A well balanced curriculum is an area of great concern in a school. With an enhanced collection, the library media specialist can further educational progress on all levels. Through accessing a good science collection in the library, students can achieve their learning goals. This article describes a process used to evaluate a science collection…

Any student will tell people that one question they've been asked repeatedly is "What do you want to be when you grow up?" From a young age, adults expect children to think about their future and to work toward a career goal. If teachers expect their students to be goal driven, career-oriented individuals, they need to provide them with ample…

Have you ever had a teacher say, "I'd love to bring my classes to the library more often, but we just don't have enough time because we have to prepare for our state standardized tests?" This response stems from a misconception about the role of library media centers and library media specialists. In some school environments, the library media…

As teacher and instructional partner, one will need skills in instructional design. The three main types of instructional design are curriculum planning, unit planning, and lesson planning. Curriculum planning, the big picture, looks at the entire set of skills and knowledge for the district, the school, or a specific grade level. Unit planning…

As the national educational organizations' standards evolve from students mastering discrete skills to demonstrating broad learning behaviors, often referred to as 21st century learning skills, pedagogy is slowly shifting from teacher- and textbook-centered dissemination of facts and information to student-centered construction of learning and…

In data-driven collaboration, the teacher and library media specialist (LMS) have a prolonged and interdependent relationship as they do in all collaboration. Units and projects are team-planned, team-taught, and team-assessed. The partners share goals, have carefully defined roles in the process, and plan comprehensively based on the results of…

Teaching students the difference between good and bad information has become increasingly more difficult for librarians and other educators. While tools exist to help students to understand how to determine good and bad online information (Web site evaluation forms, techniques to link back to Web site owners, etc.), the reality is that most…

One of the main goals as a secondary librarian has been to get every teacher to use the high school library. For years, various public relations activities, includes quarterly newsletters, distribution of lists of new books, handing out various lists of library materials asking teachers to provide displays in the library and sending lists of…

In inquiry environments, assessment is integral to the learning process. This means that students not only assess their own work, but they also help identify the criteria for assessment and design the tools for measuring the quality of the performance. One critical assessment tool, which is being used in countless classrooms, is the rubric.…

This article is based on a series of lessons prepared for a class of third graders who were going to research specific planets. With so many Web sites on the Internet, there is a need to be concerned about information overload for the audience. The NASA site (www.nasa.gov) is filled with lots of sites providing factual information about the…