On Wednesday, TLC: The Library Club is joining our cross-country group of other library book clubs in a “Somewhat Virtual Book Club” discussion of Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens.

This will be our fifth virtual book discussion. We have tried two different software platforms, Google + Hangouts and Skype, for previous meetings, and had both successes and challenges with them. Unfortunately, my aging computer has frozen at times, and, last time while we were discussing John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, the Skype options disappeared on us so we could neither control the mic nor read or write in the chat box! While problems like these are frustrating, they also offer us a real-world lesson in the opportunities and challenges of communicating online. For Wednesday’s discussion, we will be using Blackboard Collaborate, software I use regularly for California School Library Association Board business meetings and for webinars I have attended, and find to be very reliable. I’m optimistic that, with my brand new Mac Air and Blackboard, we will have good communication throughout our session. I am confident that Bray’s satirical book will inspire a lively discussion and the opportunity to explore parallels with one of our school curriculum novels, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as well as many contemporary issues. Check out this preview of the book. Our club members invite any interested guests to join us at 3 PM on Wednesday. And, of course, we’ll have refreshments!

I have posted a map of the club before. If you compare the two, you will see that I have updated it since we have added two new members – Cathy Jo Nelson’s Domain HS in  South Carolina and Debbie Bobolin’s James Caldwell HS in New Jersey. Welcome! They join our “founding members” at Joyce Valenza’s Springfield Township HS Library in Pennsylvania, Shannon Miller’s Van Meter Community School in Iowa, Michelle Lahtala’s New Canaan HS in Connecticut, and Colette Cassinelli’s La Salle Catholic College Prep in Oregon. I left Amy Lott’s Deer Park MS in Texas on the map in case her group is able to rejoin us in the future.

P.S. If the map looks squished in on your screen, click on it to view it in a new window in better proportion.

To see more student spine poems, come by the library or check our online Flickr.com gallery.
You can also enjoy more spine poetry on this blog.

Mira Costa students, teachers, and friends are invited to join the Spine Poetry contest. Either come by the library to create a poem and have me take a photo of it, or you can email me a photo. Submissions are due by Monday, April 30. Poems will be judged by English Teacher volunteers, and the winner will receive an iTunes gift certificate.

Happy Poetry Month!

The Mira Costa Library has just added a great new tool, EasyBib Premium School Edition, to make citing sources, taking notes online, and evaluating the creditability of online sources easier for students. Don’t wait for a class visit to take advantage of this great new resource. Come by the library or email Mrs. Lofton for information about how to create an EasyBib account, get access to our Premium School Account with our Mira Costa coupon code, and take advantage of all the help it can offer you when you do research.

The Mira Costa Library now has ebooks! We have:

• 22 new ebooks you can check out like a library book and then read online on any computer with an internet browser. This collection includes popular favorites such as Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy titles, John Green’s Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska, Sarah Dessen’s The Truth about Forever and Along for the Ride, and Gayle Forman’s If I Stay.
• 2 new reference books, the electronic version of the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues and Voices of Shakespeare’s England: Contemporary Accounts of Elizabethan Daily Life. These two reference books can be accessed by an unlimited number of readers simultaneously.

1. Visit the library catalog online through this direct line, or through the library catalog link on the library website.
2. If you see a list of district libraries, be sure to select Mira Costa High School.
3. Click Login at the top right of the Mira Costa Library Catalog screen. Your username is your nine- or ten-digit Permanent ID and your password is destiny.
4. To see all the ebooks, select Resource Lists from the left menu bar and then Public Lists from the tab at the top right. Then select the eBooks list. You can also identify a book as an ebook when you search the catalog if you see this icon:  
5. To view information about an ebook in the list, click on the title or on Details.
6. Choose Read Online to browse a book and decide if you want it, or choose Check Out Online to check the book out.
7. Once your book is checked out, you will have it for two weeks, unless you choose to return it earlier. You can access it at any time by logging into your library catalog account and selecting the My Info tab.

To read the two new reference books:

1. Click on the ebook title or on Details.
2. Click on the hyperlink provided in the detail record.
3. Enter Mira Costa’s username and password for ABC-CLIO reference materials. Come by the library or email Mrs. Lofton for this username and password.

Enjoy reading! Be sure to let Mrs. Lofton know how you like the experience.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9106303@N05/4826939037

Please share yours!

Here’s a great graphic created for the event by Cathy Jo Nelson and adapted by Michelle Luhtala and, now, me:

Mrs. Lofton with her books from the SCIBA Dinner

Last Saturday I was delighted to attend the annual SCIBA (Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Children’s Book and Literacy Dinner, along with MBUSD Library Media Specialists Julie Jones, Heidi Snively, and Debby Kalenik. Here we are:

This event features speeches by several great authors, an author at each table, and free books and book signings. Speakers this year included Michael Grant, Aaron Karo, Jennifer Nielsen, Lisa Loeb, and Cornelia Funke. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Author Lisa McMann and getting a copy of her newest book, Dead to You, for our library. Here I am with her: I came away with a wonderful assortment of other new books and pre-publication advanced reader copies to share with students. I also got another opportunity to see and visit with Andrea Cremer, who visited us at Mira Costa in January, and Margot Ferris, bookseller from our local {pages} the bookstore, who has been so terrific working with Mira Costa.

Come by the library to borrow one of our new books soon!

The opening presentation of the day was a teaching demonstration by Jose Rivas, Physics and Engineering Teacher at Lennox Math, Science, and Technology Academy in Inglewood and a recipient of the Carlston Family Foundation 2011 Outstanding Teacher Award. Rivas was able to both teach us a physics lesson and articulate his techniques as he progressed. He showed us how he builds emotional connections with students to engage them and help them retain material through hands-on exploration, fun competition, self-assessments, and lively film clips. He emphasized how a short movie or song can help students retain an important concept. He spends minimal time doing direct instruction, since the students spend most of their time actively working on solving problems with other students. Our challenge was to use a collection of Styrofoam cups, paper clips, tape, wooden sticks, and rubber bands to create a catapult for a marble that would send the marble further than our other classmates’ examples. We all got into the spirit of the competition, although I am afraid my group’s product was not very successful!

I came away highly motivated to incorporate these techniques in the lessons I teach. I especially liked his effective use of film clips. An audience favorite was the film he made himself in which a picture of Isaac Newton was talking to us. He used a software product called Crazy Talk in order to animate the picture. CrazyTalk is definitely on my “have to get and use” list now! Another example he shared that I think I could implement right away was a tic-tac-toe game. Students receive a sheet of physics computation questions at different levels of difficulty. Once they choose a level with which to begin solving problems, they can find the correct answers on a tic-tac-toe board which they compete with a classmate to complete.  I think this tic-tac-toe model could be applied to problems in any subject area, including my own information literacy lessons in the library.

One of the breakout sessions I attended was led by Bill Macauley, Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Nevada, Reno. The intended focus of the session was on how we can help students make the transition from high school writing to college writing. In fact, though, our discussion was much broader, since there were educators from middle school through college participating. We discussed how the Common Core Standards provide a fairly even balance between higher order and lower order skills, and how we can balance them in writing instruction and practice. Macauley shared several handouts on designing effective writing assignments which I can, in turn share with Mira Costa teachers, and we all contributed our own ideas in small group and whole group discussions. One idea that I contributed myself to help students develop both lower order and high level skills is to alternate between structured writing assignments and more free form, creative writing such as blog postings. We also talked about how the teacher librarian can help the students focus on the structure and citation components of writing, while the subject area teacher focuses on the higher order analysis components. Another idea we discussed was the value of using Google Docs for writing assignments, allowing teachers to share comments with students online. One participant suggested taking advantage of the revision history feature and requiring students to articulate the kind of changes they make at each revision.

I attended a second breakout session on “You Can Have it All: Academic Literacy, Critical Thinking, and Student Engagement through the Common Core” led by Nicole Kukrai, Secondary Teacher on Special Assignment, San Juan Unified School District and Area 3 Writing Project. Like Rivas, Kukrai led us in a model lesson, and, at the same time, articulated the techniques or routines she uses to teach students and build a classroom culture of learning. The lesson in this case was reading and analyzing a short essay, We all came away with a number of routines for multiple readings of a text and student conversation promoting academic literacy in the classroom. Kukrai’s routines included “turn and talk” in which students pair up to discuss what they read, small group conversation, whole group sharing, and charting the discussion points. We all read the essay several different times, focusing on different types of questions for each reading. While we worked in pairs and small groups, Kukrai had time to move from group to group, assess our performance, and give help as needed. These routines are definitely good ideas I would like to use as models for my own teaching.

I came away from the summit with lots of good ideas for myself, many I can share with other Mira Costa staff, and a much better understanding of the new Common Core Standards and how I can help implement them. Teachers, please come by to hear more about the summit and see the helpful handouts I received. I am very grateful to have been able to attend this outstanding professional development day.

We are so fortunate at Mira Costa to have a strong school library. So many schools in California and across the U.S. do not.

Carl Harvey, AASL (American Association of School Librarians) President has posted a petition on the Whitehouse.gov site in support of school libraries. Here’s the text:

“WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Ensure that every child in America has access to an effective school library program.
Every child in America deserves access to an effective school library program. We ask that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provide dedicated funding to help support effective school library programs. Such action will ensure more students have access to the resources and tools that constitute a 21st century learning environment. Reductions in school library programs are creating an ‘access gap’ between schools in wealthier communities versus those where there are high levels of poverty. All students should have an equal opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to learn, to participate, and to compete in today’s world.”

Petitions posted on this site need 25,000 signatures to be forwarded to President Obama. Please add your signature and spread the word far and wide. We need more signatures by February 4 for this petition to be forwarded. We can do it if we all get out the word to colleagues, family, and friends. Our students’ futures depend upon strong school libraries. Let’s advocate to make it happen.

To sign, click this link to go to the petition. You do need to create an account, then sign in. Some people have had challenges getting logged in. If you have trouble, try another browser. If you still have trouble, click on ‘forgot password?’.  You’ll fill out the dialog box and then it sends you a new password in your email.  When you get that, you are sent to a site to change your password then you can go back to the original site and type in your new password.  That seems to work. I did have to log in about three times before I succeeded. The time and effort will be worth it!

Thank you for your support of strong school libraries for all students!