It is so fantastic to be back in IRL school! We learned a great deal from URL school, but we will save that for another post. There is too much exciting brand new information to share.
First our library is hybrid! Since the physical room is serving as a study hall right now, our virtual library is open during the school day. Virtual learners can drop in anytime!
At the virtual library, we answer questions about research and reading. We can also refer students to someone who can help with learning tools. To access the virtual library, sign in to Chrome with your @ncps-k12.org email address, then click on the VIRTUAL LIBRARY link on the library homepage at nchsclibrary.info. You can also email the Student Help Desk for help with your learning tools.
We started the year by booktalking up a storm. Ms. Sheehan made an outstanding handout featuring our summer reading list and many other titles. Click on the preview image below to see the entire document.
Eleventh graders have been selecting independent reading materials. Students were surveyed about their reading interests and we produced the following booktalks to align with learners' survey results. As with summer reading, there is a book for every student, but not every book is for every student. Book selection is a part of the independent reading experience.
Course: Junior English
Course: AP Language
Course: American Street Law
As juniors prepare to start working on the first of the two major research papers they will complete this year, we explain that we will provide feedback as they reach the following checkpoints:
Research questions
Works cited lists
Thesis statements
The first research paper, which is assigned in English, uses The Great Gatsby's examination of social class, equity, and The American Dream as a launchpad for research. Students choose their own topics for research. We collected juniors' research questions for the past three years and classified them into 11 broad categories:
Civil/Equal rights/Discrimination/Social justice
Cultural messaging
Education
Family
Law enforcement/Military/National security
Mental/Physical Health/Wellness
Politics
Prosperity/Business
Science
Social pathology
Technology
The chart below shows how many students gravitated to each topic.
As one reviews the above classifications, it is surprisingly easy to let ones' personal viewpoints influence expectations about the subcategories that could nest under each parent classification. Go ahead. Give it a try. ... pause
Our juniors are independent thinkers who are grappling with current issues in their own way. They are bringing their experiences, interests, and ideas to their understanding of, and predictions about the world they will inhabit as adults.
We compiled 3 years of research questions into word clouds, which are images composed of research questions in which the size of each word indicates its frequency of use, then we selected book talk titles to align with these word clouds. See below:
Booktalk Aligned with Junior Research Paper Research Questions:
In order to comply with the district's COVID-19 mitigation plan, students are requesting their titles via a Google Form, which is linked to the library homepage at ncpslibrary.info.
Here is the form:
We then retrieve the books from the collection, check them out to students, and send them to their classroom.
Our collection includes over a thousand ebooks and hundreds of audiobooks. This tutorial will help learners find our ebooks and audiobooks:
We are promoting ebook and audiobook discovery by posting these flyers around the school and making this slide deck available on our website at nchslibrary.info. We, along with our fabulous corps of virtual volunteers, are adding to the list regularly:
In the event that a student requests a book that is currently unavailable, we send them an email featuring alternative titles. We base our recommendations on our expertise as reader's advisory specialists, our experience with NCHS readers, and, occasionally, Goodreads, which has a helpful "Readers Also Enjoyed" carousel, and displays popular tags.
Here is our list of alternate choices so far. This is a "living document", which means it will grow. A lot.
Well, there is more, but we'll save that for the end of the month. Be safe and be well!
