Click here to see photos - Thanks to Diane Cordell, photographer who joined us!
- We Introduced some new eBooks purchased for all districts. See Sharon Hinkle, if you would like to know more. These include: Marshall Cavendish, ROSEN's Spotlight on NY (3 titles), and Overdrive titles.
- Link to the NYSED approved APPR rubric now available on the state ed website: click here After two years of writing, tweaking, asking people to pilot this, and more, I am happy to say this was approved. Just when I had about given up hope, I received a call from state ed. I remember last summer trying to meet an original deadline for submission. We were on vacation at a remote cabin in the Adirondacks--without Internet service or cell service. My husband was "fishing," keeping his foot on the trolling motor to stay within wireless connection of another home...while I poached connectivity long enough to press "send." I look back and laugh at the event. Little did I know that was the beginning of a year long process. This is good news as it puts us on the NYSED map as having a tool for "teacher" evaluation.
- We spent some time at this meeting discussing the Empire State Fluency Continuum, and how to use the tools in our binders for effective instruction on library related skills such as: Main idea, research, web evaluation, point of view, opinion, forming a hypothesis and more. See the approved bullets we have built SLO assessments for on our SLS website. Not only did we discuss the binder, but discussed innovative ways to deliver these learning objectives at different grade levels.
- We discussed the Vocabulary shift in the CCSS and the support a librarian can offer. Vocabulary is integral to comprehension (see my upcoming blog post for a spotlight on vocabulary & the CC). Therefore, we can help students read and understand novels, news, non-fiction and more by embracing ways to get students tuned-in to vocabulary. We are offering discount pricing on a new web tool for Vocabulary called VISUALTHESAURUS.COM We currently have a free trial. Please disseminate this to your staff. (It has to be disseminated in an email. If you copy and paste it into a browser, it won't work.) Try this link and set up an educator account. Be certain to scroll down the homepage on their site and check out the VOCABULARYGRABBER tool also. Both are great examples of tools to engage students in understanding and comprehension.
- Another topic of discussion was SYNTHESIS. How do we get students to comprehend and synthesize. Ask you colleagues about the activities we participated in to embrace and understand the links between close reading, info-mining, and synthesis. Our new Synthesis Booklets were handed out and we practiced being 'overwhelmed' by new knowledge, difficult material, and mental indigestion -- to replicate the experience of our students. Participants were shown techniques to help students find their way to understanding.
- Hoping there would be time, I had a presentation planned for an introduction to Digital Footprints. Time did not allow us to cover this, so we will be hosting a webinar on this topic shortly.
- Polly's eTools for the Common Core were spotlighted, digested and discussed. Check out the wiki she prepared for our PD at this link. We had a Backchannel going for discussion, hastag #slscooltools, and our hashtag for the morning was #wswhesls -- Check out the hashtag archives via Tweetdeck, if you'd like to see the participatory comments.
If you missed the day, you missed connections and new ideas for instruction. We missed you, but realize that there are many valid reasons people could not make it. This year with SLO's, assessment, district PD conflicts, and other new district policies not allowing teachers to leave the building, there were many smiling faces missing. However, we still had over half our group! So, for that we are happy! We hope to post some photos and video clips of our suggestions for rolling-out Common Core standards in the library. Stay-tuned!
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