LIBE+463+Assignment+2

Community Analysis and Report
To present the data collection on community I used Prezi. It can be found here. The Prezi was used to create a visual overview of my community. But Prezi was not appropriate for the entire assignment so the rest will be found here.

School Community The school I work in is a dual-track K-7 English/French Immersion school with a student population of approximately 415 students. 230 students are French Immersion and 185 students are English. The school is located in the west end of the city which is the fastest growing subdivision in our community. The socioeconomic status of the students is middle-class to upper-middle class(approximately 95% and about 5% low socio-economic status and there are no ESL students and we do not have a lunch program. The majority of the student population is a Caucasian - about 90% with about 48 declared Aboriginal. We have 14 students who fall in the category of Special Needs. We have many extra-curricular activities ranging from sports to CanSpell to Red Cedar Battle of the Books to Speech Arts that are sponsored by the teaching and/or administration staff. Academically our school falls on par or slightly above the District average. The school has 20 teachers, 2 Learning Assistant teachers, 1 Teacher-Librarian, 1 Music teacher, 1 Aboriginal Education Worker, 2 administrators and 4 Teacher-Aides as well as 2 custodians. Some of our teaching staff live in the neighbourhood and 7 have advanced degrees, and 1 is working on an advanced degree. We have French Immersion teachers who are from Quebec and some who are products of the French Immersion program themselves and the English staff come from diverse backgrounds.

Some of the potential partners that may be important to our library are the local public library. We partner with them frequently. We promote their programs, we have them come in and promote their summer reading program and we look to them for extra resources for our students when we need to. Also, the University of Northern British Columbia has a 'scientist in residence' program that allows teachers to book a university scientist to come in and give presentations to our students on curriculum related science topics. The University has also sent one of their professors from the Eco-Toursim program along with this students to give a presentation on Antarctica to students studying extreme environments. Finally, Exploration Place museum also has elementary school related curriculum programs such as owls and owl pellets and dinosaurs that they will bring to the school for the students or they have programs at the museum that the students can attend as a field trip. These programs change frequently so teacher's would need to access the museum's website to find out what programs are currently being offered.

The curriculum area and grade level for this assignment is Grade 5 Science which incorporates Human Body, Simple Machines and Renewable and Non-renewable Resources. There are three teachers, one English and two French Immersion, with a total of 51 students accessing the science collection in the library. The teacher's usually sign out the related non-fiction science books, and magazines as well as curriculum units (Scholastic PanCanadian Science Units, forestry kit and a mining kit) as well as Eyewitness DVD's and older Bill Nye VHS videos from our Professional collection. The students access the non-fiction books as well as the student books for the PanCanadian science units from their teacher's class library. Students can also access the non-fiction books in the library during their weekly library book exchange time. (The library operates, this year, on a fixed schedule. I am attempting to change that to a fixed/flexible schedule for next year.) The students and teachers also have access to the District online databases such as World Book Online, Primary Search and Searchasurus. Teachers can access the District Resource Centre's OPAC to borrow any related materials for their Science units, including audio-visual materials. The library program itself incorporates both Information Literacy and research skills based on the model of inquiry learning by David Loertchester and Carol Koechlin. The library is slowly beginning to transform into a Learning Commons with a heavy emphasis and focus on collaborative research between classroom teachers and the teacher-librarian. The school's teachers are slowly beginning to realize that the library and its staff are a large, well-stocked classroom for their use as well as having myself to collaborate with on inquiry-based projects along with Web 2.0 tools to assist students in finding, understanding and using ethically the information that they find. There are also engaging tools to use to show case their learning from presentation tools to blogs for e-portfolios. It takes time, though, for teachers to find the paradigm shift to move to this type of research and this type of a library.

Another means of assessing school needs for collection development is to quickly survey the staff to find out which units they are planning for the school year and if they feel the library has adequate materials to support their planned units. For example, this year we have two grade 6/7 splits and one straight grade 7 class. All three teachers have taught the ancient civilization social studies curriculum. We had just weeded that section and I have just placed a pending order for more books on Ancient Mesopotamia, Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece and Ancient China to shore up that curriculum's resources. The challenge is to find these same topics in French that our FSL students will be able to read. I will be sending an email to the staff asking for planning information and feedback on our resources and will inform the grade 6/7 and 7 teachers of the ordered material.

I will also be asking whether they are planning to bring their students into the library for research and how I can help with that. This is very important as our library is transitioning to a Learning Commons. Due to this transition, and attempting to encourage the teachers to use an inquiry-based approach to their research projects, I am changing the library from a totally fixed schedule to a fixed schedule for the primary students and an open, flexible schedule for the intermediate students. This will open up more time for collaborative research with the intermediate classes.

As our enrolment has been decreasing, the library budget has been cut so the need for fundraising through book fairs and applying for grants is becoming necessary. The information collected here would be useful for grant applications and our Vice-Principal has applied for grants for our French Immersion program for novel sets. The information collected in this analysis is also highly relevant to the Report to the Principal that I submit each year at the end of June which is a method of advocacy for the library.

One of the more informal ways that I gathered information for the library's collection development has been to attend grade group meetings. I have not been able to attend all of them as I have classes at the same time as some of the meetings, but sitting in on these meetings has provided me with valuable information regarding the School Plan for Student Success (SPSS) and what the teacher's are doing to meet the SPSS goal. With this information I have brought in resources to support them. For example this year and next year the staff are focusing on values. I then purchased very specific picture books relating to themes of respect, cooperation, anti-bullying....that the staff have been using to support their teaching.

The library would like to provide open and free access for students and teachers to library information such as links to curriculum-related and appropriate web sites, but our current CMS is so user unfriendly that I have quit using it. I have not yet decided on the Web 2.0 tool I would like to use for this service. I could use either this wiki or Google Sites or a blog. I need a tool that meets our needs in terms of being easy to access for a K-7 student population, easy for busy staff to navigate and quick and straight-forward for myself and my clerk to set up and up-date on a weekly basis. Whatever Web tool I finally decide on using will then be linked to from the school's webpage. Apparently the District is going to replace the CMS with a much more friendly version soon - no date has been given.