Competency 9: Internet

Using Google and searching "reading motivation" I found the website www.readingrockets.org. The tag for this website is "teaching kids to read and helping those who struggle." I thought this would be an excellent site as it offers information for parents, teachers, and librarians in ways to work together and individual to get kids reading, and reading well.

When clicking on the "Librarians" link we are provided with "Top 12 Resources for Librarians." These are things that we can use to encourage and motivate our students to read. Some of the things on the list are videos of interviews with 80 popular authors such as Mo Willams who write the widely popular and loved Pigeon series. There are also themed book lists, author study kits and seasonal book activities that will be beneficial while lesson planning and setting up displays.

I chose this website because it is one that will be helpful for me now as a teacher, in my near future as a librarian as well as when I'm a parent. This is a useful guide that I will be sharing with collegues at the return of school in August.

Competency 8: Research visual/multimedia

I found this visual while searching google images for "reading motivation in school libraries" for the previous post. It was a part of the School Library Journal's spending survey for the year 2006. It breaks down each of the motivational programs found in libraries and how many schools are spending budget money or participating in them. I was very surprise with how high the number were for neither school/classroom or the Library Media Center. Many of these activities are budget friendly such as Intergenerational reading programs or family literacy reading programs, yet schools aren't doing them.

Image found:
Shontz, Marilyn L and Leslie S. J. Farmer. "The SLJ Spending Survey." School Library Journal.
Media Source Inc., 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 21 July 2010.
<http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6403260.html>

Competency 7: Image

I really struggled finding a good image for this post. While working with JSTOR for my last post, I noticed they had an image feature. I was impressed with the number of images that came up with the very specific search terms that I had to used to locate an article on reading motivation in elementary school libraries. Unfortunately, the images that came up were mostly copies of articles that really didn't have much to do with my topic. I decided to try Google Images, and found a lot of cartoons, motivational posters, and pictures of stacks upon stacks upon stacks of books. Then it dawned on me. One of the biggest ways to motivate a student to read to to somehow draw their attention to the books through a display. I did a search for school library displays and came up with a wealth of images. Here are some of my favorites:

Teachers from the school reading books available at the book fair.

Popular cartoon series advertising books about being called names to promote no name calling week.

Characters from TV's Hannah Montana showing off books about friendship.

Nancy Drew identifies the good mystery books.

A display of Twilight-esque books for those who can't get enough of the vampires and werewolves.

These are perhaps my favorite. Flags placed inside of books displayed on top of the short stacks to grabs a student's attention.

Compentency 6: Specific Facet First

This search was the most difficult for me to do. I used the JSTOR database to perform this search. The first term I used to search was "reading motivation." From there I had to narrow it down even more to ensure the results were what I was looking for. I added the term "school librarian." This search brought up a lot of information about high school students, which is great information, but elementary school is where I want to put my focus so I added the final term of "elementary OR primary."

This search brought up 939 matches, which is still a lot, but I was unsure how to break it down even more. I also found this search to be very similar to the building block search. In the end, the article I chose for this search was about first graders and their preference for narrative and information books as well as the preferences between boys and girls.

Compentency 6: citation pearl growing search

For this search I used the Lexis Database. In order to already have a set of search terms to use, I looked at the descriptors of an article about reading motivation I had previously found. The article was called "Literacy Committee: Creating a Community of Readers"

The descriptors I chose to use were: reading motivation, school library, elementary.

After searching, I found 1o results. Most of them seemed to be relevant to the topic I was searching for.

I chose to look more closely at the first article that was provided. Overall, this was a good database to use for this type of a search. I'm not sure that it would be the best database to use if you are wanting to do a building block search.

Competency 6: Browsing Search Strategy

To complete a browsing search I visited the LibLit database. Step one was to click on the "Thesaurus" tab up at the top of the page. I did a search for "school librarians." This search brought up a number of categories. I chose to explore "School Librarians (53)" as it seemed to be the most broad, yet most relevant category.

The search became difficult after this. I went through the first 100 results and found a large amount of good information that could be very useful at another moment in time. There were articles about starting a library program from scratch, articles about what the roles are of a school librarian, question and answer articles about situations that have come up in school libraries and great general information for a newcomer to the field. I made a mental note to remember this for when I get my first librarian job. I did not find any articles about motivating students to read though, which is my topic of interest. This is a great method to use if you are looking for general information on a topic, but it did not suit me well for my specific topic of interest. Here is an article that I did find interesting. It focuses on three different school librarians and the differences between the programs in their schools.

Competency 6: Building Block Search Strategy

To demonstrate this search strategy I first went to the ERIC database. In searching for articles on motivating students to read I broke my search down the following ways:

S1: motivate

S2: children OR youth OR students

S3: read

This search produced 316 results. I looked closely at the first ten results and all but two were relevant to the specific topic I was looking for.

I chose to look more closely at result number 3, "Reading Incentives that Work: No-Cost Strategies to Motivate Kids to Read and Love It!"

Overall, I feel this search did a very good job of locating information that was relevant to my topic. Even hits that appeared that I did not find useful were simply because they focused on students at a higher education level rather than in the younger grades. To narrow my search even more I could have added an S4: elementary OR primary.

Competency #5: Tagging/Indexing

After visiting Librarything.com I chose to search for the tag "school librarian" and see what resources would come up. I chose to pick the book Library 1o1: A Handbook for the School Library Media Specialist. Out of all the books that came up, this book had the highest rating. I thought this would be a good guidebook for a first time media specialist. I had a similar book that I got as a gift before my first year of teaching and still use it all the time 4 years later.

Here are the tags associated with Library 101: A Handbook for the School Library Media Specialist:

(dec. 2008) (1) 510 (1) academy 1 (1) administration (1) adult (1) cataloging (1) collection development (1) college textbook- management (1) computers (1) education (1) elementary (1) handbook (6) how-to (1) information literacy standards (1) information storage and retrieval (1) instructional materials centers (1) isar (1) june 2008 (1) librarians (2) library (6) library administration (1) library guides (1) library management (1) library media specialist (1) library policy (1) library science (1) library-fun (1) lis5270 (1) ls5813 (1) management (1) media (4) media center (3) media program (2) media programs (1) media specialist (2) media specialists (2) medt (1) new librarian (1) non-fiction (1) office (1) ou slis (1) planning (1) professional (2) professional books (1) program administration (1) reference (1) research (1) resource (1) school (2) school library (6) school library lessons (1) school library media (1) school library media specialist (2) school library media specialists (1) school media (1) school media center (1) teacher librarian (1) technology (1) textbook (5) uwg textbook (2) work (1)

The link associated with Library 101: A Handbook for the School Library Media Specialist is:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4172102#

Competency #3- podcasts

Using the database www.podcastdirectory.com I found a delightful podcast that is great for both students and librarians alike.

Reading Rockets presents Meet the Authors (http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podcasts/52271) is a series of video interviews with authors of popular children's books. These books range from ones that are targets for early childhood, like the author of Arthur, Marc Brown, to books that target an older student such as Jack Gantos, the author of the Joey Pigza series.

In the videos the authors discuss inspiration and interests that led to the creation of these popular stories. This would be a great podcast to include on grade level ipods that are provided for each grade level in my current school. What a wonderful special treat for students who finish early!

Competency #2: Found Blog, MotherReader.com

I have found a new blog to add to my google reader with this assignment. I used the google blog search tool and searched for children's books. I thought I had found the blog I was going to use for this competency, but then I saw a post about a 48 hour reading challenge. I thought this is such a good way to motivate children (and adults) to read and I had to find out more about it. I followed the link to the blogger that started it and found MotherReader. www.motherreader.com

One of the features of her blog that I really liked and intend on sharing with our kindergarten teachers is ABC story time. Each week she highlighted a different letter in the alphabet and included popular titles that start with that letter as well as a poem or song. Below is a screenshot of her "E" entry.



Not only would this be helpful in a kindergarten classroom, it would be a great way for classroom teachers to work with the librarian to promote popular books school wide based on the letter of the week.

Finding the spark...

For the longest time I wanted to be a teacher. I really gave no other career a second thought. I worked hard in school, got my teaching certificate, became a teacher and quickly realized that there is a job that is even better, the school librarian. This blog is a result of my reaching my goal.

As a young girl, reading wasn't my favorite thing to do. I actually hated it. Being the daughter of two avid readers, my mom tried so hard to find a book that would spark my interest and get me excited about reading. That book was "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I want to become an elementary school librarian in an effort to find the book that sparks the same interest in the students that come through my library. The topic I will be focusing on is instilling a love to read in elementary aged students.