2012-2013
Annual Howard County Middle/High School
Library Media Center Report
Due Date: May 31, 2013
Date:
May 6, 2013
School:
Glenwood Middle School
Library Media Specialist(s): Courtnay Moore
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I.
2012-2013 HCPSS Systemic Expectations
Know your students and the differentiated supports in place to ensure their
success.
Ensure students receive exemplary instruction that prepares them for
college and careers.
Have a process in place for continuously monitoring student progress.
Develop a relationship with students and their families.
How did you help your school achieve these Systemic Expectations?
•Know your students and the differentiated supports in place to ensure their
success.
1. I have IEPs in a flash; I receive IEP updates.
2. When I co-plan with teacher partners,
we address needs of individual students to ensure that I differentiate
instruction and assignments to meet individual learning needs.
3. Often, we use UDL principles for end products to ensure that options are
given to differentiate for individual needs.
4. I use the translation and audio features of the online databases to support
auditory and ELL learners.
•Ensure students receive exemplary instruction that prepares them for college and
careers.
1. Integration of information literacy skills and disciplinary literacy into
content curriculum as I co-taught with content teachers. Examples
include: note-taking, summarizing, paraphrasing, writing questions, thesis
statements, citing sources, website evaluation, using online databases,
presentation techniques
•Have a process in place for continuously monitoring student progress.
1. Honestly, I can’t say that I do this much. I create pre and post test
skills assessments for research units to take a pulse check for my
students; I use Noodlebib note cards, which the students share with me
so that I can monitor their notes.
•ªDevelop a relationship with students and their families.
1. I use the media center wiki as a means of communication with students
and their families.
2. I attend Outdoor Education with the 6th graders, GT field trips and
sponsor community based literature appreciation events as well as a
GT database research night, which enables me to interact with parents
and students within our community.
II.
What activities did you do to support the transition to the Common Core?
• Supported disciplinary literacy by creating reserve carts use in science and
social studies classrooms for curricular units (examples: solar system, weather,
earth science, middle ages, renaissance, Africa, Central America)
• Supported disciplinary literacy by finding articles of academic “rigor” in
HCPSS online databases to support curricular needs of module courses
Connections (grade 6), Digital Citizenship, Future of Foods, History of Water.
• Taught writing strong research questions to 6th grade ELA. Link to lesson 1.
Link to lesson 2.
• Taught paraphrasing lessons to 6th grade ELA, 6th grade GT research class and
6th grade modules (career connections) as part of research. Link to lesson.
• Taught note-taking strategies as a way to summarize. Grade 6 ELA. Link to
lesson.
•Taught NoodleBib citation skills to 6th grade ELA.
•Taught advanced web search strategies (Boolean) to grade 8 ELA. Link to
lesson.
• Taught website evaluation to 8th grade ELA. Link to lesson.
• Taught NoodleBib note-taking and citation to 8th grade ELA. Link to lesson.
III.
How did you collaborate with teachers in your school?
• Integration of technology products into curriculum:
1. Health- Garageband: PSAs; Bitly: comic strips
2. FACs- Weebly: website development
3. 6th Grade Career Connections Module- Glogster: electronic poster
4. 8th Grade ELA- Weebly; iMovie, Glogster
• Instruction of the Research Process
1. Grade 6 ELA
2. Grade 8 ELA
Note: I was unable to teach grade 7 ELA. All three grades have the
research module written into the second marking period. I lost 14 days
of that marking period with the January administration of the MAP
assessment. The seventh grade ELA teachers chose to teach the
research module themselves as opposed to moving it to another time.
This is just one example of how testing has impacted my role as a
teacher within the building. I lost 50 days of this instructional year
involved in some form of formalized assessment (MAP, MSA science,
HSAs).
IV.
What type of professional development would you like to have offered during the
2013-2014 school year?
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I would like professional development on collecting data/artifacts to
support SLOs.
•
I would like help with reading promotion in a building where time for
reading has been replaced with assessment. My circulation figures
declined by 30% and I am racking my brains to figure out how to get my
kids reading again.
V.
Number of book fairs held in your school and who managed each
No book fairs were held this year. With so much of my time taken by
testing I did not want to lose any other time that I could devote to instruction with
a book fair.
VI.
How can the Office of CTE/Library Media assist you?
Lobby to change my testing role. Somehow, my principal is being fed that
the role of the media specialist has “changed” to be the SAC of the building. Not
only do I watch children test but also I build the testing groups, create testing
schedules and all of the other things traditionally done by the Assistant Principal.
I do not believe that my principal dreamed that up himself; I think it is coming
from above. I fear that we are headed the way of Baltimore County. Please lobby
for new computers in the media center. I have twelve eMacs that are now 9 years
old and on their last legs. These are the most used machines in the building. This
is where students work before school, during lunch and after school. This is
where students work when sent individually by teachers on a pass to complete
assignments. Sadly, this is where many of my classes have been working since
technology has been gobbled up by the testing initiative. I know that money is
tight but we could really use replacements…much more so than we needed new
PACs last year. Lastly, I think we need support to curtail the amount of testing
that we are doing. By incorporating yet another test, MAP, into a schedule where
we have removed reading classes and core plus we have really decreased the
emphasis on reading as a lifelong skill for pleasure and learning. My circulation
statistics dropped 30% from the 2011-2012 to 2012-2013 school year. I work
very hard to book talk to my students and to schedule times for ELA teachers to
bring their students in for book checkout. Unfortunately, ELA teachers are
pressed for time to meet the demands of a new curriculum and the loss of teaching
days that yet another set of tests has given them. As such, many of my reading
promotion programs posted anemic participation numbers and I eliminated a
couple due to lack of time/interest/ability to participate. Short of donning your
superwoman suit and convincing the leaders of our system to change their current
course of action, I really need guidance and practical support in building a reading
promotion plan for a building where I don’t really get access to my students
anymore. I am stymied as to how to attack that problem.