Year Long Decorations Follow Up- Sustaining the Theme

      About a year ago, I wrote a post about decorating the library with a year long theme.  This is a follow up post on that topic:

     For the longest time, I have considered elementary teachers to be among the best practitioners in the field of education.  They are masters of integrating across curricular areas, including hands on learning opportunities, and generally making learning fun!  My wife is one of these elementary educators, and although I taught middle school and high school and now work in an 8-9th grade library, I still borrow many of my best ideas from her and other elementary educators!

     Among the ideas I have "borrowed" from my elementary colleagues is the idea of a year long theme in the library.  Two years ago, we had a superhero theme.  I was able to get a variety of Batman masks and posters from Marvel comics in honor of his 75th anniversary that were used throughout the year in support of the theme.

     The challenge of a year long theme is how to keep it fresh and new.  It is a best practice to change up displays about once a month-so how can this be done with a year long theme?  I found it easier to do this with the superhero theme.  I used the Batman masks from Marvel to disguise the classic novels and created a Robin mask for the YA companion novels.  A Creative Commons image of Batman and Robin was used to draw attention to this "Dynamic Duos" display.

     Student aides also created superhero window displays where they could pick a traditional superhero such as Green Lantern and then find books about them to place in the window.  (In the case of Green Lantern, books with green themes or the word green in the title were selected) Students could also create their own.  One student choose her favorite teacher who is affectionately known as "the Hobbit" and created a superhero poster featuring Super Hobbit.  She then filled the display with the Lord of the Rings novels and books about characters from Middle Earth.

     This past year, I went with a Monopoly board game theme.  Instead of "passing go and collecting $200", the sign in computer featured a poster that said "sign in and go enjoy your library."  Different book sections were featured signs like Fiction Avenue and Biography Boulevard.  In terms of keeping a yearly theme "new", there were more challenges than with the superhero theme.

     One display featured a "Take a Chance on a Book" similar to Monopoly's chance cards. I wrapped up books that had not ever been checked out, wrote a quick phrase hinting at their content, and encouraged students to check them out.  If they did take a chance, they could write a quick review and get a treat. Student reviews were posted on the display.  This display stayed up throughout the year.  About 40 books got their first checkout, and about a dozen student reviews were posted.  Most of the checkouts occurred during first semester and almost none occurred in the spring.

     Comparing the two yearly themes, I would say the superhero theme was more successful.  It was easier to maintain momentum by changing up the displays throughout the year while maintaining the overall theme.  Involving student aides in the decorating process also proved effective.  Their creative idea to have superhero windows was one of the best displays of the year.


Key questions to ask in considering year long themes include:

• Is there a historical anniversary or notable pop culture theme/event that could be used as a year long theme?
• Are there free/inexpensive decorations available that could support the selected theme?
• How can this theme be sustainable throughout the year?
• How can a yearly library theme mesh with a focus of our school during the current calendar year?
• Are there displays or contests that could be run that would support the yearly theme AND help to maintain enthusiasm for it?
• How can the faculty and students be involved in a yearly library theme?

     As the new school year approaches, I am still considering some different year long theme ideas.  What year long themes have you tried in your library/classroom and what did you do to sustain them/keep them fresh?

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Genius Hour for Library Aides

     Ever since hearing about Genius Hour at the Schools Without Walls Conference this past year, I have been intrigued about how best to implement it in the library.

     For those who might be unfamiliar with it, Genius Hour, also known as Passion Project(s) or 20% time was born in Google where engineers were given that percentage of their work week to develop ideas and innovations they were interested in.  This policy not only increased employee motivation and productivity, but it also led to innovations such as Google Mail and Google News.

    There are a few basic principles of implementing Genius Hour in a school setting:
-projects are student directed/selected based on their research into areas of interest
-students have a means to demonstrate progress
-projects must be documented/presented in some way

      This year, I posed this idea to my student aides:  what would you do if you had 20% of class time each week to work on a project of your choosing?  Students had to earn this privilege by displaying outstanding time management skills.  Those aides who met the standard were rewarded with Genius Hour as their second semester final project, while those whose time management skills were still emerging were assigned a more structured final project.

       Students were informed that they had qualified for Genius Hour and they were given about two weeks to research and select their ideas.  We had to have some discussions about what would qualify as a Genius Hour project and emphasize the need for there to be some sort of product and documentation of their efforts.  This lead to some funny conversations about what would be an appropriate Genius Hour project and what would not be.  (For example, texting your girlfriend or playing a video game for 20% of class time would not meet the Genius Hour criterion :) )

     Student aides came up with an impressive array of projects:

     One student had a passion for teaching.  She had worked with the pre Kindergarten program in our junior high throughout the year on various projects.  For her project, she researched and taught pre-K students to make play dough.

     One student had a passion for computers.  He developed his coding skills through working in the library this year and was eager to expand his knowledge of how computers work.  His project was to take apart a computer, and then rebuild it in a cardboard box.  Since he used an enormous, old desktop, he named his project "Megalodon."

     One student had a passion for video production.  She had already worked on several video projects using i-Movie, including a book trailer and an informational video.  As a result, she was ready to move in a different direction.  For her project, she created a stop action video story on a whiteboard.

     One student had a passion for singing and video production.  He chose to create a video advertisement for our school's Karaoke club.

     One student had a passion for gaming.  He chose to build a Pokemon rom hack where he redesigned a section of the Pokemon world.

     Looking back, I am proud of the array of projects students created.  I observed the same spike in motivation and productivity from my student aides as they worked on their projects that Google executives observed.  (There was even one student aide who attempted to sneak out of other classes to come back to the library to work on his Genius Hour idea!)

     In the future, I look forward to providing more opportunities for Genius Hour through the library.  Students each presented their projects informally to library staff.  Next year, I hope to support students in more extensive documenting of their work perhaps through video or presentations to the school and the community.

     This experience also got me thinking about how Genius Hour could be applied to the classroom.  I look forward to exploring this during the upcoming school term with my teachers!

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Let's Recap App: a Powerful Incubator of Reflection

      During the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media conference this spring, I heard from Joyce Valenza, one of my library heroes. One of the ideas that has stuck with me from her presentations was the need to publicize the library program with more than just usage statistics.  She proposed that including student feedback in library reports could deepen students learning through reflection and provide powerful documentation about the impacts of the library program on their learning.

Recently, while I was discussing authentic reflections with one of my colleagues, Justin Hart, he mentioned an app called (Let's) Recap. Mr. Hart joked that he would keep mentioning it until one of his colleagues went out and tried it.  I took him up on his offer and try it out with my student library aides this spring.  

Let's Recap is available on the Apple Store or it can be accessed on a computer. (https://app.letsrecap.com/)  Students can access the app either with their email, or by entering a class pin.  For my students, I had them enter a pin.

     For this experiment, I wrote up a few reflective questions for my student library aides to answer about what they had learned working in the library this year. Initially, I gave them the option to either write down their answers and submit them or complete a video reflection using Let’s Recap.  I anticipated that some student aides would volunteer to share their reflective thoughts on camera using the Recap app.  I was wrong.  Instead, every student submitted written responses to the reflective questions.

Since the written responses were limited and lacked depth, the next day I rethought this reflection activity, and decided to give them another opportunity.  I rewrote some of the questions and required students to complete their reflection on their learning using the Recap app.

I was pleasantly surprised by not only the amount of feedback students' Recap presentations provided, but by the depth of their reflective thoughts.  Some aides focused on the skills they had learned working in the library this year such as shelving books, time management, or ways they had built their customer service skills.  Other described the activities they had done such as working on Genius Hour projects in the Maker Lab, or the coding they did of Finch Robots and to build video games.

One student's reflection was particularly poignant.  This student was one of the more shy student aides this year.  Their reflection focused less on activities, or skills that were developed, and more on how they had grown as a person through working in the library.  In the Recap reflection, they described how they had "learned how to talk with people" and "be more social" working in the library this year.


Some things I liked about the Let's Recap app:

1. Ease of use-it is not difficult to set up reflection opportunities using the app or to review student responses.
2. It provides more authentic feedback opportunities since students are talking out their thoughts.  This proved more effective for some students.  For others, the lack of structure provided through oral explanation led to more of a "stream of consciousness" approach.
3. Some students shared about class learning and skills they developed, while others shared about personal growth.
4. Students were in some cases more frank and honest when they talked out their reflections compared to when they reflected on paper.

     5. Let’s Recap is free and works as an iPad app, or on computers.

As I look forward to the 2016-17 school year, I will definitely be including Let’s Recap as one of the apps that will be shared through the Digital Diner technology trainings I offer for my staff.  It will be one of the first apps I share this fall. It is a great, easy to use reflective tool that can powerfully display students' reflections on their learning.

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Bracketology: Using the NCAA Basketball Tournament as a Literacy Tool

  Like many of us, I love March Madness: filling out a bracket, watching the games, rooting for the underdogs, enjoying the outstanding individual performances-it is truly magic!

     For years now, I have had my student library aides fill out a bracket just for fun.  We hold a contest to see who among the library staff can guess the most winners of the games correctly.  This past week, I had my students fill out a bracket again.  But this year my perspective changed.  Instead of just viewing the filling out of a bracket as a fun exercise,
I began to view it as a literacy opportunity.

     As I presented the bracket opportunity to my students this spring, I was struck by how many did not know how to read a bracket.  I am not sure if this is because I have fewer student aides this year who are basketball players/fans than in the past.  That was out first lesson-how exactly do you decipher a bracket?  (After all this is a life skill right? - at some point their children may participate in competitions of all kinds where the results will be posted in a bracket)

     Filling out an NCAA bracket also has other literacy opportunities embedded within it.  As students fill out their brackets, they can learn new vocabulary terms such as seeds, regional, mid-major conference, and even RPI (Ratings Percentage Index-in other words: how did a team fare against other good teams in the regular season?).

     Bracketology also gives us as educators chances to differentiate instruction for our learners.  Students will need to check the results almost daily to update their brackets.  Which websites are the best sources of information?  How do I read information on these websites?  Aside from the scores, what statistics can help me to understand why this team won against a particular opponent?

      For students who are ready to go deeper, research opportunities abound: how does the NCAA figure out the seeded teams and who plays who? Why does... team with a better record have a lower seed than ... team?  What types of players/styles do the different teams play and how does this impact the results?  Does it matter that ... team has no players on its roster that are taller than 6 foot 5 inches, or that all of their starting players are seniors?  Historically, does .... team usually play better against.... team and why is that?

     Working with my students this year to teach them about filling out a bracket for the NCAA tournament ended being an unexpected literacy opportunity.  I wonder what other unexpected literacy opportunities we can utilize as teachers/media specialists to further equip our students as effective users of information in the 21st century world?

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