As a school librarian, I know that it makes sense to teach multimedia literacy skills collaboratively with the classroom teacher rather than in isolation. So I have been very lucky to collaborate with my colleague, Lisa Ross, 3rd-grade classroom teacher. … Continue reading
I have yet to meet a student who does not enjoy Mo Willems’ books. Earlier in the school year, my Kindergarten students read several books in the Pigeon series and currently are reading books in the Elephant & Piggie series–all … Continue reading
In social studies class, my 2nd grade students learned about immigration. With help from their parents, they created family trees, discovering that their ancestors immigrated from different Eastern and Western European countries and even from as far away as Taiwan. … Continue reading
When last month I worked with my 4th grade students on creating maps (an extension of a social studies lesson on map skills), we referred to it as our GeoLiteracy project. While we thought we had come up with the … Continue reading
I love my job as a teacher librarian at a private school. I have had the freedom create my own lessons–shaping and reshaping them, while trying new ideas or adapting old ones or just sticking with the tried and true. … Continue reading
The last few weeks of the school year, my 3rd grade class researched information about a country of their choice. While engaged in the research process, they explored a variety of technology resources to gather information, synthesized what they found, … Continue reading
My 1st graders love learning about animals, so making animals the subject of our research skills unit was a no-brainer. Also, thankfully, our library collection includes a decent number of early reader books on different animals. My goal was for … Continue reading
App Smashing Biography Research My 2nd grade students did some biography research this spring. The first challenge was to find biographies they could actually read. While we had enough books for each of the students, I wish we had … Continue reading
In language arts class, my 5th grade students read A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park (2010). The book tells the story of Salva, one of the thousands of Sudanese “Lost Boys” who … Continue reading
My 3rd and 4th grade students embarked on a new endeavor–creating book trailers. I had never created trailers before, so I learned alongside my students. Since I meet each class only once weekly for 40 minutes, the project spanned twelve … Continue reading
Liquid Literacy 