We had a busy October! We started the month with a book fair table to promote our Book Club, and we are happy to report that we had a wonderful first meeting on October 20th. We offered a virtual option for those who could not be on campus, and the rest of the club participated in person. Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, November 3, at 6:30 PM. Please contact us if you would like to be added to the Book Club distribution list.
Playing YA Lit jeopardy!
It was a tight contest!
The makerspace is a popular destination for classes and individual students working on independent projects. Five Departments (CTE, English, Health, Science, and Social Studies) have used the makerspace this year, which means that well over 500 students have already had an innovation experience this year. Here is one student describing her work for a project on Absolutist rulers.
A few junior English classes have begun working on their research papers. Students are using databases and library subscriptions to access news articles that are paywall protected on the Web. Databases provide citations that students can use to document their research. Databases can be accessed several ways:
ClassLink folders, which are organized by student task
Country Studies
English & Literature
Images
Library
Newspapers & Magazines
Primary Sources
Science
Statistical Information
Works Cited
World Languages
Schoology
The library website search box
The library website link to the databases
Watching students work on their American Studies students on their first Junior Research Paper helped us realize that they might benefit from a Works Cited "cheat sheet", so we made one! Here is the link to the document, and this is what it looks like:
We made copies for each teacher, so they could post it in their classrooms.
It's the last day of September, and we can honestly say that this month felt truly normal! We never imagined that "normal" could be such an exciting and positive adjective.
The first Club Fair since 2019 just wrapped up and Radea, our Book Club President, did an outstanding job coordinating sign-ups and distributing hand-made bookmarks. Over 30 students signed up to join the club. Our book club meets on the 3rd Thursday of the Month at 6:30 PM either in the library or on Zoom (your choice - both options are available). Our first book of the year is Karen Mc Manus' new title, Nothing More to Tell. In case you missed our table, the QR code below links to the sign-up form.
The makerspace is reemerging as a hub for engaging NCHS student learning. Science, Social Studies, English, and Math classes all visited the expanded makerspace to work on curricular assignments. As we write this, a U.S. History class is creating conversation starters for a "speed dating" experience between key figures of the Reconstruction Era. When asked to describe what he was working on, one student explained that he was creating a scale to introduce W. J. Whipper, a lawyer who was a freedom activist. He explained that the scale of justice effectively symbolized Mr. Whipper's commitment to equality.
The Podcasting Studio is back in business (initially launched in February 2020). Mr. Remley's AP Literature students are recording conversations about one of two books they read, either Crime and Punishment or Pride and Prejudice. The group we spoke with crafted a guiding question for their discussion, "What is punishment, and what forms does it take?". They completed their recording and will collaboratively edit their conversation in WeVideo.
The green screen room is back too! The first day it reopened, students used it to record projects for their U.S. History class. It's been in nonstop use since.
Our new banquettes arrived and quickly became a popular spot for students to congregate in the library. The tables, which arrived about a week after the banquettes, facilitate collaborative work, which was the desired effect of the purchase.
We are working through the introduction to inquiry with our 10th-grade social studies students as they start working on their Absolutism project. The following is the slide deck we used for our lesson. We hope to record it shortly.
We completed a round of first-quarter independent reading book talks with 9th, 10th, and 11th graders, and helped to launch lit circle units for several AP Language classes. A few Junior English classes started working on their Junior Research paper. The library's instructional program uses this and the spring research paper in social studies as critical benchmarks for measuring the impact of our instruction on student learning.
The Workshop, which is what we are calling our new innovation lab (for now), is coming together. The 3D printers are working. The Cricut is calibrated and equipped with a fresh cutting tool. The Cricut Press was used for its first appliqué. We've started organizing the equipment and look forward to getting feedback on how to proceed from the district Innovation Committee, which will hold its next meeting in the NCHS library.
We can't believe that Halloween is almost here, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. It feels so great to truly be back on track with a busy library filled with learners actively engaged in new learning. The old adage appears to be true. Time does fly when you are having fun!
It is summer reading time! That's when we get to catch up on what’s new and exciting in publishing. Our Summer Reading List is recreational. Its purpose is to connect our learners with resources they may enjoy.
We try to keep the list relatively short – under one hundred books, so as not to overwhelm. We are mindful of genre and diverse interests. We focus on contemporary publications - the last two years or so, but we also include a few classics. We aim for a balance between young adult and adult literature.
Keeping in mind that our library users include young teens and adults, our list is thematically comprehensive. Seventy-nine percent of our graduating seniors have taken at least one college-level course at NCHS. As a result, our collection is designed to meet the needs of college students as well as high schoolers. Not every summer reading book is appropriate for every library user. Selection is part of the reading process and we encourage young readers to be reflective about their choices - to contextualize them with their personal and family values. Readers are encouraged to consult reviews and publisher notes to make predictions about whether a book will suit their interests and to switch to a different book when one falls short of their expectations. There are so many books to enjoy. Summer is not the time to slog through a book that holds little appeal. All members of our learning community are invited to read from the 2022 summer reading list. This year, we are collecting one-minute video reviews on Flipgrid (click on the Google login option, and sign in with your @ncps-k12.org Google account).
As in previous years, New Canaan (town) Library runs dynamic Summer Reading Program. We send copies of our summer reading books to the town library so that students may borrow them during the summer months. We carry as many titles as are available in both eBook and audiobook formats. Students can access ebooks and audiobooks through MackinVia (tutorial). They can text the library at (615) 669 6670 if they need help.
We aggregate our summer reading list in GoodReads, which is a social book recommendation site (see grid to the right). The entire NCHS learning community is invited to connect, share what they are reading, rate books, and write reviews. Again, the list is here. Tabs (at the bottom) allow viewers to switch between Sheets organized by title, author, genre, awards, young adult, adult, etc.
Wow! It is truly great to be back! We are excited about many new developments. As week one winds to a close, we feel great about the start of the 2021-2022 school year.
ClassLink:
Most students learned about ClassLink this week. The launchpad provides authenticated access to resources our students need, including PowerSchool, Schoology, Naviance, Google tools, and much more. The library has a ClassLink presence too. Over the weekend, we will replace the link to the library's website with a folder that includes several links:
This folder should help students access essential library tools and services
The Page That Cross-searches Our Databases
Library Learning Zones:
We converted the upper library into a lounge area. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors are invited to decompress in comfortable chairs during their free periods. The upper library is equipped with plenty of power outlets for students to charge their devices. Ninth graders will have the option to use the lounge second semester.
The New Library Lounge
The makerspace is back! Teachers have already begun brining their classes to work on projects. We love the block schedule for innovating. Students have ample time for design thinking and even a little clean up time as well, which helps each new class find all the materials they need with ease.
Working on the Growth Mindset
ColLabB is back to serving as an instructional space for the library (it was a health classroom last year). This week, it was used for student collaboration on the growth mindset and also for booktalks. We are thrilled to have access to the adaptable learning space this year.
Booktalks in ColLabB
The virtual reality lab and podcasting studio will reopen shortly. We will write more about that in our next post.
The rest of the library is divided into two sections:
Collaborative learning
Quiet independent learning
9th Grade Orientation in the Collaborative Learning Zone
9th Grade Learning Modules:
Over the summer, the Information and Communications Technology team developed learning modules for the ninth graders to complete during study hall. The modules help our newcomers familiarize themselves with high school services and technologies, including
Tech for success (BYOD, and high school specific technology)
Asking questions and getting answers (library services)
Digital citizenship
Summer Reading & Booktalks:
We collected our summer reading books from the town library this week and have rolled much of that collection into the high interest reading collection (Vide), which we promote throughout the school year through our ongoing booktalks. We started these this week. It was a pleasure to see our learners making their selections, and sending them off for a long weekend with a book in hand.
Summer Reading Books
Co-Teaching:
Booktalking is a co-teaching experience. Our teachers survey their students and share the survey results with librarians so that, as a team, we can recommend titles for each individual student. We love starting the year this way.
Sophomores will begin studying absolutist rulers over the next few weeks. Through collaboration, we are adapting research projects to optimize our use of extended periods with a focus on strengthening higher order thinking skills.
We are working with health teachers on upcoming freshman and sophomore instructional units as well.
Textbooks in the library:
We populated the lower library, which is dedicated to quiet, independent learning with copies of department textbooks. We have new shelving that will help students keep these materials organized.
New to New Canaan High School:
In case you missed video we made for the incoming 9th grade parents last spring, you can watch it below:
MLA 9:
Last spring, the Modern Language Association released an updated manual for researchers, and we were slightly concerned that our instructional materials on citation would have to be updated. But, surprisingly, the guidelines are the same. The 9th edition book is an improvement, as it features deeper explanations and more examples, but the citations themselves are essentially the same. We will add a folder of resources about that to the students' ClassLink launchpad as well.
Well that will do until next time. We are thrilled to be back. Have a great weekend!
A quieter library means that we can divert some of our attention to improving our virtual library services. Since November, we have been working on the library's new website.
We recorded a tour of the site for the 2025 students and parents' virtual open house on March 4, 2021. It follows. The video is too long, we know, but just for the record, it was originally 26 minutes long. Halving that was a minor accomplishment.
There were a number of reasons our old library website needed a complete overhaul.
We needed to switch to responsive web design. Most of our web traffic visits our homepage to navigate from "the top navigation menu", which is comprised of a dozen "tiles" linking to instructional resources. On the legacy (old) website, this navigation menu failed to resize on mobile devices and led students to the wrong sites when they clicked on the right tile. Now, pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes (we think?).
Much of the legacy (old) website information was migrated to the new district platform in 2016 by Senior Internship Program participants. What they migrated came from from our 2006-2016 iteration of our library website. The interns were charged with migration, not content revision, and thus some of the content on our legacy website was over 15 years old! To say this overhaul was overdue is an understatement.
The web platform itself improved some of their navigation options and we wanted to take advantage of that.
Our legacy (old) website was cluttered. We wanted to streamline it.
We want to give a shout out to Felice Russell, a graduate student in the Southern Connecticut State University library science graduate program. As a course assignment, she interviewed Ms. Sheehan and wrote up a case study of our library's instructional program. In the report, which she shared with us, there were several recommendations for a website update. It was clear from Felice's narrative that the content on our legacy website reflected an outdated version of our program. This was what prompted us to tackle the overhaul project.
While we are pleased with what we have done so far, there is still plenty of room for improvement. At this point, we could use some guidance. We think that the new library website is responsive, simpler, cleaner, and easier to navigate, but we want to hear from our visitors, so we are inviting you to compare the old site to the new site and provide us with both warm and cool feedback. Simply click on images below to open both sites in new tabs.
Once you have compared the two websites, please feel free to complete the form below:
Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism andfollowing a standard format for citation.
Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas,avoiding plagiarism and over-reliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation.
NCHS Library Works Cited Support
NCHS teacher-librarians co-teach with classes during the research process. Teaching students to develop research skills, including creating a proper works cited, is a focused competency and supports standards-based learning. Teacher-librarians give feedback to students on how to correctly cite sources. Besides in-class support, the NCHS library provides different resources to meet students' diverse needs.
The NCHS library homepage has valuable, user-friendly resources that students can access 24/7. Students have access to contacting a librarian for help both physically in the library and in the virtual library during school hours. Simply click on the words Virtual Library to contact a librarian during school hours.
There are tutorials and sample citations in a citation resource guide that students can access online on the MLA Help Page.
Students can also use a checklist that has live links to resources to check their works cited.
13. I made sure links to url addresses are not live (blue).
14. I have a period at the end of each citation.
15. I have included a variety of sources.
Creating a works cited doesn't have to be laborious when there are resources and librarians as a support system. It is a skill that will be valuable in students' academic endeavors.
We are still working on this post. Please check back later on Saturday. Thank you!
COVID-19 has made it clear that it is essential for New Canaan High School to provide digital access to library resources. Fortunately, we have been carefully curating our digital collection since 2003.
At this point, we own 3,840 ebooks, 800 of which are fiction titles, and we also own 533 audiobooks.
Over the years, we have heard parents, teachers, and even some students tell us that they prefer reading in print, yet we continued to develop a digital collection knowing full well that someday, we would need a digital collection and that when that day happened, we would need it all at once. We anticipated that that paradigm shift would be driven by student need and/or interest. We never imagined that it would be a global pandemic!
Over the past few weeks, we have been posting flyers throughout the building that direct students to titles in our digital collection. Here are a few examples:
Once students hover their phone camera over a flyer, they will be prompted to open a link that appears across the top of their screen. Then all they need to do is click the link and sign in to open the digital book. Each flyer is a slide i a deck. The complete deck follows.
We are still working on this post. Please check back later on Saturday. Thank you!
Teacher-Librarians have been collaborating with social studies teachers to teach students how to effectively research. Ninth Graders in Global I have been wondering about how civilizations emerge and investigating how civilizations and universal belief systems develop. Students learned how to use the NCHS databases and keywords to locate and access information. Schoology, the high school's adopted Learning Management System, allows students to access the databases right through courses.
Students learned how to use the various features of a database to research more efficiently. Databases allow the users to save articles to their Google Drive for easy access for reading and note taking.
Students also learned that the database collection can be located and accessed through the NCHS library page.
Just enter any character or keyword in the search box.
Once verified as a NCHS student (Log into Google Drive), the databases populate on the right hand side.
Students read across texts to answer their inquiry questions, used an organized notes system, and synthesized ideas. Students creatively expressed ideas through the lens of the elements of civilization and the use of Google Draw.
Students reflected on their strengths and areas to grow using their research skills. As a result, they know what to skills focus on when they conduct research again.
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