ISCI 794 Blog Assignment: Curate (Post 4)

 AASL National School Library Standards for School Librarians

Shared Foundation: Curate

For the Shared Foundation Curate, I spoke to an elementary school library at a public magnet school. This school library program has a strong emphasis on teaching students in every grade level how to find, critically evaluate, and use information. In the Think Domain, the standards state that school librarians should "challenge learners to act on an information need by designing opportunities for learners to explore possible informations sources" and "make critical choices about information sources to use" (American Association of School Librarians, 2018, p. 94). The school librarians designs many lessons around fulfilling information needs. For example, the fifth grade classes have a lesson around various information sources. The librarian shows a few online databases and the students are asked to identify the different information found on various pages. She will open a specific database that has sections for various ages levels and show an example entry for each grade level. Students are then asked to discern which level of information is appropriate for their grade level and assignment. These lessons are very effective ways of not just telling students what to look for, but actually showing them the detailed steps in evaluating an information source. 

The Create Domain states the school librarians should "promote information gathering appropriate to the task by fostering the questioning and assessing of validity and accuracy of information" (American Association of School Librarians, 2018, p. 94). Another lesson the librarian uses is a comparison of a print encyclopedia and a digital encyclopedia. She asks students to come up with the pros and cons of both formats, such as which might have more outdated materials, which source do students think is updated more frequently, what kind of information is okay to pull from older sources, and what kind of information can only be found in recent publications. The librarian shared the example of teaching students to do research on history projects. If their topic is from the 1800s then a 2007 print encyclopedia is a good source of information. If their topic is about the Obama administration then a 2007 print encyclopedia might have an entry about Obama but would not have anything on his presidency. This was a very helpful approach to have as an example of creating lessons on information sources. Students were not just pointed to a source but taught how to choose which one to use. The librarian also does an interesting lesson on "accidental knowledge" that explains how students might find useful information in unexpected places. She teaches students how to look at every information source as a potential place to gather a wide variety of information, and how it is important to fully read sources instead of just scanning for simple answers. 

Another interesting framework the librarian uses in these lessons is asking students to use prior knowledge to inform their assessment of sources. This seems obvious, but it was helpful to hear how she breaks the research process down for students. She asks students to really think about what they need before evaluating resources but at the same time encourages them to be open to actually learning new information instead of just checking off boxes for an assignment. This seems to really allow students to curate information in a way that is meaningful to them.   

The resources the librarian uses include the databases and website available to students on ClassLink. She also uses many BrainPop videos. Students are often asked to talk in small groups and then discuss as a class the lessons learned from these videos. Like with most of this library program, implementing the Curate Competencies involves collaboration with classroom teachers and the curriculum. The library lessons are all designed to support classroom assignments. For the younger grades, the lessons are similar to the older grades but tailored to the grade level. One example is helping students find easy readers about certain topics and how to judge what information will be included based on title and cover. While focus on curriculum is always important, one of the challenges the librarian mentioned was getting students to see themselves as curators of information outside of school. This is done partly through media literacy lessons where students are asked to evaluate news sites and information pulled from social media. Getting students to apply the same type of information evaluation outside of school as they do inside of school is not always easy. Overall, this librarian really fosters students' ability to independently gather, evaluate, and use information. 

Reference: 

American Association of School Librarians. (2018). National school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. American Library Association.