that is worlds stronger.

In the film, instead of revealing Edward’s hidden identity, Bella’s friend darkly hints that Edward is somehow related to an old Quileute tribal legend, but refuses to say more. Bella then undertakes an iterative search process, in which she reads for search terms and folds them back into her search process to get more specificIn this example, Bella takes stock of what she knows, and goes online to find a more information (search: [Quileute legends]). She finds a book on Quileute myths, and homes in on the term cold one, which she then takes back online as her next search. Using this specific term, she finds precise information, which in fact allows her to build a list of attributes that she has recognized in Edward—speed, strength, and cold skin—and leverages that knowledge to add new ones—immortal, drinks blood—confirming for her that Edward is a vampire. A much more successful and satisfying search experience, if a weaker execution of the plot. This type of iterative searching is one of the key skills that I teach students, educators, and parents in my classes.

With the second movie in the Twilight Saga selling like crazy, and two more to come over the next two years, both the Twilight and the search lovers in your class can enjoy the opportunity to dig in.

My take away: No one wants to hear they have to run multiple searches to find information. So, use something kids do want to hear about to get the point across!