The American Library Association says that the arrangement of library facilities should motivate students to use the materials to learn. Believing that changing the library facility can bring about important changes in the program, this author shares how she became a "decorator" and changed the library media center in an elementary K-6 school. The…

This companion volume to "Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension," which covered lower grades, completes the educational arc by focusing on adolescent readers in grades 6-12. Drawing on the most current standards from the American Association for School Librarians (AASL) as well as cutting-edge research, this straightforward…

Imagine a classroom where students are actively engaged in seeking scientific knowledge from books and computers. Think of a classroom in which students fervently write to create PowerPoint presentations about their scientific topic and then enthusiastically practice their speaking roles to serve as docents in a classroom museum setting. Visualize…

"Nintendo Power," "Sports Illustrated for Kids," and a biography of President Obama were on prominent display as the author entered the branch library in Forest Hills, Queens. The librarian looked skeptical when the author asked the librarian if she could leave copies of "IndyKids" newspapers on the free literature table. The branch manager…

In the Northwest Independent School District (ISD) located in north Texas, collaboration is "not" optional; it is expected from all teachers. The driving force behind this effort is the district's vision: "the best and most sought-after school district where every student is future ready: Ready for college, Ready for the global…

Brandon School is a small pre-K through 8th grade school serving approximately 327 students. It does not have the funding that a lot of larger school districts have. When the special needs teacher approached the author a few years ago about high-interest, low-level books and asked for ideas to help her students read more, they came up with the…

E-readers like the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook are beginning to make their way into school libraries and classrooms. It's about time. E-readers have tremendous potential to entice reluctant readers to read more. A study that the authors recently conducted among low-reading-ability middle school students demonstrated that potential.…

Teachers often find themselves lamenting the loss of emergent readers to video games, television, and, most recently, the TTYL (talk/type to you later) culture of text messaging and Internet social networking. Trying to impart the joy of a good read to middle school students feels like pushing religion onto the perfectly content worshipers of…

A librarian, a professor, and an alumnus of Eastern Michigan University (EMU) collaborated to create an innovative library learning workshop for sixth-graders and college students. Pairing sixth-graders and college students increased the motivation to learn of both groups. Participants discovered through hands-on projects that library research…

Developmentalists state that children are born with the intrinsic motivation to learn, but studies show that this intrinsic desire to learn begins to wane during the early school years, around third grade, and continues a steady decline through eighth grade. Intrinsic motivation is at the core of information literacy, the foundation for a desire…

In this article, the author discusses how her sixth-grade students gained writing skills and learned to "dream big dreams." She wanted to celebrate literacy, and also create something that could raise funds to support literacy projects, so she challenged her students to write to their favorite authors and ask each for a recipe. The end result of…

In school library research programs, a challenge for students doing research emerges when they take their projects home and turn to their parents for assistance. Often parents lack sufficient knowledge of the research process to be able to effectively help their children. Moreover, teachers expect parents to monitor student homework but rarely…

Since archaeology is a branch of science that interests so many kids, Alice Robinson based a 10-week lesson for her sixth grade class on the subject. First, she prominently displayed archaeology books in the library, including Ancient Times by Guy Austrian and Archaeology for Kids by Richard Panchyk. After explaining the definition of archaeology…

This book allows the reader to team teach with a science specialist to drive home key library and media curriculum goals. Eight detailed chapters provide background and complete lesson plans that cover both library and general science skills and benchmarks. Included are reproducible student worksheets, tools for assessment, and a suggested…

This article describes the experiences of a sixth-grade language arts class that participated in a research and portfolio-writing exercise using the school library media center. Students in this class learned that organization and process are central to the completion of a successful research project. After learning various note-taking strategies…