Checking Inventory

Today, I assisted with checking inventory. As stated in the prior blog, I originally thought that checking inventory was going to be a paper and pen kind of job. However, I am so very thankful I was wrong! I'm especially thankful that I was wrong today, because I got to check inventory by myself! I watched Mrs. Deep and Mrs. Dickerson for about 3o minutes to make sure that I completely understood the process. Then, they let me begin checking inventory by myself. I can see how it can grow old after a while, but I rather enjoyed checking inventory. I loved being able to see and put my hands on literature that I have not seen in a long time, and I got to rediscover my childhood while I took inventory of books that I read when I was a child. This experience has been one of my favorite experiences that I've had so far in practicum. Mrs. Deep also said that she has a good time checking inventory as well.

Checking Inventory

Today, I helped Mrs. Deep to check her book inventory.This is something that has to be done each year. They have fallen a little behind this year, but Mrs. Deep said they would be fine as long as they completed the inventory by December. Now, previously, I have never really thought about how a media specialist would take inventory. This morning, Mrs. Deep told me what we would be doing today, and I thought that we would be walking around with a pen and a paper checking off the books that she had in the inventory. Then, go through the Renaissance Book Reports to take inventory of the books that are currently checked out. Thank goodness I was wrong! This technique would have taken us close to a year to finish. The current method for checking inventory, which takes them a few months to do, is pen and paper free. Mrs. Deep, or her para-pro, Mrs. Dickerson, takes a laptop that sits on top of a rolling cart (pictured below) and scans in each book that is on the shelves. They work one section at a time to ensure that they do not get confused and forget their place. Now, this does take some time; especially since they have to take each book off the shelf and scan them. However, it saves so much more time by scanning them in instead of marking them off with a paper and pen. To check inventory, you must go into Destiny, select the "Back Office" tab, select "Invetory", and then select the section of the library that you are working on. When you scan the bar code for the book, it will pop up on the screen in the section of the library that you are working on. When the book pops up on the screen, you must check to see that the title, author, and the t-number are correct. If it is incorrect, they place the book on the bottom part of the rolling cart so that they can fix it later on that afternoon. If it is correct, they place the book back in a stack on the floor until they are ready to shelve the inventoried books in that section of the library. If you scan a book that is not supposed to be in that section of the library, it pops up a red note on the laptop that says it's in the wrong section and tells you which section of the library it needs to be in.

Shelving Books

Today, I assisted Mrs. Deep in returning the books to the shelves. This was a fairly easy task to do since I have previously learned Mrs. Deep's routine and organizational strategies in her library. I have already helped Mrs. Deep with returning checked out books to the shelves during one of my other courses in this degree. However, I found that I was a little out of practice! I'll be honest, for the first 30 minutes of the time I was there, I had to think about the Dewey Decimal system pretty hard. However, Mrs. Deep has small posters that she created to help students (and myself!) to find books that they are interested in. I also assisted students in finding books that they were interested in. For example, I asked 3 students if they needed help to find something in particular, and each student told me what they liked. I then helped them to use the poster to find the area that they needed to look in. Once they spotted the area, I helped them to find their perfect book! I was so excited to be able to help students and see their eyes light up when they found a book that they were really interested in. I've provided a picture of this poster below.

School Meeting with Accelerated Reader Committee

Today, Mrs. Deep met with all of the Reading teachers within the Accelerated Reader Committee to discuss the theme for AR program this year. This year, the theme will be "The Achiever in Me." This theme will be focused on Hollywood and the Red Carpet. Mrs. Deep explained the AR procedures, as discussed in the prior post, again to Reading teachers. Then, Mrs. Deep explained how each grade will keep tract of the AR points students receive this year. The teachers will put up a Red Carpet display on their hall. Stars will be displayed on wall to show the level of points the child has reached. For example, their will be large stars on the wall to represent 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 points. When a student reaches 25 points, the teacher will place their name on a small star and allow them to place it outside in the hallway under the 25 point star. As the students progress, they will move their stars up the points line. Mrs. Deep also announced the due dates for the Rotunda Decoration for each of the grade levels. Each grade level has a corner in the rotunda that they need to decorate in accordance to this year's AR theme. The decorations can start going up on October 29th, and the judging will take place on November 2nd. First place will win an ice cream party for the teachers and students.

Face-to-Face Staff Development Needs Assessment

Today, I met with my supervisors, Mrs. Deep and Mrs. White. I discussed with them about certain professional development needs that they thought that the teachers needed. Mrs. White identified Symbaloo as a useful resource that could help teachers the middle grades teachers to help organize and share their resources with their students. Mrs. Deep also suggested a staff development on Google Classroom for the K-5 grade teachers.

For my Face-to-Face staff development activity, I have completed a staff development workshop outline and goals for the Symbaloo staff development for middle grades teachers. Together, we identified goals that seemed suitable for the staff development workshop. Since I teach at the elementary school, I will use the staff development for Symbaloo at the middle school for my activity. However, I have decided to go ahead and teach a staff development on Google Classrooms as well for grades K-2 as well as grades 3-5. I've included the staff development workshop needs assessment below:

Checklist Item #5: PLN

The tools in my PLN have helped me to become a more confident and knowledgeable individual about standards and objectives within the instructional technology and school media track. I feel that I will be able to continue my learning after this program by using these tools and share these tools and resources as they are curated with my students and teachers. Below is the PLN link for School Media. https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/school-media-practicum/pln

Checklist Item #4: Conference Attendance

On March 19, 2018, I participated in a the 27th Annual KSU Conference on Literature for Children and Young Adults. I learned about new and distinguished children's book authors. I also learned how to use various online Web 2.0 tools to engage young readers in literature. This conference also helped me to experience different cultures and literature from other cultures and backgrounds. The author's that spoke, James Blasingame, Rich and Sandra Wallace, and Meg Medina, were also very distinguished and informative about their writing techniques, their experiences with literature, and how to be successful writers.

Conference SIgn Off by Jessica Mobley on Scribd

Checklist Item #3: Membership

One of the many responsibilities of an effective school library media specialist is to stay up-to-date with current technology and emerging research that are meaningful and appropriate to use within the school to promote reading and learning. I have become a member of the following organizations to help me stay informed of emerging research and the newest technology: American Library Association and the Georgia Library Association. These organizations will help to provide me with information on becoming a leader for the promotion, development, and improvement of my library. They will also help me to enhance the learning within the school and ensure that everyone has equal access to the services.

Student Orientation

Today, 08/15/2018, Mrs. Deep gave a Media Center orientation to all 4th graders. During the orientation, I helped to discuss some of the points in her PowerPoint as well as assist students with correctly inserting their "How Did Dewey Decide" sheet into their AR folders. Mrs. Deep explained how to properly take care of the library books and what to do if one becomes damaged. Mrs. Deep also discussed how students are responsible for these books that they take out of the library. I told students a story to help them understand the seriousness of the situation. I stated: "I had a student one year who loved to borrow books from other students. She always seemed to want what other students had. One day, she borrowed a book from one of her friends in the class. She took it home and came to school the next day without it. The girl she borrowed it from and her mother were very upset because even thought the other student lost the book, they had to pay for it to be replaced." Mrs. Deep then discussed library procedures with the students. Additionally, Mrs. Deep discussed emergency procedures and what to expect if they are in the library during an emergency procedure such as; lock downs, fire drills, or tornado drills. Lastly, I passed out the "How Did Dewey Decide?" papers to the students. I helped them put it in their AR folders and Mrs. Deep explained how to use the sheets. Mrs. Deep told the students that row 1-4 in the library are the non-fiction books. She then showed them how each of the Dewey Decimal numbers correlated with the subjects and topics found in that section. Row 7-11 are the fiction aisles.

Below, I have provided both the Google Slide presentation used for the orientation as well as the "How Did Dewey Decide?" sheet.

Checklist Item #2

Today, I met with Mrs. Deep to resolve book return issues within all grade levels. Mrs. Deep said that last year had the highest amount of lost/not returned books that she's seen since she has been in charge of the TCES Media Center. She said that she had to send out over $600 in book overdue/lost notices to parents and guardians of students within the school. Most of these were due to student withdrawals. The students would withdrawal from the school and not leave their books.Together, we discussed a new routine that would help to eliminate the amount of books being taken home and lost/stolen. The lower grades, K-2, would only check out 2 books at a time. Then, the teachers will bring them to the library once a week, during alloted times, and exchange their books. Grades 3-5 may have 4 books at a time, but at the end of the day, they must leave 3 of their books in a bag in their homeroom teachers classroom. This way, only one book was being taken home. Additionally, teachers will be asked to talk to students about the moving situation. If a student has been told by their family that they may move soon, have the student return all but one book at a time. Therefore, only one book is in danger of being taken in the move.

I also talked to Mrs. Deep about yearly and monthly activities in the library. We used Destiny to locate and outline the activities that took place within the 2017-2018 school year. I have attached the Infographic that I created for this information below:

Tour of Media Center

On Monday, August 13, 2018, I met with my Site Supervisor, Mrs. Patti Deep. Mrs. Deep is the Media Specialist at Telfair County Elementary School. Mrs. Deep and I discussed practicum guidelines and expectations. I also shared the School Media Website with Mrs. Deep so that she could understand the practicum tasks and activities that we are to begin working on. Mrs. Deep then gave me a tour around the Media Center.

First, Mrs. Deep explained how the books were organized within her classroom. She has rows 1-4 sectioned off for her Nonfiction books, or number books. Rows 7-11 are the fiction books, or letter books.

Then, Mrs. Deep showed me the rooms in the back of the center such as the video control room, the video production room, and the conference room. The video control room and video production room are very rarely ever used. The rooms currently store overhead projectors and out-dated video tapes. The conference room, however, is used very frequently for professional development classes, leadership meetings, and parent conferences.

Mrs. Deep then showed me the front desk where she checks out students and provides service to students for the school store.