mary kay biagini: director, school library certification program, sis, university of pittsburgh

Mary Kay Biagini: Director, School Library Certification Program, SIS, University of Pittsburgh

Daniel Hood: Information Literacy Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University

Samuel Jackendoff: Curriculum Supervisor for Library & Info. Sciences, Pittsburgh Public Schools

Development of a K-12 Information Literacy

Scope and Sequence for School Libraries

What this session will discuss: One version of the process of developing a scope

and sequence for libraries

We will discuss what worked and didn’t work for Pittsburgh Public Schools

Some alternatives that you may want to consider

What this session will discuss: One version of the process of developing a scope and

sequence for libraries

We will discuss what worked and didn’t work for Pittsburgh Public Schools

Some alternatives that you may want to consider

What this session will not discuss: The efficacy of educational theory

One teaching style versus any other

What should be in your scope and sequence.

Suggestions for the educational content of your document

Tell us who you are

We don’t have a district-wide information literacy curriculum

We’re working on a district-wide information literacy curriculum

We already have a district-wide information literacy curriculum but need to update it

Why have a scope and sequence?

So students can learn needed information literacy skills when they need them to help them learn in each of their courses

So teacher-librarians can collaborate with other teachers to integrate information literacy skills into what they are teaching when the students most need these skills

An effective teacher librarian:

Plans information literacy skills to complement the curriculum at each grade level

Integrates the teaching of information literacy into all courses in the curriculum

Teaches information literacy skills when they are most needed by the teacher and the students—not in isolation from the curriculum

The Role of the PPS Library Program

The School Library

Scholastic Library Publishing.

School Libraries Work! 2008 edition.


School LibraryTeacher-librarian


School Library

Teacher-librarianLibrary Program




School Library

Teacher-librarianLibrary Program

StudentAcademic

Achievement



Links to Higher Ed

Collaboration Knowledge sharing

Transition from K-12 to “Real World” Creating a continuum

Standards AASL – ACRL

New skill sets

AASL standards are fresh

About the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS)

~29,000 students (and falling) Number of schools

K – 5: 20

K – 8: 23

MS (6 – 8): 9

HS (9 – 12): 13

Teacher-librarians: 53 Libraries: 61 (Some schools span multiple buildings and have 2 libraries.)

Site-based: Budgeting

Site-based hiring (Curriculum Supervisor can – if permitted – advise.)

Site based collection development

Centralized policies are often subject to policies of the principals

Library Services: Scope and Sequence and other curricular functions

Centralized resource-collection for interlibrary loans

Centralized purchasing of some materials (mostly reference)

Book review policies & database development

Professional development

Operations

Large grants and projects (District-wide)

Rules of Engagement Decide what you want to create

Scope and Sequence?

Fully “fleshed-out” curriculum?

Some combination thereof?

Decide why you want – or need – to go through this process. PPS’s last curriculum was written in 1986.

What is your budget?

When is your document needed?

When can you do the work? (During the year or during the summer?)

How much administrative support exists?

Do you need perfection or will a fine working document suffice?

Don’t go it alone. Work with a good team.

Committee Development Develop budget and timeframe

How many people can you support – and, for how long?

Find members that will collaborate, work and laugh together

Find people with differing:

Backgrounds

Levels (i.e., elementary, middle, high school, university)

Different kinds of schools

Level of Experience (veterans, “newbies,” etc.)

Make sure that one person has the final responsibility for the final product.

Additional Rules of Importance

Begin with an open, accepting mindset

“Don’t re-create the wheel.” Never create when you can borrow and transform.

Make sure that it fulfills the daily needs of your teacher-librarians.

Make it easy to use.

Maintain a sense of humor at all times.

Take your work seriously – but don’t take yourself too seriously. It really

does help.

Never create when you can borrow and transform.

Great source for curricula

Council of Great City Schools (CGCS): Library Media Supervisors' Network Wiki

greatlibs.wikispaces.com | Programs | CURRICULA for School Libraries and for Teaching Information Fluency

http://greatlibs.wikispaces.com/Curricula+for+School+Libraries

We browsed (to borrow and transform)…

PPS Library Syllabus (1984)

NYC School Library System: Information Fluency Continuum (2005)

Upper Merion Area School District: Library K-12 Information Literacy Skills Curriculum (2005)

Des Moines Public Schools: Information Literacy Skills K-12

Public Schools of North Carolina, State Board of Education: Information Skills, Integration Strategies Support Document for Elementary Media Coordinators and Classroom Teachers (2001)

Public Schools of North Carolina, State Board of Education: Information Skills, Integration Strategies Support Document for Middle Grades Media Coordinators and Classroom Teachers (2001)

Rochester City Schools: Library Curriculum K-12 (2004)

Ephrata Area School District: K-12 Information Literacy and Technology Skills Curriculum

Miami-Dade County Public Schools: Library/Information Literacy: Objectives and Competencies, Pre-K-12 (2007)

Chambersburg Area School District: Scope and Sequence for Library Research Skills / Research Skills

New Hope-Solebury School District: K-12 Information Literacy Scope and Sequence

Des Moines, IA

Chambersburg (continued)

New Hope-Solebury School District

Never create when you can borrow and transform.

Browse and borrow both content and format

If the format that you like is in a .pdf file:contact the authors to see whether they will send you a .doc file.

Attribute good ideas

Ask permission before borrowing entire chunks.

Note that if you are building this document with public funds (i.e., your salary), it is a public document.

We browsed to borrow and transform.

The committee finally decided to borrow and combine elements of the curricula from several districts -

especially from:

Upper Merion School District, PA

The general format

Much of their content (subject to a lot of editing)

“Enduring Understandings” (which became our “Concepts for Life Long Learning”)

Glossary

Develop an Outline

Use MS-Word’s Outline tool to create your outline.

That will eventually become your Table of Contents

1 PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTS

2 CONCEPTS FOR LIFE-LONG LEARNING (CL3)

3 ORIENTING STUDENTS TO USE THE LIBRARY AND ITS RESOURCES

4 ENCOURAGING READING AND THE LOVE OF LITERATURE

5 TEACHING STUDENTS TO ACCESS INFORMATION

6 TEACHING STUDENTS TO IDENTIFY AND EVALUATE RESOURCES

7 TEACHING STUDENTS TO SEARCH FOR INFORMATION

8 TEACHING STUDENTS THE RESEARCH PROCESS

9 TEACHING STUDENTS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

10 TEACHING STUDENTS TO BE SAFE ONLINE

11 APPENDIX A – PARTS OF A BOOK

12 APPENDIX B – AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL LIBRARIES (AASL) STANDARDS

13 APPENDIX C – PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ACADEMIC STANDARDS

14 APPENDIX D – PITTSBURGH PUBLIC SCHOOLS FAIR USE POLICY

15 APPENDIX E - GLOSSARY

Develop a Template for your Document

Decide upon:

Overall outline of document

Standard format & verbiage to use throughout


We decided upon:



1. Chapter Title

2. Appropriate Concepts for Lifelong Learning (CL3)


We decided upon:



1. Chapter Title


3. Concepts & Instructional Timeline- All concepts were presented as “SWBATs”


We decided upon:



1. Chapter Title


3. Concepts & Instructional Timeline- All concepts were presented as “SWABATs”

4. Concepts with Discussion and Guided Questions

All were mapped to PDE and AASL standards

What We’d Like to Add & Update

The AASL Standards utilized throughout our document are the old ones. The new Standards weren’t finalized until we had finished all but the final editing and the approval. We could not afford to go back and re-edit this. We solved this by listing the new standards after the old ones in the appendix.

We did not have time/budget to add a column for the “eligible content” for PSSAs.

Create your document Once the outline and template have been created, fill them

with your information

Wherever possible, work with the team to fill it in.

Send it out for review.

Get as many eyes looking at the document as possible. Get input from as many as will give it.

Use their suggestions

It builds buy-in

It makes for a better document

Reconvene to approve the suggested changes.

Develop your Preliminary Documents (Preface, Acknowledgements, etc.)

Explain the reality of your situation

Explain the Reality of Your Situation

This document was created by – and at the behest of – Pittsburgh’s teacher-librarians to help them to address the needs of our school-learning-community.

Pittsburgh, like many other urban school districts, has a mobile student population. The teacher-librarians want to help to provide a uniformity of skills learned during the students’ progression through the grades, so that no child will be left behind when (s)he moves between grades, teachers or schools.

There are differences among schools within the Pittsburgh Public Schools. These differences are based upon some combination of the following:

The physical differences of the school buildings;

The demographics of the student population;

The academic and social needs of the students within those buildings;

The differences in the site-based budgets;

Mandated services;

Mandated usage of varying resources; and/or

The scheduling of student classes.

Consequently, there are great differences among the school levels in the school libraries – and the roles of the teacher-librarians – from school-to-school. Some elementary and middle schools have a full-time teacher-librarian. Other schools have a teacher-librarian on faculty only half-time, or even just one day per week. Several schools have no teacher-librarian at all. Some elementary and/or middle school teacher-librarians teach each student once per week, while some teach each student three or even five times per week. In fact, within any given school in the District, there may be differences as to how various grade levels utilize the library. This is at the discretion of the school schedule and the principal.

Develop your Preliminary Documents (Preface, Acknowledgements, etc.)

Explain the reality of your situation

Make sure to build in flexibility in your language. Make sure that your document allows you to retain the flexibility required to do a good job

…this document has been designed to be used as a set of recommended guidelines and lessons – rather than as a list of requirements – for the individual teacher-librarians.

As mentioned previously, it is understood that due to the lack of uniformity within the District, not every teacher-librarian will be able cover every topic listed in the Instructional Timelines for each grade every year . This means that the teacher-librarians need to monitor and reassess their students’ abilities and needs each year, and throughout the year. If a student – or a class – didn’t learn a prerequisite skill, then the teacher-librarian should actively introduce or reinforce the “missing” skill or knowledge.

It is important that it be understood that the Instructional Timelines in each chapter are strictly guidelines, and teacher-librarians cannot be expected to adhere to them without deviation. For example, in Chapter 6 it is suggested that bibliography/Works Cited be formally introduced in fifth and sixth grade, with the topic to be reinforced after that. This is not to say that the general topic cannot be introduced informally – or even formally, if the students can handle it – at a much earlier age.

…Along with each concept, questions are suggested to help stimulate learning activities and discussions. These are only suggested questions, as each teacher-librarian will have to adjust the questions to the level of the class and the depth to which that class can comprehend the conceptual framework and the material . Also within these matrices is a listing of which of the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) Academic Standard(s) correlate(s) with the listed skill or knowledge.

Build in Flexibility

Find a descriptive title

Utilize an appropriate vocabulary to be descriptive, to grab attention and to ensure acceptance.

Develop a Rationale

There is a great likelihood that the administrators that have to approve your document won’t take the time to read it.

Many administrators and teachers may find your document scary and threatening – you are proposing to teach material that falls into everyone else’s curricula (research, reading, science, etc.)

A Rationale, stuck at the beginning might be all you need to push the document through. In our case, it was.

Rationale for Information Literacy for Life-Long Learning

Skills and techniques learned and practiced in the library will lead our students towards information literacy, i.e., the wherewithal needed to collect, evaluate, process and appropriately utilize information of all sorts throughout their lives. While the library may be at the center of the “web of learning,” the long-term mission of the Pittsburgh Public School’s (PPS’s) library program is to provide our students with the resources and skills needed to succeed in today’s information-based society.

Methods and strategies for information retrieval and processing – as well as the love of literature and reading – promulgated by the PPS’s library program cannot stand in isolation, and should not be considered ends in themselves. The teacher-librarians of the District are fully cognizant of this, and expend a great deal of time and energy working collaboratively with other teachers in the learning community. In other words, the entire library experience should supplement – not supplant – any learning done within other curricula.

This scope and sequence – created for PPS’s library program – provides teacher-librarians with the roadmap needed to plan our students’ library experiences, thus ensuring students an exposure to the range of information literacy and library-specific skills needed for life-long learning.

Stick to your timeline - FINISH

Be willing to accept a document that “suffices” instead of toiling for a perfect document. Otherwise you will never finish.

If you don’t finish, you won’t be able to have the document approved.

Without approval you won’t have your document to use.

Quick Technical/Mechanical Note (1)

For your protection and sanity: Store multiple versions of your document as you work, changing the version number every time you make any major changes. E.g.:

v1ScopeNSequence.doc



.

.

v20aScopeNSequence.doc

v20bScopeNSequence.doc

v20cScopeNSequence.doc

This allows you to go back a version or two if you lose a paragraph or mess up some formatting – and copy what you need into your new version

Do this either with <File>|<Save As> or with <F12>

(I’ll be happy to give a quick tutorial on this after the session.)


During any group editing process, use MS-Word’s Track Changes feature

<Tools>|<Track Changes> or <Ctl><Shft><E>

(I’ll be happy to give a quick tutorial on this after the session. Or press <F1> for help.)


Start with an outline in MSWord

Once you have the outline you can have MSWord’s Table of Contents feature

<Insert>|<Reference><Indexes and Tables>|<Table of Contents>

(To learn how to do this, press <F1> for help.)


If your document can be broken into several distinct sections, number the pages of each section beginning with page 1

1-1, 1-2, 1-3

2-1, 2.2… 2-8

3-1

4-1, 4-2….

5-1, 5-2…. 5-7

This way, when updating one section you don’t have to reprint the entire document.