Inching our Way Back to Normal

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:

• The library's website
• Destiny - the library's print catalog
• MackinVia - the library's catalog of ebooks and audiobooks
• The page that cross-searches most of our databases (see screenshot below)
• The list of database links
• The link to the virtual library

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 tour of the new library website

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:

Thank you so much for you input!

Practice Makes the Perfect Works Cited (Resources Help Too!)

Importance of Citing Sources

  Common Core Standards indicate the importance of students being able to curate and cite sources:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.8

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 and following a standard format for citation.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.8

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.

 Works Cited Checklist Tutorial Link

Criteria	Yes	No
I have watched the video on how to format. Video  (hanging indents, Times New Roman Font, Size 12, double spaced)
I have put my citations in alphabetical order.
I have accessed the sample document to check YouTube, NPR (National Public Radio), TEDx Talk entries, or a blog or opinion piece. SAMPLE document
I have double-spaced all my entries even the first citation to the heading. (I do not have spaces that are bigger than double-spaced.)
I have removed the https:// from the URL.
I have not repeated the publisher if it is the same as the container. Ex: The New York Times,
I have lower-cased the word in. Gale in Context: World History
I made sure the titles of articles are properly capitalized.             capitalizemytitle.com and Click MLA 8.
I have written dates of publication correctly: 09 Dec. 2020,
I have abbreviated months correctly. (Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.) May, June, and July are not abbreviated.
11. I have checked for errors in database citations:       Titles are properly capitalized.       https:// are removed.       Dates are written properly.
12. My website containers match the url address. Container: Wall Street Journal www.WSJ.com/articles/global-stocks-edge-up-ahead-of-fed-policy-decision-11580293546.
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.

The Challenges of Digital Collection Development

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!

Fall Focus on Freshman Research Skills

 Applying the WISER Research Process

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. 

What a difference a year makes!

 On Wednesday, we met with the 9th grade parents via Zoom. We highlighted some new library services we are offering this year. We recorded the slide deck to share it with you. The video follows:

We are starting to update our usage statistics. Please take a peek to see how hybrid learning has changed how our students use New Canaan High School library materials!

Period 3 study hall on a rainy Friday

       Destiny Discover 

    Portal to NCHS Library Collection

Destiny Discover gives our learning community access to print and digital resources. With a single search, users can find books, eBooks, and audio-books.

LightBox books are multimedia text. These books incorporate audio, video, curated weblinks, and interactive activities. 

NCHS has an extensive collection of eBooks that can be checked out on Destiny Discover with just a click.

The NCHS collection also has over 350 audio-books that can be checked out. 

Readers can add books to their favorite list by clicking the favorite button. Destiny Discover curates favorite titles in a digital list.

Destiny Discover lets readers check which books they have out, put holds on books, and curate favorite titles. Books can even be renewed on Destiny Discover.

Want to know more? This short tutorial goes over Destiny Discover features.

         Destiny Discover Tutorial

Need a reading suggestion? Here are popular titles students are reading.