Nov 17 Class Meeting - Policy

Today we met in class and were fortunate enough to have a guest speaker. She was an expert on policy and we discussed all the various levels of policy in the schools system, and the impact it has on the students and patrons of the library. There are policies on everything, from confidentiality restrictions to how to challenge a book. We talked about who creates these policies and who is responsible for carrying them out.

Nov 16 Action Learning Meeting

Our group got together to discuss the research we had found on our programs we plan to implement to accomplish our goal. We actually spent a good portion of the time putting the PowerPoint presentation together. We plan to incorporate some of the IMPACT videos that Jerri and Rebecca watched, which are pertainent to our programs. The programs we plan to implement to accomplish our goal are DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), Reading Pals (where older students read with younger ones), and the Road Runner Reading Program (a reading contest where students or classes compete to read the most books for prizes or other incentives). The only thing that is left to do now is to format and review the PowerPoint.

Nov 9 - Met with teacher to collaborate on lesson plan

I met with another 6th grade teacher to collaborate on our unit plan. We plan to do an integrated unit on space exploration. We plan to have the students write a persuasive essay on whether or not to continue space exploration. We will be reading "First on the Moon" in language arts, and covering the chapters in the science book related to space exploaration. The librarian will be responsible for teaching the research strategies to the students. We plan to use the Big 6.

Oct. 27 Meeting with Dr. Nita

The class met with Dr. Nita on this night to check on the progress of our Action Learning projects and to give feedback as to what steps we need to take next. We also discussed various research techniques and methods. We split into groups to research each one of these, and shared with the other group member. We also talked about the 21 century learner goals and how to incorporate those into our lesson plans.

Oct. 20 - IMPACT Panel Meeting

On Oct 20 we met with the IMPACT Panel to discuss how this program was carried out in a real school. I was surprised to find out that the principal was so supportive that he/she actually alloted a specific time for the librarian to plan with the teachers. I was also glad to hear that the planning / collaboration time with the teachers was well-received. I always feel like two heads are better than one. I love it when I have the opportunity to collaborate with others. I feel like the children get most of the benefit, while some of the burden is taken off of the teachers.

October 19 Meeting

We met on October 19 online to discuss our project with Dr. Nita. We gained a better understanding of some input we needed to add at the front and also what was required of the final presentation. We will be creating a PowerPoint presentation with some interactive aspect included. We thought we could possibly show a video or allow the audience to explore some websites as we discuss. We even tought about about asking discussion questions for the audience to be involved in.

Logic Model - Post Two

Our group met for approximately one hour last night to discuss which strategies matched up with the objectives listed on our logic model. We actually ended up deleting some of the strategies we originally posted because we knew that in the amount of time we had available to implement this program, some of the strategies would be impossible. For example, Rebecca already tried to propose Flex scheduling to her principal for her first action learning project, and unfortunaltely did not achieve her goal because her principal didn't agree. Therefore, since we played the change game, and know how long it takes to implement this type of change, we figured it would be pointless to list this on the logic model. We had also originally wanted to link all the strategies to all the objectives, but after scrutinizing the list, we decided that all the strategies did not match up with all the objectives, so we narrowed the list. Vern put the organizer together, and I believe Helena will draw the arrows to the appropriate boxes in the Word document. We met in the Qwaq forum with few glitches. There was some discussion about what specific objective we wanted to work on, but I don't believe anything was finalized. We will discuss it further during our next class meeting.