1st Quarter Library Report

Fall 2025 is bustling in the hallways and classrooms here at GD! Students are learning, growing, and thriving in our student-centered schoolwide culture. Keep reading for a snapshot of our first ten weeks in the Library!

Library Statistics at a Glance:

Year-to-date circulation: 2,977 materials

Items added: 130 materials

Most popular book: Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park (8 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.

CTE 6 is off to a GREAT start this Fall! 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.

In early October, I took our 8th graders to Career Jam at HVCC where they got to meet with area businesses to see what jobs might interest them in the future. That was the perfect segue into our current unit on Finding the Right Careers. In this unit, 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 their reports. They are doing a great job so far!

The ICAN students have been coming to the Library this year and I have been modifying my Kindergarten curriculum for them. So far we have had units on Books You Can Sing and Fall/Pumpkins. With the help of Questar Model School's Katie Fahrenkopf, I will continue to develop new custom curriculum that is developmentally appropriate and engaging for this special group of learners. We are currently studying the 5 senses.

This fall I participated in a live webinar sponsored by Open AI Forum called, "California Teacher of the Year (Casey Cuny) Uses AI to Make Good Teaching Even Better". We covered:

1. Streamline teacher workload
2. Use AI as a thought partner in lesson design
3. Empower students with AI as a study buddy
4. Use custom prompts to create personalized learning experiences for students
5. Apply best practices for crafting prompts
6. Implement guardrails for preventing misuse
7. Reframe “cheating” in the age of AI
8. Raise expectations for student learning by shifting from rote tasks to deeper inquiry
9. How Deep Research changes the game for lesson design and curating resources

A BIG shoutout to Mandy Miele for bringing this PD opportunity to my attention!

I have also been working with Katie Fahrenkopf from Questar's Model Schools to develop new library curriculum for my ICAN class. She came to observe me on November 3rd and we are following up regularly.

Similarly, I have been working with Maureen Squire from Questar's SLS services to enhance our dedicated OverDrive eBook collection. We meet remotely on some extended Wednesdays to work collaboratively on this project. I'm hoping to wrap it up before the new year.

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