Module 2.2

What shall we teach?
Name: Judy Ringgenberg
Date: February 21, 2010
Unit Title: How Do We Locate Information?
New___ Revised_XX___
Content Areas: Information literacy and English/Language Arts
Grade Level 7/8
Unit Duration 2 weeks
Unit Description Students will begin by pre-testing online with a database called “TRAILS”
Students will receive instruction in locating library information using an electronic catalogue.
Students will receive instruction in using online databases for retrieving information.

Standards Source:
AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action
North Dakota English Language Arts Content and Achievement Standards, April 2005
North Dakota Standards and Benchmarks Library/Technology Literacy, January 2003

Unit Standards:
AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner in Action
1.1.4 Find, evaluate and select appropriate sources to answer questions.
Consider and prioritize possible sources of information based on specific information needs and strengths of different information formats.
Use specialized reference materials to find specific and in-depth information.
Use both primary and secondary sources.
Evaluate sources based on criteria such as copyright date, authority of author or publisher, depth of coverage, and relevance to research questions.

English Language Arts Standards
8.1.1 Use questions to narrow research topic
8.1.2 Use a variety of primary and/or secondary sources to access information i.e., computer catalogs, magazines, newspapers, and primary sources
8.1.3 Evaluate sources that present different perspectives e.g., by identifying sources of bias and distinguishing between primary and secondary sources
8.1.4 Use information from multiple sources when presenting research findings to defined audiences
8.3.1 Compose informative writing, e.g., research, biographies, autobiographies, news articles, interviews.
8.3.4 Use free writing and journal writing to develop ideas for writing topics
8.3.6 Use prewriting product to create a first draft emphasizing details and referencing sources
8.3.12 Incorporate a variety of visual aids in publications
8.3.13 Use computer technology to present written work
8.5.2 Access media (e.g., television, film, music, electronic databases, videos, DVDs, comics, visual and performing arts, newspapers, and periodicals) for a variety of purposes
8.5.7 Define copyright

Library/Technology Literacy Standards

8.1.1 Define a research problem or task
8.1.3 Access information using a variety of sources
8.5.1 Follow school guidelines for responsible use of technology and information resources
8.5.3 Demonstrate knowledge of intellectual property rights laws.

Unit Objectives:
Learners will locate 5 items in the local library
Learners will identify the title page, verso page and copyright date on 5 books.
Students will find information on a topic of their choosing in an online subscription database.

Unit Resources:
TRAILS: Tool for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills
Kent State University Libraries, 2010 Retrieved from http://www.trails-9.org/

Online Dakota Information Network. Retrieved from http://library.nd.gov/

Other Content Areas for Project #2.

Occasionally our teaching staff will embark on short thematic units related to events that we design and teach. Some examples would be Career Education Month, Multicultural Awareness Week, Veteran’s Day and the Olympics.
Since my main duties involve library use, I can usually offer students additional information or a place to come and explore whatever they are studying at the time.
For Project #2, I am considering a unit that would include both Information Literacy Skills and English/Language Arts.

Power Point Reflection

Writing Instructional Objectives for Teaching and Assessment

As far as the curriculum planning described in our textbook, my opinion is that this model does not work in all schools. For instance, the school I teach at is not a regular, traditional school. We are an alternative school but I think even in some alternative schools the teachers have a little more control of the numbers of students; when students start their classes; and when they finish them than we do. In our school, we are 100% open entry/open exit. As such, we lose some students every week and gain new ones, every week. With this type of student dynamics, it is difficult to plan long, extended units of instruction. In other words, if I would be teaching English, I wouldn’t come in the first day of school and say to my students, “We are going to study American Literature for 9 weeks, then grammar for 6 weeks, followed by poetry and creative writing, and so forth.” When I did teach in a public school, I did organize my classes over a yearlong time period so I would have a “map” of what I thought was necessary for my students to learn. Anytime a subject is sequential, teachers should be aware of what is being taught before them as well as what will come after them. This doesn’t happen at the Youth Correctional Center. Many of our students have huge gaps of missed instruction due to dropping out, truancy, moving, or having learning difficulties. Our main goal for students who are with us for treatment is to help them get back on track, to help them“close” the learning gaps, and to instill in them a new appreciation for their own education. These “treatment students” may spend anywhere from 3 months to 3 years or more at the Center. And while we do have successful graduates, either through a traditional diploma or a GED, many of our students return to their previous communities or other schools to finish their education.

Looking at the power point, I do agree that we “have to know where we are going before we plan the trip.” So for the short, week to 2 week long units, it is a good idea to look at the school calendar for interruptions, check with other faculty to see if any other teachers want to participate, and to map out a plan of activities that students will be able to access, repeat, and apply to their learning. Looking at all the slides on methods of teaching, I believe I use a mixture of each and every one of them in my teaching. Since our class sizes are small, we do a lot of group work but it is usually with only 4 to 10 students. I like to do demonstrations and have students model the lesson followed by a question and answer period. I also like to incorporate peer responses to the students’ questions as that allows me to check if others are following along and understanding the concepts. We use inquiry lessons and often will employ learning centers and independent study in the assignments. I also think that students can be best assessed by producing a product. This might be a model, a picture, an essay, a paragraph or some other type of evaluation that shows student understanding.

Textbooks

I have taught many different classes and levels during my 30 years of teaching. Sometimes a textbook is useful and sometimes it isn’t. It really depends on the class. For instance, when teaching English to Students of Other Languages (ESOL), a work text was used to facilitate concrete illustrations, but not for students to read. When I taught middle school English in a public school, I used a textbook for some of the literature and grammar skills. Some of the concepts were also taught without a text as I used students’ own examples to make the learning real. I taught GED for a number of years and we used all sorts of items to facilitate a student’s understanding of each subject. Usually a workbook was used and sometimes outside reading assignments were required for them to increase their writing ability. My belief is that good readers can become good writers. Language follows a specific order; first you hear it, then you imitate it through speech, then you read and decode it and finally you are able to write down your own thoughts and ideas. I am more apt to follow a modeling form of teaching rather than a textbook. With today’s technology, I truly believe that textbooks will be eventually phased out in favor of continuous updates to what we know.

Professional Organizations

I visited the International Reading Association’s website at www.reading.org.

The site opened with some interesting articles that even non-members could access. I was drawn to an article about censorship concerning the book by Sonja Sones, “One of those Hideous Books where the Mother dies.” A mother of a middle school student in Fond du Lac, WI, had challenged this book based on some of the sexual passages and wanted the book removed from the middle school library. The librarian followed the procedure in place for challenged materials and the school board disallowed its removal. The reason this caught my attention is that this book is the first one we will be discussing in our Great Stories Book Club this year. I am always interested in stories of censorship especially if the author is allowed to respond. Ms. Sones did send the school board this message: “If Ms. Wentworth thinks the book is inappropriate for her own child, then by all means she should not allow her child to read it. But it would be unfair and inappropriate for her to try to force her own personal beliefs on every family with children attending Theisen Middle School, or any other school in the district."

Dues for the organization are $39 per year for a basic membership and then range from $69 up to $159 depending on how many journals a person would like to receive.

Their mission is “to promote reading by continuously advancing the quality of literacy instruction and research worldwide.”

They post lists of all the state organizations so I found the North Dakota site on the calendar of events. The local association will be holding their 2010 conference in Grand Forks this year on April 29-May 1. The website for more information about the conference is www.ndreadon.utma.com/intro.htm .

In addition to the conference information, there was more about the North Dakota Reading Council. The site stated it was founded in 1968.

Self-Reflection Survey

While reading through the self-assessment survey, I thought a bit about when I taught in the public sector. There I was limited by minutes of the period, days in the week and weeks in the school year to get my subject matter into the minds of my students. There wasn't time to "think" about what the student might have meant or didn't mean. There was only time to put a critical eye on a student's work and mark it as best I could. Working in correctional education has eliminated some of the time constraints in that we don't have a "regular" school year like the public schools do, even though we follow a public school calendar. We are also open for 2 months in the summer. Our students don't get docked for excused or unexcused absences. If students are pulled from school due to behavior issues, the school comes to them in the form of SMP, Special Management Program. Education is seen as part of the student's treatment focus so leaving school out, isn't allowed. Even 18 year old graduate students take part in some type of education, be it vocational, lifeskills or other classes to help them improve in some way.
The last two pages of the survey caught my attention as that is much of our focus at the Youth Correctional Center; class participation, spelling/grammar, neatness, completing work on time, ability level, effort, improvement during a grading period or since one, inappropriate classroom behavior, paying attention, cooperation and attendance. Often, just trying to correct bad habits and low student skills is an objective we try to meet.

Grading Theory

Self-Worth Theory
While reading the text on Grading, I was drawn to the summary by Covington where he states that "students were not on equal footing with regard to ability; some students are more able than others." He then expounds on his theory of "motivational equity" where students are encouraged to "think more, and to dare more". They are to feel "caught up in the drama of problem solving, and of being poised to learn and ready to take the next step."(Brookhart, p.41). That is not only how I view myself as a learner, but I see this in the challenges and attitudes of my fellow teachers as we deal with students of wide ranging abilities. We must do this over short snippets of time or long periods since students are on an open entry/open exit continuum. They might be with us for 3 weeks or for 3 years. Correctional education also sees more students with learning difficulties and lower scholastic abilities as well. Our students need to know they can be successful even if it's limited.
A recent example of this theory is a student we've had for over a year. He is a 16 year old who spends much of his day in the resource room with our special needs teacher. While watching a news story on TV one day, he became engrossed in the events surrounding 9-11 and the World Trade Center. He took it upon himself, through a social studies assignment of current events, to locate additional information and from there he built a scale model of the Trade Center and wrote a detailed report about the building, the destruction and its future. It was interesting to see this young man become so excited when he would talk about his project (as he carried it around with him quite frequently).
Whenever we allow students to really learn what they view as important, the learning becomes a part of them. I feel the same way. If an assignment or exercise doesn't have some type of personal motivation, it is hard to embrace the knowledge.
Another example I can remember from quite a few years back was when everyone was just starting to learn how to use computer applications, like Excel. If you were given an exercise in a workbook to put together a table or chart, or had to use a function for something, you might have learned something. However, if you were allowed to bring in your class lists, address lists, inventory sheets or something that was personalized and could use after the class was over, that learning became relevant.

Grading Intentions

I think students should always be aware that what they do in school is important. It might not always be for a "grade" but for the sheer interest in learning something new. I am the teacher they meet before they actually start school. I let them know that some of the things they will learn aren't necessarily "subject" matter things. They will learn that it is a good idea to be punctual, to show respect for others, to organize their time wisely, to communicate effectively and to learn how to get along with one another.
We are an alternative school and our schedule is very flexible. When students are scheduled into the library as a 2nd hour of a class, we call that doubling-up, I grade them on their attitude, effort, amount of production for that period, relationship with other students, relationship with the teacher, and their conduct. The teacher of record assigns the grade.
As the librarian, I don’t often have to give students grades, but I do provide verbal and written feedback when asked. For instance, if a student writes a GED essay, the instructor will have me as the second reader. If the student is present when I read, I talk to them and explain what they’ve done well and what can be improved. While grading student papers, my intention is to guide students to think about their schoolwork, to evaluate them on different levels, and to state the evaluation in understandable terms.

How do you assess?

Over the years I have taught different classes from GED classes to English and now, orientation. Our school uses percentile based grading with rubric evaluation. Students are given daily percentile grades and then scored overall on a rubric of 4-1 with 4 being the top and 1 indicating they need more work in that particular area. The seven areas that our students are graded on are Achievement, Effort, Attitude, Amount of Production, Conduct/Behavior, Relationship with Teacher and Relationship with Students. The Achievement grade is based on a percentile of scores during the grading period. Thus 93-100% is a 4, 87-93% is a 3, 80-86% is a 2 and 79% and lower is a 1. Our students are all aware of our grading procedures and policies. We conduct treatment teams on a monthly basis and go over every student’s progress report with them individually with their counselor. Teachers are encouraged to include a short narrative with their grades and most do. Because of the transience of our students, we have treatment teams once a month. This is where a team of two teachers meets with the student, his counselor and sometimes other staff to discuss the student’s progress. The student plays an active role in this meeting by reading the progress report to the group. Students also receive cottage reports from the resident staff in regards to things such as hygiene, cooperation, job duty performance, role modeling, confronting appropriately and other interactive social skills. When I started teaching in 1987 at the Youth Correctional Center, we used a different form of grading and all reports were written on quadruple forms by hand. Even then we used the non-achievement scores because we are a correctional facility. As such, behavior, attitude, student effort and motivation are all qualities we encourage students to improve upon.

Bibliotherapy

While researching the topic on bibliotherapy, I have had several moments of illumination and retrospect. The illumination comes when I put a face to a title of a book I might recommend; and in retrospect I think there were people in my life who did the same for me.

It was a struggle to put into words what I would like to accomplish at some point in my career. I would like to be able to open up a line of communication between myself and the doctors who treat our students so I might be of some assistance at the very least. I would like to order specific titles on their recommendations and then follow through with getting the right books to the right readers.

One time consuming task I noticed while putting this paper together is not being able to go through book lists and choose appropriate titles based on those recommendations. I know I will never be able to read every book I suggest, but I would like to be able to keep up with the new titles and whatever else the students like to read. The sheer volume of both old and new titles with all the different genres and utility are staggering. In one week I usually have at least 3-4 students come to me asking for a book they started reading at another placement, a second or third book in a popular series, or a book like another title they recently read.

Grading Story

As I read the “grading story” on page 3 in the text, I was reminded of a similar situation that I was part of in my high school. I, too, was always a straight A student and didn’t have to work hard for good grades. I don’t think I ever really thought about my grades. There was a joke in our family that my older brother and sister always got “paid” for grades but when I came along, my parents decided they couldn’t afford to pay $1 per A, so quit offering that incentive. At any rate, there were 3 of us in my senior class that were ranked at the top. The two other students, both boys, were taking advanced classes in science and math while I took the general electives in order to enroll in a secretarial program after graduation. Back in “those days,” girls were encouraged to become nurses or secretaries. I finished high school as the top ranked student and gave the valedictorian address at graduation. The two boys that ranked 2nd and 3rd went on to colleges to become doctors or engineers I think. If it wouldn’t have been for the intervention of our high school guidance counselor, I probably would have attended the 9 month business school and ended up doing some type of secretarial work. As it turned out, Mr. Leidle, the guidance counselor, talked to my parents and convinced them that I should attend a four-year college. So the summer after graduation, I applied for college, received some scholarships, and was accepted at Northern State in Aberdeen. I am still somewhat curious as to what the outcome of my future would have been had I not gone to college. It was there that I met and married my husband, started a good job in advertising sales after graduation, and was promoted three times within 6months. I was told these promotions were because I had a college degree and the other salesmen who had been there longer, didn’t.
I imagine one could surmise that grades had an influence in my life, although at the time, I didn't realize it.