Teaching & Learning

Have you considered trying out some new program ideas in your library but aren’t sure where to start? In this session, you will learn from a combined 30 years of experience with innovative, fun, and collaborative library programs. This session will be interactive and informative as participants learn about examples ranging from low to high tech and free to nominal in cost. Three areas of programming will be shared: community building, literature, and information literacy.

Remote learning and pandemic-induced stress have focused attention on the necessity of meeting our students’ social-emotional learning needs in culturally responsive ways. The four panelists, all regular contributors to School Library Connection on the topics of Collaboration, Inquiry, Reading Culture, and Information Literacy, will explore ways in which a school’s library program can empower all young people to recognize their own strengths and grow cognitively, emotionally, and socially.

It all begins with story! Upon receiving the ALA “I Love My Librarian” award in January, 2021, Mrs. Jane Martellino reflected on her 25 year career teaching in three different states and more than 12 different schools. She identified12 strategies that contributed to effective teaching practice, student achievement, and parent/community connections resulting in the creation of a vibrant literacy culture grounded through story. Participants will be provided with more than 20 ideas and templates.

How do you advocate for your library? Integrate more technology? Become an instructional leader in your district? Join us to learn how a cohort of school librarians from South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming have been successfully implementing a professional development process through the Reaching Out: Meeting the Needs of Rural School Librarians project. View the IMLS Grant project’s how-to guidebook and hear first-hand accounts from participants at all K-12 levels.

Creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication are the 4 C's of learning, but what about the 5th C? COPYRIGHT! It's critical that we teach students how copyright applies to them as creators and publishers in the digital world. Learn how to incorporate a free K-12 copyright curriculum into what you already teach with innovative, digital project ideas. Attend this session to learn practical, authentic ways to teach about copyright while having your students be ethical creators!

Instruction through games brings immediate student engagement to learning experiences. This session offers whole-class instruction strategies, ideas for push-in and virtual programs, assessment of career readiness skills, and game club tips for libraries and classrooms. Managing a tabletop game collection can seem overwhelming—we will help you break it down. Time will be included for hands-on exploration of favorite games from our collections.

Teaching research and other library skills can be a challenge because students often considered these topics “boring.” We have curated available resources (and even made some of our own) to make engaging lessons students WANT to participate in! You will leave this session with fun, hands on, and gamified ways to teach research and other important library skills!

You know you need to teach Media Literacy but your students and staff are tired of hearing about it. How do you get them to hook into what you have to say or see that is more than just, dare we say, an English or maybe Social Studies thing? This session will provide you with tools to fill your Media Literacy toolbox so you can return to your schools will ideas on how to approach your colleagues to form collaborative partnerships across a variety of curriculums to connect with students and staff.

Copyright consists of six rights and ten exceptions. Becoming familiar with the six rights is the easy part! Navigating the exceptions as they relate to librarianship, teachers, teaching, and literacy programs is the trickier part. Attend this session to become more familiar with the copyright system.

Does the term "research project" scare your students? Does it scare you? This session will discuss our successes (and struggles) using Guided Inquiry Design to teach the Tulsa Race Massacre. With the tools and steps in Guided Inquiry Design, students were able to plan, track, process, and share their chosen investigations. This session will share tools for preplanning with the teaching team, tools for information gathering/organizing with students, and tools for project creation for students.

Is digital citizenship more than a buzzword? Does access to digital spaces automatically promote digital skill growth? Recent #digcit research unites with digital pedagogy and library best-practices in an informative session designed to lead efforts in instructional growth. This session serves to inform participants how to prepare, implement and review current digcit curricula for faculty growth in instructional leadership.

Sarah Beth Nelson tells tales of being a school librarian, and invites you to do the same! If you are interested in sharing a brief (5 minute) story about being a school librarian, you may put your name in a hat to participate in the open mic portion of the workshop. Sarah Beth will share stories of her own, and lead a discussion on how personal stories can help prepare future school librarians.

Demystify the book review process for your students. Middle schoolers have definite opinions about what they read. Book reviewing teaches them to articulate their views and share them with their peers. Book reviews are authentic writing practice and an opportunity for students to consider purpose and audience. This program provides a flexible plan for teaching students to review books over 3-6 meetings, tips for implementation, and a graphic organizer to help students map their reviews.

Can curiosity be developed in our students? Join the discussion in this session as we explore ideas to help libraries become hubs of exploration in any school. Get suggestions for creating unique approaches that will improve student engagement, attention, and perseverance as they seek answers and follow interests and curiosities in pursuit of true learning. Leave with ideas, information, and tools that will help you use the power of curiosity to positively impact today's diverse learners.

Think back on all the things you have posted, created, & built online. If your digital/online life were a closet how packed would it be? Now think about your students & their digital lives. How can we aid students in understanding their online behavior while also protecting the legacies & lives they build online? In this session, attendees will engage with the idea of digital lives as well as discuss how the topic of digital legacies/lives can be shared within our learning communities. Attendees will leave with engaging topics to share with students and peer educators.

Civil rights education is often criticized for being limited to biographies of a few leaders and the “I Have a Dream” speech. This session will present an overview of how graphic novels can be paired with primary sources to teach the civil rights movement to middle and high school students. A variety of resources and instructional strategies will be provided. Participants will collaborate and share ideas on how to use these resources to make the civil rights movement more relevant to students.

80% of teens resend without thinking about it. Teaching the skill of evaluating something on social media in seconds is vitally important. Long lectures won't work. The answer is to look at crowdsourcing and media bias. Everyone takes a quiz to show how quickly a decision is made before sharing. Plus, we will spend extra time looking at image manipulation.

Research has shown that the use of multimedia is beneficial to all students. However, it is not always easy to find educational media with high quality captions and description. The Described and Captioned Media Program is a federally funded program, which provides accessible educational media and much more. Learn about this free resource. We’ll discuss how captioned and described media can enhance learning and the classroom experience in both face-to-face and virtual settings.

Ready to excite and inspire students to learn, question, and explore? Consider using student-centered strategies! We’ll discuss why library instruction/lessons should first meet student needs and how to incorporate kid-friendly, timely topics into instruction. We’ll also reflect on how library organization and design can foster or hinder student access and use. Be ready to shift your thinking and leave with implementable ideas that will serve your student and school population!

Student voice is the notion that since students have the greatest stake in what happens on campus, they can and should have the greatest say in what happens there. Participants will understand student voice and the positive impact it has on students and school communities, see examples of student voice in action in Elizabethton, Tennessee and Manson, Iowa, and will create a plan to encourage student voice in their own school libraries.

Striving to have meaningful dialogue with students around digcit topics? Hoping to find your 'in' as an instructional partner? This session will help you do both! Learn ways to incorporate digcit & tech ethics lessons alongside some of the classic (and new!) dystopian books, short stories, & poems that are often studied in the classroom. A reading list, lesson ideas, & standards alignment will be shared, Participants will also have a chance to add to this curated list as well.

Your makerspace is an amazing place for students to explore, learn, create, ideate and problem solve, but have we missed an important component? Digital ethics lands at the intersection of technology and humanity. It helps us decide what our own relationships with technology look like, but can also help tech developers create innovations that forward societal goals like equity, sustainability, health and wellbeing. Let's help our young people look at technology through an ethical lens.

Wondering how to support the learning community with social and emotional learning (SEL) lessons? Discover how the AASL Standards Framework for Learners connects with social and emotional learning objectives. We will explore compelling picture books that support the AASL Standards and highlight lessons in SEL. Participants will leave with lots of picture book lesson ideas they can share with their learning community.

Are you looking to standardize the goals you set for your media center and to have everything in one document to share with your administrative team? Are you looking for a way to have the information from past years readily available too? Wouldn't it be great if this information was also tied to your observation and evaluation framework? Come see how Frederick County Public Schools in Maryland solved this problem in an innovative way using Google Sheets.

The time is now for practitioners to explore the elements of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that reach far beyond “multicultural nights.” Learn how to define and apply CRT in your daily instructional practices, collection development, and public-school media center environments. Furthermore, learn to advocate for culturally literate citizenship through collaborative practices and student agency.

The time is now for practitioners to explore the elements of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that reach far beyond “multicultural nights.” Learn how to define and apply CRT in your daily instructional practices, collection development, and public-school media center environments. Furthermore, learn to advocate for culturally literate citizenship through collaborative practices and student agency.

Wondering how to implement the AASL Standards in your library? Looking for fresh ideas to engage learners? Learn how the AASL Standards-Based Learning Series helps support teaching and learning. Hear from the authors of four books on how to implement the standards using a variety of approaches and engage in collaboration at varying levels. Participants will leave with concrete ideas they can use in their library.

Empathy is an invaluable 21st century skill, which allows us to better understand others’ perspectives in order to be more respectful, compassionate individuals. This session will show you how you can harness the power of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) through a variety of consumption-based and creation-based tools that will open students’ eyes to the world around them and within them as a means for sharing the power of storytelling and promote understanding and empathy.

Participants will learn about the resources for educators in all content areas and all grade levels provided by NASA, will participate in a model lesson, and will return to the library with enthusiasm. Interested participants will also learn about the application process for and the benefits of joining the Solar System Ambassador program.

Self-care and social-emotional wellbeing is extremely important in order for students and teachers to be their best selves. Attendees will have hands-on experience with mindfulness techniques and curated resources will be shared. Crowd-sourced resources will be curated, as well as actionable tips to take the first steps to create a school library that is inclusive and mindful of all learners, including those struggling with self-identification and mental disorders (including depression and anxiety).

What's one way to get students to read a book? Tell them they can’t! In this program, participants will learn about intellectual freedom programming, and how it can be used to develop critical thinking and collaboration skills, reach underserved audiences, broaden perspectives, and develop empathy.

This session will focus on creating a culture of reading that centers around student book selections, student choice, and student’s voice. We will explore how one high school transformed the culture of reading in the building which then spread district-wide. Join us in learning how a faculty book study of Penny Kittle’s Book Love, the use of the book club model in English courses, and self-selection transformed the relationship that our students have with reading.