1st Quarter Library Report

Our first quarter flew by in a whirlwind of fun activities and programs! From our amazing Open House to our Pumpkins & PJs event and our new Harvest Fall Fun Day - students have been more engaged and involved than ever before! Here in the Library students have been learning and exploring whether they're visiting me for Prek-6 Library Skills, CTE 6, 7, or 8, or Music Research.

Library Statistics at a Glance:

Year-to-date circulation: 3,081 materials

Items added: 285 materials

Most popular book: Dog Man The Scarlet Shedder by Dav Pilkey (12 check-outs!)

Our PreK students had a busy and fun fall learning all about many exciting things during Library ranging from an author study of popular children's author and illustrator Mo Willems to exploring the history of Veteran's Day! We also enjoyed reading books about Fall including Fletcher and the Falling Leaves and Bear Says Thanks.

Our incredible kindergartners have been learning all about children's author and illustrator Lois Ehlert in the 1st quarter! We are currently reading her wonderful books and working on fun extension activities, like making their own Fall books and Leaf Man collages! Check out some of their awesome creations!

After we learned about the differences between Fiction & Nonfiction, our 1st graders jumped into a nonfiction unit on Fall where we're learning all kinds of fascinating facts about apples, pumpkins, leaves, and animals! Students are practicing the skills of listening for information and notetaking using custom-modified ESIFC graphic organizers.

Second grade spent the 1st quarter learning all about biographies! Students conducted independent research using the database PebbleGo to learn about important authors, athletes, and political leaders of their choice. Next, they will be interviewing a person of their choice over the Thanksgiving Recess so they can write a biography of their own for a class book that I will add to our circulating Library collection!

In the 1st quarter, third grade first learned about all the books on the "big kid" side of the Library as well as helpful strategies for choosing "Just Right Books". We focused on tips like the 5-finger rule and looking for books in series. Next, we learned how to use our online catalog OPALS to look for books and materials in our collection, and how to use our consortium eBook collection, Sora, to look for eBooks and audiobooks. Now we're exploring the database Britannica Online!

In conjunction with the Social Studies work being done in the classroom, 4th grade spent the first 10 weeks in Library learning to use a variety of electronic resources to explore New York State. They first used OPALS to explore the resources that we have here in our own Library. Then they used our Rosen eBook series Spotlight on New York to explore topics in NY history. Now they are using Britannica Online to learn more about our state. We are focusing on using information responsibly by giving credit to our sources through MLA citations. We will soon be starting our first Library research project where students will select a NYS topic of their choice to explore.

Fifth grade spent the 1st Quarter learning how to use Pathfinders and Advanced Search in OPALS. Pathfinders are curated lists of resources that I can create for research projects. Advanced search allows students an opportunity to craft very specific searches using the Boolean terms AND, OR, and NOT. We are now discussing the vocabulary and key concepts necessary to embark on our next unit: Digital Citizenship.

Sixth grade began this quarter using our Rosen eBook series, Spotlight on Ancient Greece, to learn about different aspects of Ancient Greek culture and life. Topics ranged from the Ancient Greek economy to government to geography. Once we had that historical foundation, we zeroed in on Ancient Greek Mythology. Students are now working on their Create Your Own Demigod Greek Mythology research project where they are studying a Greek God or Goddess of their choice before tapping into their imaginations to construct a demigod story in the style of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. Students are using NoodleTools to organize their research questions and to-do list as well as to create their citations and notecards. The project will culminate in late December when students share out their research and story.

My first year teaching CTE 6 is off to a GREAT start! First students created their Personalized Learning Profiles where they identified their unique learning preferences, strengths, and challenges. Next, they worked in teams to explore Effective Study Skills and they created presentations of tips and strategies to share with the class. This was the perfect foundation for the work that lies ahead!

Seventh grade CTE studied Self Awareness and Building Healthy Relationships in the 1st quarter. In our self-awareness unit, students explored what makes them unique including their individual strengths, weaknesses, interests, and talents. As part of this unit, students created SMART Goals to help them achieve a goal that is important to them. Next, we focused on identifying the characteristics of healthy versus unhealthy relationships. In this unit, students explored changes they can make in their own lives to improve their current and future relationships. This unit is culminating in a role model project where students are analyzing and presenting on their own role models drawn from their families, friends, and celebrities.

Eighth grade CTE is off to a great start this year! We began the year by working on a significant research project where pairs of students researched their 6 high school options together in a shared NoodleTools project. Each group divided the 6 schools and researched 9 metrics that included total number of students, average class size, racial diversity, graduation rate, and sports and clubs. Once they had their 54 notecards, groups then made charts and graphs to visually represent the data they researched. Finally, each student wrote their own concluding report where they discussed what they learned about each high school option, and then they discussed their choice with an evidence-based rationale.

Next, students explored specific career options in class and researched their "dream jobs". We are now learning about NYS labor laws and working papers before students create resumes and cover letters. I am very excited that I have our first 2 community presenters lined up: Will Potts, owner of the Rensselaer Chick Fil A will come in December to discuss getting jobs in high school and Kevin Boomhower is coming in January to talk about careers in the financial sector.

The students in Music Research have been studying different genres of music in the 1st quarter. They began by studying a random genre assigned to them as we practiced new skills, including how to create an annotated citation. Now students are studying their favorite genre and artist, and we are working on how to include in-text citations in their reports. They are doing a great job so far!

This fall I participated in an asynchronous PD opportunity offered through Questar SLS called, "What's New in AI". As part of the workshop I was able to explore new AI tools designed to enhance teaching and time management. For my required AI activity, I chose to explore AI for Education where I was able to locate and customize prompts that I could then plug in to Chat GPT. I used this tool to do 3 things:

• First, I gamified a lesson plan I had on Building Healthy Relationships for CTE 7 to make it more fun and engaging for students.
• Next, I used it to create an exemplar research report for Music Research that included in-text citations, images, and all the required information from our project on music genres.
• Finally, I used it to create a lesson plan and game for CTE 6 that had students work in groups to experiment with different memorization techniques.

This was a fantastic PD experience that actually allowed me to work with tools and to create products that had an immediate and positive impact on my teaching!

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments you may have!

Email: lfecura@wynantskillufsd.org
Website: https://sites.google.com/wynantskillufsd.org/lfecura/home?pli=1
Location: 25 East Avenue, Troy, NY, USA
Phone: (518)283-4600 238