4th Quarter Library Report

Another school year is in the rearview mirror - and what a school year it's been! From the introduction of Community Connect to our Optimization Study, many things are changing and evolving at GD as we continue to grow and explore our full potential as a student-centered shared learning community!

I would like to give a shout-out to my many student volunteers who helped me prepare the Library for its annual summer cleaning! Thank you to 5th graders Darla Miele, Madison Van Ness, and Stella Crucetti for helping with overdue slips and reshelving hundreds of book returns! Thank you to 7th grader Khloee Scifo for helping with many odd jobs! And thank you to 8th graders Aidan Niver and Mason Brown for helping to deaccession hundreds of old and obsolete Library books! As the saying goes: many hands make light work!

• Number of class visits = 1,080
• Items Circulated = 10,191
• New Items Added = 369
• Items Withdrawn = 497
• Most popular book = Guts by Raina Telgemeier with 27 check-outs!

This quarter our Prek students enjoyed an author study of local author and Russell Sage professor, Matthew McElligott. During that unit, they got to design their own "Galactic Pudding" after reading Even Aliens Need Snacks, and then they came up with their own clever book ideas based on Even Monsters Need Haircuts. A popular choice was Even Dinosaurs Need Toys! We concluded the quarter by using the database PebbleGo in conjunction with books to learn about Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Juneteenth!

Kindergarten wrapped up their year in Library by exploring the wonderful books of Laura Numeroff and award-winning author & illustrator, Eric Carle. We practiced story sequencing and inferencing, as well as comparing and contrasting.

First grade spent the 4th quarter studying Caldecott award-winning picture books. We learned the history of the award and examined a variety of Caldecott winners spanning the decades, including Where the Wild Things Are, Kitten's First Full Moon, The House in the Night, Officer Buckle & Gloria, and this year's winner: Chooch Helps. We spent three classes studying David Wiesner's award-winning books: Tuesdays, The Three Pigs, and Flotsom. As part of this unit, students learned how picture book call numbers are made, and then they practiced making and alphabetizing call numbers of their own.

In the 4th quarter, 2nd graders practiced identifying the author's purpose by studying Aesop's Fables. After reading and analyzing about a dozen of his fables, students worked on creating their own fables. Using a graphic organizer planning sheet, they first chose a moral and animal characters, before mapping out the problem and resolution of their plot. I just finished collating their amazing work into yet another bound book has become part of our circulating library collection!

Third grade was also busy writing in the Library this quarter! To conclude our long unit on Folklore, we studied Tall Tales, including The Bunyans, Pecos Bill, and Swamp Angel. Drawing inspiration from the stories we read, students then planned a Tall Tale of their own featuring lots of imaginative exaggerations and creative explanations! Their stories were set in the western USA in the 1800s, and their characters each had a job or occupation that would have been important as the first settlers were taming the wild lands.

Fourth grade did an amazing job as we studied Online Reference Resources and Literary Genres in the 4th quarter! During these units, we explored online dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, and atlases. For each resource, students learned important uses and real-world applications while they practiced navigating within them through guided activities. What better way to learn how a thesaurus can improve your writing than by doing a Mad-Lib-like activity? And how cool is it to use Bing Maps to see when our houses were photographed, and then explore how to use the directions tool to map routes and calculate distances and times using various modes of travel? The students loved this unit and definitely learned a lot! To conclude the year, students spent our final three classes learning about Literary Genres including their favorites: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, and Horror!

After practicing how to create citations and notecards ethically using the online research organizer, NoodleTools, 5th grade spent the 4th quarter researching how America is a great "Melting Pot" blended from cultural ideas brought here by generations of immigrants from across the globe. Each student chose a topic that in some way represents American culture, and then they researched where that idea originally came from, what group of immigrants brought it here and when, and what is the modern impact of that topic on America now. All research was housed in NoodleTools and students created reports complete with an ethically soured historic image and bibliography that they shared with the class through presentations.

In an annual tradition I have come to love, 6th grade created Book Talks of their suggested reading for their classmates. First, they researched a little about their chosen authors, housing their citations and notecards in NoodleTools. Then they created six "hint" notecards to entice their classmates to read their chosen book. "Hints" could be anything except a plot summary - so think genre, setting, mood, problem, etc. Finally, students carefully selected 2-4 images that represented their books and created citations and notecards for those as well. Once their research was complete, they put it all together into one infographic-style slide. I then took all their slides and created one large slideshow they can access all summer whenever they need an idea or inspiration for what to read in their time away from school. Awesome work, 6th grade!!

CTE 6 spent most of the 4th quarter working on the Restaurant Project. This was the culminating activity in the Young Voices Matter Unit where we celebrated inspiring young people who have had a huge impact on the world. Students learned about Youth Activists and Youth Entrepreneurs through authentic research, and then they took a turn exploring what it would be like to create their own businesses from start to finish! We used AI to help us generate realistic looking menus, logos, and advertisements and we used Designer5D to create professional looking floorplans. After students presented their restaurants, they anonymously voted on which ones they would most like to visit!

We ended the quarter with a quick unit on Digital Citizenship that had students looking for clues to detect phishing scams and creating their own digital footprints.

CTE 7 wrapped up an eventful year with two final units. Unit 7 introduced our students to career opportunities in Architecture, Construction, & Manufacturing, and Unit 8 focused on careers in Public Security, Law, and Corrections. In each unit, students independently explored Questar's related CTE programs that they can take in high school. They also explored specific careers in each career cluster, creating presentations that they shared with the class. Best of all, each unit featured a variety of volunteer community career presenters. For unit 7, we had Ed Anker who talked about his career as an architect. In unit 8, we had two more career presenters. Nichole Hurbanek talked to our students about her fascinating career in Forensic Science followed by our very own SRO Officer, John Yeery, who shared his stories of Police Academy (we even saw a video of him being tazed as a trainee!) and life as an active duty patrol officer. I think our students learned a lot about themselves and about possible career pathways during our time together this year.

The 4th quarter included 2 units in CTE 8: Artificial Intelligence & Sustainability. In our AI unit, students "played" with fun AI tools like Animated Drawings which made the students' custom creations come to life! Students also challenged their vocabulary with Semantris and used a student friendly ChatBot called Code Breaker. My favorite AI activity required the students to create an original writing sample, that they then had ChatGPT try to replicate. Once they had both pieces of text, they first tried to trick each other, and then they had to see if they could fool me. Of 37 students, only 3 succeeded! In our final unit, students studied Sustainability. They calculated their own Carbon Footprints, researched product life cycles, and explored the question of whether supposedly sustainable energy alternatives like solar, wind, and EVs are in fact good or bad for the environment.

The 8th graders in Music Research spent the 4th quarter researching a music-related topic of their choice in our Build Your Own Inquiry (BYOI) unit. As part of this project, students created research questions followed by annotated citations and notecards for the information they discovered. Topics included "The Impact & Origin of Indie Music", "Evolution of Music in Puerto Rico", and "How Can Music Be Used in Psychological Therapy?". Once their research was complete, students created an outline for a 3-page research paper. That paper had to include appropriate in-text citations and a bibliography. Next, students designed a lesson about their topic that they had to teach to the class. Each lesson was required to conclude with a 5-question quiz to indicate how effective the lesson was. The students did a great job!

In my ongoing role as our district Communication Coordinator for Questar's Library group, I attend the 4 required annual meetings which are a great opportunity to network and grow professionally. This year’s topics included:

• October: Howard Moody on Incorporating Play Into Education
• January: Regional Showcase of Excellence
• March: Ken Shelton on AI in Education
• June: Introduction to Sooth.fyi and Member Plan SLRP Rubric

This year I also participated in an asynchronous workshop titled What's New in AI?

In March I participated in the regional PD day by attending 3 virtual workshops: Disrupting the Cycle of Burnout, Meal Planning on a Budget, and Heart Healthy Eating.

Email: lfecura@Wynantskillufsd.ord
Website: https://sites.google.com/wynantskillufsd.org/lfecura/home
Location: 25 East Avenue, Troy, NY, USA
Phone: (518)283-4600 238