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AASL Knowledge Quest 8.18.26

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The Case for Using AI as a Co-Librarian | AASL Knowledge Quest

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The start of the school year brings a unique kind of overwhelm and exhaustion, doesn’t it? Between setting up orientation lessons, putting up displays, updating policies, and welcoming students and staff, the sheer volume of decision-making exhausts me before school even officially begins. For a long time, whenever I hit that back-to-school wall staring at a blank display plan or a half-drafted newsletter, I procrastinated those tasks, eliminated them entirely, or did the smallest amount to say that it was done.

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Gemini for Google Classroom now available for K-12

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Gemini for Google Classroom now available for K-12

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AI--The Library in the Machine--Sam Helmick

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AI--The Library in the Machine--Sam Helmick

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"But a librarian is not an answer machine. A librarian understands context. A librarian asks what you are really trying to accomplish. A librarian knows when not to answer, prioritizing user privacy over data harvesting. A librarian helps you interrogate the source, grounds information in local community needs, and ensures that access to knowledge remains a public good rather than a commodified service."

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AI, Human Intelligence, and the Future of Libraries

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News Literacy Project's Teens and News Media Report 2025

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News Literacy Project's Teens and News Media Report 2025

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2022 News Literacy Project's  Framework for Teaching News Literacy

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2022 News Literacy Project's  Framework for Teaching News Literacy

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The News Literacy Project - For a future founded on facts

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Framework for Teaching News Literacy - The News Literacy Project

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Our Framework offers standards, questions, objectives, performance tasks and learning activities for educator planning.

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News Literacy Project Starter Pack for 2026

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News Literacy Project Starter Pack for 2026

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From Dr. Jarrod Amato, author of JUST READ IT

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Using Movement as an Instructional Tool in Literacy

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When kids are able to move, they learn better. Here’s how to give young students more opportunities to move throughout lessons.

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From Gothemist: "City data released this week (6.16.26) in response to a new law shows that there are 287 school librarians, including 14 part-time librarians, across the city’s 1,616 schools. (https://gothamist.com/news/few-nyc-public-schools-have-librarians-data-shows)

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Teacher to Librarian (T2L) Second Certificate Initiative | New Visions for Public Schools

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2025 report on digital reading from Sora

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2025 report on digital reading from Sora

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You Don’t Have to Love Every Book: Why Student Choice Matters in School Libraries | AASL Knowledge Quest

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I once told a student I had never read Harry Potter, and their jaw just about hit the floor.

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Based on the Rochester Provocations

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In December 2025, the TeachingAbout.AI project convened school librarians, classroom teachers, instructional leaders, university researchers, and instructional technologists in Rochester, New York. Over four days, the panel set aside discussions about AI implementation and teacher training to consider a harder question: what should K-12 educators be asking before we begin to tackle AI work?

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From Steve Tetreault on the KQ blog

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Advocacy: It’s What You Do Every Day (Literally) | AASL Knowledge Quest

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Genre-fication Complete! Now what do I do with all my spare time?

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Last year I started reading about libraries - mostly school libraries - that were arranging their fiction books by genre, rather than strict…

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Does genrifying increase circulation for increased literacy??

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I just finished genre-fying our high school library! I know a lot of librarians struggle with the "should I or shouldn't I?" conundrum when it comes to genre-fication. I thought I would document my journey here in case it helps anyone else with their decision and process!

Genre-fying (grouping fiction books according to similar genres/topics/themes like a bookstore usually does) is something that has been a big topic of conversation in library land over the last decade or so. There are many pros and cons batted around, and many other blogs and resources go into those so I'm not going to re-hash that here now. I'll just say that, in the end, I got sick of watching students wander the fiction section looking ambivalent and eventually either leaving with no books, or just checking out the old favorites. It became clear to me that the traditional library setup was doing nothing to excite students about reading. Being faced with a collection of 5000 books in author A-Z order, spines out, was overwhelming, boring, and inefficient. So, I decided to genre-fy.

The following information is my very detailed walkthrough of how I approached the process. I'll include the mistakes I made as well as the triumphs!

How do you know if you should genre-fy?
Talk to your students, talk to your staff, talk to your admin! Get feedback, test the waters. Visit genre-fied libraries if you can, to see how it is working for them. You are the librarian for your school, so you are really the best person to decide if genre-fication makes sense for your school. But you don't exist in a vacuum! Always bounce the idea off as many stakeholders as possible.

How did I decide?

After observing students struggling to enjoy browsing the library and frequently walking away without a book, I started thinking about genre-fying. Then, last year I started a Roaming Library program, where I would bring baskets of books on a cart to the english classrooms for 10 minute browse and checkout sessions.

I always genre-fied the baskets around main themes or topics (like horror, adventure, overcoming obstacles, if you like 13 reasons why, etc etc). I saw so much more engagement in the students than I ever saw in the library. I quickly realized that by giving students a smaller, more focused selection of books to look through, they were finding things that interested them more often. They were not getting overwhelmed by the rows and rows of alphabetized books. They were not getting frustrated at not knowing where to start. This year, after I did the first round of Roaming Library, I just instantly knew that I had to genre-fy the library.

I figured, bookstores must be doing it for a reason! I also figured that, grocery stores do it it. I mean, just imagine if grocery stores had items in order by brand name instead grouped by like items. Imagine if you wanted chips, but Lays chips were in one place, and Herrs chips in a completely other place. It wouldn't make any sense! How frustrating would it be to grocery shop for the items you need to cook just one meal. Now imagine you are someone who doesn't even like cooking! Imagine how much more frustrating and disheartening grocery shopping would be for you then. This is how I imagine the standard library setup is to students, let alone to students who do not like to read. No wonder my students are so rarely browsing and checking out at my library. It is simply not a pleasurable activity. This is why genre-fication made sense to me.

I also polled the students and they overwhelming said "YES!!" to genre-fying. I spoke with english teachers and they were intrigued. A little less certain than students, but optimistically intrigued. I checked in with my principal and he said "You're the expert and it's your classroom to manage as you see fit." So I began the genre-fication process!

First step: Weeding/Getting to know your collection

Genre-fying is not a quick or simple process. The first step is to get to know your collection really, really well. Know your student's reading habits and preferences. Know your teacher's teaching styles and annual assignments. I started my genre-fying process two years ago, really, when I started a big weed in Fiction. I had just started at the high school, and I found that weeding was a great way to get to know the collection, because you're touching each book, examining it, learning about it's publication date and popularity. I think this is the first step to genre-fication. If you don't know your collection or your student's needs, it will make things much harder. Trust me on this, because as you will see below, I made mistakes that I later had to correct, after I knew my students needs better.

Second step: Deciding on your Genres

Once you've weeded down and/or familiarized yourself w. the collection, it is time to decide on the genres you'll use. It is a good idea to talk to people again about this. There are MANY options and the genres that work best for one school may be very different than the ones that will work best for your school.

I initially chose based on what seemed best to me. Later I had to re-do it and then I based it on students requests, language students use when asking for books, what I was seeing get checked out the most, and the English assignments. For instance we often have reading assignments that ask students to read books with themes of identity, culture, or adversity. This fact informed my choice to have genres that served that need. I knew I didn't want a ton of genres, just for simplicity's sake, so the ones I created were pretty broad at first.

My initial genres (I had to change them later, see below) were:

Fantasy

Sci-Fi

Classics & Literary

Horror/Mystery/Suspense

Historical Fiction

Realistic Fiction

Third step: Deciding on your labeling & Cataloging plan

Next you need to decide on how you will handle labeling and cataloging. There are many options here and you will need to decide what works best for you.

Some common Cataloging Options:

Change call # prefix (ex: F MYS to signal Mystery genre)

Add copy category to indicate genre

Add sublocation to indicate genre

Some common Labeling Options:

Colored labels on spine

colored transparent spine label covers

new spine labels that include genre name

genre graphic stickers (usually purchased from demco or similar)

handmade labels/stickers (some people design their own custom)

For cataloging, I decided I would add a copy category and sublocation to each book, to indicate the genre. I did not want to go the call # prefix route (just personal preference, there is nothing at all wrong with that method! Many librarians use the prefix method!). Partially it was because I did not want to print and replace all of the spine labels, and partly it was because I just don't think my students would understand it when looking in the catalog. Adding the copy category and sublocation would work best for me because the category will let me run reports according to genre, and the sublocation is easily viewed when searching Destiny catalog.

For labels I decided to do a simple colored sticker on the spine, right above the spine label. I chose this because I like the simplicity and visual punch it gives. I feel it is easy, cheap, and quick to label them. Its very easy to cover or replace the sticker if I need to change the book's genre for any reason. It is very easy to quickly scan the shelves and see that a book is shelved in the wrong section. So I designated a color for each of my genres and ordered 3/4inch circle labels from Demco. We cut the circles in half and sit them above the spine label like a little hat. I cut them because it makes the box go twice as far for the money, and I think it looks sharp, visually! For books that have additional genres or big topics (like romance or novels in verse) I can easily add a second colored sticker below the spine label, like a sub genre. (In the pic below you can see my labels. The number written on the label indicates the school year it was added to the collection. so 17 means it was added in 2017-2018 school year. This helps students find new books, and makes it easy for me to find them and avoid them when weeding!)

Fourth step: Start labeling each book

This is the part a lot of librarians dread because you need to decide which genre each book belongs in. I know a lot of people struggle with this because most books cross genres. I think you just need to not overthink it. For Most books, it will be very obvious which genre they belong in. You just decide where your kids would most expect it. This is why it is important to know your students reading habits when genre-fying. If you use Follett Destiny you can call Follett and ask for a "genre assist" report. They send you a spreadsheet that helps you decide for each book which genre it is. I also used goodreads.com a lot for extra help because goodreads users tag books, often by genre. You can see which genre it gets tagged in most. When in doubt, I deferred to the goodreads genre with the most tags or my personal opinion 🙂

Spreadsheet looks like this:

This is a good point to stop and reassess your process. Ask yourself questions to determine if you are on the right track or if you need to make changes. Do you have enough of each genre? Too many or too few of certain genres?

If a genre is too big: You may want to consider weeding this genre down or splitting it. For instance, I initially thought I'd just have a genre for "realistic" but it was WAAAY too big. So I re-thought it and ended up getting rid of "realistic" and having three other genres instead. I also decided at this point that I did not like the idea of a "classics" section. I realized it was unlikely that students would ever set foot in that section unless they had to for an assignment. Since the point of genre-fying is to encourage browsing, this seemed anathema to me. So I had to go back through and find all the "classics" labeled books, and I relabeled them to other genres. Most ended up in Historical Fiction, but many made it into horror (dracula, frankenstein), and adventure (huckleberry finn, treasure island) and so on.

These are the notes I made when deciding on my final genres. I also used the library instagram to get feedback from students on genres they wanted.

Unfortunately this step can require a lot of back tracking and re-doing work, but for me it was necessary because at this point I realized i was on the wrong track to serve my students. The large realistic section was not going to be helpful, so I had to re-do it. The same with the original "Classics" genre. And I'm glad I did, because with the way things are now, all of my genres are very similar in size, which seems like a good thing to me. I did have to go through my collection again and re-label a ton of the books at this point, since I had changed genres, but it was worth it. I did my initial genre choosing during my first year at the school and I did not know the students or the teachers well enough. Two years later I know them a lot better, and felt that some of the genre choices I had made two years ago were not good choices.

Sixth step: Plan the footprint

Maybe not everyone is as particular about details as I am. But just in case you are, I'll share this step. There was no way I was comfortable just "winging it" and moving books without knowing exactly how many shelves I would need for each section. So I thoroughly planned out the footprint of the books before I did anything else.

So I went through each bookcase (our fiction has 40ish bookcases with 6 shelves each) and lumped the books from that bookcase into genre groups on each shelf. We had 6 shelves and 7 genres so that worked well. Then I went through, with a measuring tape, and measured how many linear inches of each genre I had. Then i decided how many inches I would want per shelf (our shelves are 34 inches wide so I decided that each shelf would start with 23 inches of books, leaving enough room to grow into it and to have outward facing books on each shelf.) I did the math, and was able to figure out how many shelves I would need for each genre. I was then able to configure it so that there would be an empty bookcase in between the genres, so there is plenty of room to grow. In the meantime, I'm going to use those cases to do spotlight displays of nonfiction books that would pair well with the genres!

I also knew I wanted to do something to really make the fiction section pop and stand out after it is genre-fied, so I decided to decorate the backs of the bookcases in the color of the genre on that case. I went on amazon and had a blast hunting down art paper and wrapping paper that I could use for this purpose. Luckily I had held back some of my supplies budget and was able to get approval to purchase some of these papers. Then I created a layout and started playing with how I could configure the shelves, how many shelves could be left open for outward facing books, etc. This is what I came up with.

Next I went ahead and created my signage and posters with postermywall.com. This was fun! I knew I wanted the signs to be larger then standard paper. So I set custom dimensions in postermywall.com for 11inches high x 24ish inches wide. Designed my posters. Then I put the document through rasterbator.net to blow it up to the large size I wanted.

Here are the genre signs I created. You'll see signs for "Quick Picks" and "Love & Romance." They are not actual genres but they will be some of the rotating displays I'll have up on the empty bookcases I allotted for.

Now that I knew for certain how everything would layout and the maximum configuration, it was time to do the actual moving. I did this during our two days of parent conferences this week. Two full days with no students, and parents don't generally conference with me so I had plenty of time. Luckily my administration approved my assistant to come in on those days as well, so we were able to really tackle the process. My assistant started scanning the books into resource lists so we could then use the resource lists to make the cataloging changes (detailed below). Meanwhile, I started moving books and hanging the colored paper on the back of the bookcases. It was absolutely backbreaking work. BUT it looks sooooooo nice. Finally, we put up the beautiful signs!

Finally we finished off re-cataloging the books so the catalog would show their genres and locations. I did this in a multi-step way.

First - I created a separate resource list for each genre in Destiny. Then my assistant scanned each book into the appropriate resource list.

Second - I created the copy categories, one for each genre. I titled them exactly the same way I titled the resource list for each genre.

Third - I created a sublocation for each genre. Again, I titled them exactly the same way I titled the resource lists and copy categories. Keeping the names consistent is good for consistency.

Fourth - I added the copy category to the books. In destiny I went to Catalog - Update copies - batch update. Selected "add category" from dropdown. Selected "update all copies in - list." Rinse and repeat for all genres.

Fifth I added sublocation to the books. In Destiny went to Catalog- Update copies - Global Update. Select with: category and make: sublocation. Rinse and repeat for each genre.

10th step: Advertise Advertise Advertise & Enjoy the results!

And voila! Genre-fication is completed! Now It's time to advertise to staff and students. I shared my story on the library instagram and twitter with students and staff. I also mention it to literally every single person who talks to me throughout the school day. I told english teachers and invited them to bring classes down to see the new setup. It was fun watching students browse it today! Today we had 33 books checked out. That's a lot for our library! The same day last year....... we had 1 book checked out 🙂

Happy Reading!

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I just finished genre-fying our high school library! I know a lot of librarians struggle with the "should I or shouldn't I?" conundrum when it comes to genre-fication. I thought I would document my journey here in case it helps anyone else with their decision and process!

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Adapted from Gene Luen Yang's original TedEx talk on comics and learning

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How comic books can help you learn - Gene Luen Yang

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Intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic

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How to help students with ADHD--by a student

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How to help students with ADHD--by a student

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Strategies to Support Students with ADHD | Caroline Odom | TEDxYouth@MBJH

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Steps to help reluctant/struggling readers

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Steps to help reluctant/struggling readers

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How Reading Instruction Fails Students | Leigh Hall | TEDxLander

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GREAT misinformation website from the Harvard Kennedy School

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GREAT misinformation website from the Harvard Kennedy School

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Excellent digital literacy essays

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Publishing high quality interdisciplinary research that examines misinformation from different perspectives, from its prevalence and impact to the effectiveness of possible interventions.

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Great Visual Literacy LibGuide from Birmingham University Library

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Great Visual Literacy LibGuide from Birmingham University Library

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LibGuides: Visual Literacy: Why Visual Literacy is important

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LibGuides: Visual Literacy: Why Visual Literacy is important

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Future Ready Libraries. Most recent is Back to Basics: Building a Community of Readers for secondary schools.

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Future Ready Librarians® are facing uncertainty as they return to learning. Join Future Ready Advisor, Shannon Miller @shannonmiller for our newest podcast series, Leading through the Library. Shannon and her weekly guest will share stories of how they are tackling the unique issues that are facing…

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Knowledge Quest; Jan/Feb2017, Vol. 45 Issue 3, p12-21,

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Stephanie Ruhle on Instagram talking about her Dyslexia 

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Stephanie Ruhle on Instagram talking about her Dyslexia 

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The 11th Hour on Instagram: "@stephruhle responds to Trump's insults against Gov. Gavin Newsom and people living with dyslexia."

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51K likes, 2,356 comments - 11thhourmsnow on March 18, 2026: "@stephruhle responds to Trump's insults against Gov. Gavin Newsom and people living with dyslexia.". 

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View this post on Instagram

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Young kids missed the pandemic’s school disruptions. Their reading scores are still behind

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Young students are still struggling to bounce back academically from the pandemic, even though many were babies at the time.

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Jason Reynolds on What Fires the Imagination of Young Readers

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The best-selling author on why “inappropriate” topics may be exactly what teen readers need, and the importance of raising the hair on the backs of readers’ necks in the first 50 pages.

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What is NAEP?

The Nation's Report Card is a resource-a common measure of student achievement-because it offers a window into the state of our K-12 education system and what our children are learning. When students, their parents, teachers, and principals participate in the Nation's Report Card-the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas-they are helping to inform decisions about how to improve the education system in our country.

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national assessment of educational progress; the nation's report card; academic achievement; educational assessment; assessment in education

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NAEP is an educational assessment. Often called The Nation's Report Card, it provides national, state, and district-level results about students' academic achievement.

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Taking it to the Community | AASL Knowledge Quest

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I work with several community groups on a regular basis in volunteer roles. Last spring, I was asked to present a 20 minute presentation on information literacy, specifically on how to identify misinformation. Part of the reason that I was asked to take on that task was because in our social media groups, there were folks who were not intentionally, I hope, but unknowingly sharing memes, articles, videos, and more that had a seed (or maybe just a kernel) of truth, but would be what Stephen Colbert so aptly coined many years ago, as “truthiness.” I did my presentation, for a while things got better, and then like every one and done event, the memes, half truths, and downright just not true started clogging up the groups again. This got me thinking about how important it is, as a school librarian, to partner in the community and ensure that there are opportunities for information literacy to be shared throughout the community.

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Standards from Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance)

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Standards from Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance)

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From ALA/YALSA (soon merging with ALSC)

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Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)

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Great Graphic Novels for Teens is a list of recommended graphic novels and illustrated nonfiction for those ages 12-18, prepared yearly by YALSA. Visit YALSA’s Teen Book Finder Database, a one-stop shop for finding selected lists and award winners. Users can search this free resource by award, list…

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Graphic Novels for the Classroom

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Graphic Novels for the Classroom

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By Larry Ferlazzo — April 23, 2025

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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Graphic Novels for the Classroom (Opinion)

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Not just an easy read: Comics and graphic novels can teach a host of skills, three educators explain.

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Scholarship to attend ALA26 in Chicago for library students!

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Scholarship to attend ALA26 in Chicago for library students!

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Conable Conference Scholarship - Freedom to Read Foundation

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The Freedom to Read Foundation was established in 1969 as a First Amendment legal defense organization affiliated with the American Library Association.

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Jennifer Sturge

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Taking it to the Community | AASL Knowledge Quest

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I work with several community groups on a regular basis in volunteer roles. Last spring, I was asked to present a 20 minute presentation on information literacy, specifically on how to identify misinformation. Part of the reason that I was asked to take on that task was because in our social media groups, there were folks who were not intentionally, I hope, but unknowingly sharing memes, articles, videos, and more that had a seed (or maybe just a kernel) of truth, but would be what Stephen Colbert so aptly coined many years ago, as “truthiness.” I did my presentation, for a while things got better, and then like every one and done event, the memes, half truths, and downright just not true started clogging up the groups again. This got me thinking about how important it is, as a school librarian, to partner in the community and ensure that there are opportunities for information literacy to be shared throughout the community.

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Many resources for bilingual education

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A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

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Tips for School Libraries for Cultural Literacy--Elisabet Kennedy

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Tips for School Libraries for Cultural Literacy--Elisabet Kennedy

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Culturally Diverse Collections | American Libraries Magazine

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Culturally responsive materials may offer learners a look into their own culture or expose them to the cultures of others.

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Stop by our school library and you might see parents of English Language Learners (ELLs) shelving books, selecting bilingual texts for their kids, or participating in an after-school story hour. These involved parents ensure that students come ready to learn, understand school expectations, and support the school through a host of activities from classroom volunteering to fundraising. Research indicates that a high level of parental involvement correlates with higher academic achievement, and benefits children socially (Guerra and Nelson 2013; Marschall 2006; Benson and Martin 2003). It is thus worrying to notice that our ELL parent community is often missing from many of our schools.

The Plympton School in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a K-5 school where just over half the students come from a home where the first language is not English. Over 35% of our students live in poverty, and families struggle with issues ranging from trauma to undocumented status; volunteering in the classroom or baking for the bake sale is not always the top concern for these families.

As school librarian, I actively work to reach out to ELL families and welcome them into our building in a number of formal and informal ways. As the school's cultural and educational hub, the library is in a unique position to accommodate ELL families and help create a schoolwide culture of support.
A Welcoming Space Welcoming families to the library begins at the door. A sign on our door welcomes patrons in multiple languages, and smaller signs announce that "libraries are for everyone." Signage matters-and translating all your signs into the most commonly spoken languages at your school sends a strong message that ELL students and parents are welcome.Collection Development Matters:
Books send a message. I've developed collections of books in the languages most commonly used in our ELL community, and I make sure that these books can be found effortlessly in an easily-seen bookcase at the front of the library. Students and their parents know that these are for family use, and I encourage parents to come and check out books to share with their children. This sends the important message that I value their culture and that the school supports reading to children in their home languages.

Foreign language books are great, but frequent displays of books that reflect multicultural issues, information books about specific countries, fiction that highlights diverse characters or multicultural folk tales also indicate that the library program supports the entire school community. Of course, in order to develop a collection that supports ELL families, it is important to continually add a wide range of books to match the needs and interests of your community. Books should be purchased in a range of reading levels, and heavily illustrated or wordless books can be useful for families with limited English proficiency. Having these books tells ELL parents that I am aware of their stories and value them. In order to build your collection and make connections with ELL families, it helps to develop an awareness of their history. Once ELL parents learned that I knew details about their history, I gained their trust in a new way and many more became regular library visitors.

Finally, the librarian who connects with ELL families is in an excellent position to help spread the message that, as research indicates, reading to children in the family's native language is important (Huennekens and Xu 2010; Lewis, et al 2016). Parents begin to see that reading aloud in their native language can help their child understand how a book works, and provides a springboard to good conversations that expand their children's horizons. Because we have a large Guatemalan population, I buy early readers in Spanish to encourage my bilingual students to read independently in their native language. I want my bilingual students to be bilingual speakers and readers, and parents appreciate this.
Library as a Cultural Center:
The cultural aspect of the library also means that the library can be a place to display educational materials about students' home cultures, as well as artifacts students and teachers bring in from their homes or travel experiences. Each month our library features an interview with a student from a different culture. The interview, a student photograph, and items the student chooses to share are displayed on the bulletin board directly next to the library entrance. The library is also a place where teachers and students can display cultural artifacts and photographs from interesting trips.
Formal Family Outreach
While literacy events promote formal family involvement with the school, they also allow the librarian to make informal connections with families. As a specialist who knows all the children in a family and who follows each child for multiple years, the librarian can connect with parents and serve as a bridge between families and teachers.

In a special effort to reach our ELL families, I've become active in our school multicultural committee and reach out often to our ELL teachers. When the ELL teachers realized I strongly support their students, that I see value to supporting family literacy, and that I have a space and resources to do this, we began to work together. My ELL staff uses the library for evening conversational English classes and parent education. I've helped provide childcare and homework help, and gathered resources for these events. Using iMovie, we created a video tour of our school in Spanish. An ELL teacher wrote a script with an immigrant mother. I then filmed the tour, edited it, and uploaded it on the school website. I made sure that the script included a big welcome from the library. These efforts help build our school's welcoming culture and help demonstrate to ELL families that the library is a place where they are welcome.
Open House Community Fair:
It can be difficult to get parents to visit the library during Open House nights. To encourage purposeful traffic through the library, my library hosts a community fair. Through our multicultural committee, I reach out to the groups that "mainstream" parents know about, but ELL families may not: the PTO, the public library, the local recreation department, Boys' and Girls' Club, YMCA, scouting groups, a local bank savings program for children, and our after school program. During Open House night, we also find bilingual fifth grade students to act as "ambassador translators" for the night. Signage in multiple languages is put around the building inviting parents to come by and sign their child up for everything from a library card to swimming lessons. Of course, school library materials are also on display so parents can browse and borrow. This initial event signals that the library is welcoming and wants to connect ELL families to our school culture. Having student ambassadors lessens the anxiety for non-English speaking parents, and we've found that adding snacks and music can also increase traffic and instill a relaxed, friendly atmosphere.
After School Literacy Events:
I've worked with our Title I and ELL teachers to offer after school drop-in story hours, literacy nights, and other formal events to bring parents to school. These, too, work best when translators are present and children accompany parents. Having a snack or craft also helps. These events provide a chance to model and underscore the value of reading. Literacy events also provide a chance to get books directly into the hands of parents and show them that they are welcome to come in and borrow books. While we've experimented with events that highlight one specific culture, we have also looked at cultural variations in common experiences such as what happens when you lose a tooth, celebrate a birthday, or visit grandparents. Parents love sharing how their culture differs from the mainstream U.S. culture and appreciate that we introduce this idea. I've also offered summer storytimes at the public library as a way to get families to see that our programs work in concert and complement one another.
Sibling and Mentor Readers:
A reading tutor at my school pointed out that students who need literacy support often don't have strong home support. This led us to create a program where students in grades K-2, who receive remedial reading instruction and have younger siblings, are invited to participate in a sibling reader program. Students in this program get a kit each week that contains an information text and a story written for a preschooler. They also have a journal that they use to log what they read to their sibling. After the students finish reading five pairs of books together, they receive a paperback book to keep forever. Many of the students who participate in this program are ELLs. When their younger siblings reach our kindergarten, it is satisfying to hear that they remember being read to and enjoyed it. Students who do not have a younger sibling can read to a younger student, cousin, or neighbor.
Immigrant Expertise:
Inviting immigrant family members to share their stories with students and staff can be a powerful way to empower ELL families and build understanding in the school community. As part of our fourth-grade course on U.S. culture and geography, we do a research project on immigration and explore how immigrants benefit from coming to the U.S., and how Americans benefit from the cultural gifts they bring to us. We begin this project by asking immigrant family members to come to the school library and talk to students. Students work in small teams to interview our immigrant experts. Teachers always report that the opportunity to talk directly to immigrant families sparks remarkable conversations about bravery, opportunity, and perseverance. Students from places such as Guatemala, Uganda, and El Salvador have been recognized for the difficulties their families overcame to come here. Seeing students become respectful and proud of our schools' diverse cultural make up is not just satisfying, it builds a culture of welcome that brings families to school.
Technology Outreach:
Having a page on your school library website translated into dominant languages is a great start in using technology to connect with families. However, it's just a start. The librarian can team up with ELL staff and instructional technology specialists for targeted workshops on how to navigate the school website, including subscription databases and eBook collections. These resources can be lifesavers for impoverished families. I always show families the translation tools on websites and databases to great appreciation. Finally, many ELL families come from backgrounds without strong technology experience. Any workshops on using technology, or even opening up the library to allow families to use library technology will draw parents in. Since students are often likely to be more technologically adept than parents, having students accompany parents helps with language issues, and parents get to see their children becoming technologically proficient.
Volunteering:
Inviting ELL parents to volunteer in my program has been a huge win-win for my school library. I always attend our kindergarten welcome event and make a plea for all parents to volunteer, and make a point that speaking English is not necessary. I also allow parents to bring toddlers. While I have hit a few snags, I find that overall, ELL parents make terrific volunteers. I've now developed a good pipeline, and have had excellent luck getting existing bilingual parents to help newcomers learn the ropes. I've found that ELL parents are often eager to get involved in schools and appreciate having a place to come and help. It is wonderful to watch ELL parents gain an understanding of U.S. educational expectations and culture through their experiences in the library, and I know that they share their new understandings with their community. I've also found that when I've really needed help, my ELL parents are the first to bring a friend along to volunteer. I now have several ELL parents volunteering in the library, and they are wonderful ambassadors for the program.
Access to Books
Students need access to books to succeed, and while building responsibility around using shared materials is important, I am aware that book access is vital, even when things are sometimes lost. I make sure that students are clear on how the library works, and I send home bookmarks in multiple languages explaining our borrowing policies. I also understand that while our public library is terrific and nearby, parents may still have issues getting here. I am always happy to let parents borrow books from the school library, and have been surprised at how grateful they are for this opportunity. I also allow students who demonstrate responsible borrowing behavior to bring books home over the summer vacation.

Reaching out to ELL families is gratifying. They are delighted to be part of the school community and appreciate being included. More importantly, ELL students gain academically when their parents are involved and understand the expectations and norms in our schools. Using the library to bring ELL families into the school makes sense and is sure to gain the notice of administrators. It is another important way to demonstrate the value of a strong library program.
Works Cited
Benson, Forrest, and Sean Martin. "Organizing Successful Parent Involvement in Urban Schools." Child Study Journal 33, no. 3 (September 2003): 187.

Guerra, Patricia L., and Sarah W.Nelson. "Latino Parent Involvement: Seeing What Has Always Been There." Journal of School Leadership 23 no. 3 (May 2013): 424.

Huennekens, Mary Ellen, and Yaoying Xu. "Effects of a Cross-Linguistic Storybook Intervention on the Second Language Development of Two Preschool English Language Learners." Early Childhood Education Journal 38, no. 1 (June 2010): 19-26.

Lewis, Kandia, and Sandilos Lia E., et al. "Relations among the Home Language and Literacy Environment and Children's Language Abilities: A Study of Head Start Dual Language Learners and Their Mothers." Early Education Development 27, no. 4 (2016): 478-494.

Marschall, Melissa. "Parent Involvement and Educational Outcomes for Latino Students." Review of Policy Research 23, no. 5 (September 2006): 1053.

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Supporting ELL Families through the School Library

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The School Library Connection Archive is an open access learning resource center for school library professionals. It contains webinars, articles, and video courses to enhance your librarian practice.

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Culturally Responsive Practice: Learning about Ourselves to Better Serve Others, KQ blog

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Culturally Responsive Practice: Learning about Ourselves to Better Serve Others, KQ blog

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Elisabet Kennedy, author of KQ article and ALA/AASL book

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Adapt, change, modify, translate, try, and then try again. Each of these are familiar skills to school librarians nationwide and sadly, they often go unrecognized. As educational trends and methodologies come and go, school librarians are often tasked with integrating pedagogical newness into their school libraries with little guidance or notice. In an already stretched position, school librarians are adept at translating classroom practices into their spaces in a way that makes sense for professional goals, assessments, evaluations, and observations. With schools creating yearly goals that include strategies relating to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), there are more concepts to understand and apply than those of a stray educational trend or pedagogy. Many school initiatives relating to EDI put forth theories and practices that rely on an understanding of identity, bias, race, deep reflection, restorative work, and being responsive to the communities served. School librarians are primed to understand these concepts and translate them into their spaces, but much of the great work being done by school librarians in their spaces, especially in the realm of inclusionary practices, also goes unrecognized.

When I was introduced to culturally responsive pedagogy, through my district, the connections between the pedagogical principles and school library practices were clear. AASL Standards, evaluative rubrics, school library courses completed, and practical experience led the school librarians in my district on a journey to understand representation, diversity, in relation to school data. The foundation to create inclusive spaces already exists for school librarians, but embracing culturally responsive practices challenges school librarians to expand both personally and professionally and build upon the existing foundation. For me, translating the principles of culturally responsive pedagogy for other school librarians in a way that makes sense with our school library practices and providing intentional scaffolding became the most sensible next step.

Embracing Culturally Responsive Practice in School Libraries combines culturally responsive pedagogy and research with a dedicated AASL framework to establish a better understanding of key principles, concepts, and definitions that are essential to begin this work. Intentional pauses for challenges, figures, and activity examples offer school librarians a toolbox for their journey of cultural responsiveness, prompting deeper exploration, and useful for garnering administrative support.

Throughout the journey, you will be challenged to make reflection an intentional part of your professional practice. "It is an inevitable truth that we bring ourselves into our profession. As we travel this path of cultural responsiveness, we will be reflecting on just about everything we do in our school libraries. We will be working inward to influence our outward actions" (Kennedy 2023, 13-14). These reflective practices will not only allow you to explore your physical space with fresh eyes, but also create a dedicated internal space for regular self-reflection in a profession where we are regularly reflected upon.

By holding a better understanding of what culturally responsive school library practices are, it becomes easier to prioritize and advocate for the implementation of those practices throughout the school year. For example, reflecting on and appreciating your own cultural identity and how it influences your spaces, policies, and interactions, takes time and patience, but allotting dedicated time is possible, whether it be at the start of the school year, or at the end of the week or once a month. It is important to approach the concept and practical strategies with an open mind. Exploration is a process, learning is a process, and growth is certainly a process. Change in our spaces and in our awareness does not happen in one day, marking period, semester, or school year. Incorporating and embracing culturally responsive practices requires us to continuously sharpen our skills (Figure 1) and build upon our tool kit. Doing the inward work of exploring yourself to then better understand others may not be on your to-do list for the school year, but it is worth the time. Whether you are new to reflective strategies and culturally responsive practices as a whole or you are a practitioner putting forth change, the school library, and those it serves, will benefit from your awareness.
Figure 1. S.H.A.R.P.E.N. your skills for culturally responsive practice
"The concepts and strategies presented... have the potential to bring impactful, mindful, and intentional change to our profession and our spaces... You will find what feels right, what works and does not work, and what you are willing to stand behind as you advocate for your school library and your learners. You may also find yourself challenged by others once you start intentionally working toward an inclusive atmosphere. As always, resources, data, and an open mind are your greatest tools against exclusion" (Kennedy 2023, 90).
Works Cited:
Kennedy, Elisabet. 2023. Embracing Culturally Responsive Practice in School Libraries. Chicago: American Librarian Association

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Learning about Ourselves to Better Serve Others

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Adapt, change, modify, translate, try, and then try again. Each of these are familiar skills to school librarians nationwide and sadly, they often go unrecognized. As educational trends and methodologies come and go, school librarians are often tasked with integrating pedagogical newness into their school libraries with little guidance or notice.

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Web Extras | AASL – ALA Editions | Neal-Schuman

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You can use symbols or words in your search to make your search results more precise.

Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn't part of a search operator.

Don't put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won't.

Refine image searches

Overall Advanced Search

1. Go to Advanced Image Search.

2. Use filters like region or file type to narrow your results.

3. At the bottom, click Advanced Search.

Search for an exact image size

Right after the word you're looking for, add the text imagesize:widthxheight. Make sure to add the dimensions in pixels.

Example: imagesize:500x400

Common search techniques

Search social media

Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.

Search for a price

Search hashtags

Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday

Exclude words from your search

Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. For example, jaguar speed -car

Search for an exact match

Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, "tallest building".

Search within a range of numbers

Put .. between two numbers. For example, camera $50..$100.

Combine searches

Put "OR" between each search query. For example, marathon OR race.

Search for a specific site

Put "site:" in front of a site or domain. For example, site:youtube.com or site:.gov.

Search for related sites

Put "related:" in front of a web address you already know. For example, related:time.com.

See Google's cached version of a site

Put "cache:" in front of the site address.

Important: Not all search operators return exhaustive results.

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You can use symbols or words in your search to make your search results more precise. Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn't part of a search operator. Don't put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won't.

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Roles of teacher librarians and library paras

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Roles of teacher librarians and library paras

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These roles are informed by the School LIT Framework developed by the School Division of the Washington Library Association.

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ROLES OF TEACHER LIBRARIANS & LIBRARY PARAS

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Our Google folder for citation guides, standards, more

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5 Must-Have Google Search Tips for Students | Common Sense Education

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Is Google OK for formal research? Sure ... if you know how to use it.

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What we know about internet use, smartphone ownership and digital divides in the U.S.

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Today, most Americans subscribe to home broadband internet and own a smartphone, while about four-in-ten say they’re online almost constantly.

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The school librarian role vs paraprofessional

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The school librarian role vs paraprofessional

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By Deb Kachel and Joyce Valenza for PARSL, school librarians in Philadelphia advocacy effort

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Webinars with K-12 lessons for teaching copyright

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Webinars with K-12 lessons for teaching copyright

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Back to School-Teach K-12 Copyright: Ready to Go & It's All Free
August 2, 2023 | Webinar Recording here
Are you tasked with teaching copyright to K-12 students or teachers? Do you lack resources or need to fill in gaps in your own knowledge so you're more comfortable instructing your students? C&C educators welcome you back to the 2023 - 2024 school year as we introduce our FREE K-12 resources for teaching copyright and fair use. See firsthand how they are used with students in the classroom and online.

Mentoring K-12 Teachers Through the Copyright Maze
January 19, 2023 | Webinar recording here

Are you charged with training and mentoring other teachers on copyright and fair use? Do your colleagues reach out to you with questions about what they can and cannot do? C&C has a new course to help fellow teachers become positive role models and confident, knowledgeable instructors. Attendees will come away with a new resource for teaching colleagues to navigate the copyright maze. We'll focus on the teacher perspective:

what teachers need to consider when modeling and teaching copyright

the role of standards

plagiarism v. infringement

sharing resources

fiscal risks of infringement

the role of copyright given today's technologies.

Teaching Copyright K-12: Ready to Go, and It's All Free
January 7, 2023 | Webinar recording here

Are you tasked with teaching copyright to K-12 students? Do you lack resources or want to fill in gaps in your knowledge to be more comfortable teaching students? Join our C&C Ambassadors (fellow teachers!) as they share their experiences teaching with our positive FREE resources. Learn how to teach the essentials of copyright, fair use, Creative Commons, and more with C&C's award-winning, FREE K-12 curriculum.

Back to School-How to Teach Copyright This Year
August 3, 2022 | Webinar recording here.
C&C educators welcome you back to the 2022-2023 school year as we introduce our FREE K-12 resources for teaching copyright and fair use. See firsthand how they are used with students in the classroom and online.
Teach K-12 Copyright Tomorrow and It's All FREE!
Jan 8 & 12, 2022: Webinar recording here.
Are you tasked with teaching copyright to K-12 students? Do you lack resources or need to fill in gaps in your own knowledge so you're more comfortable instructing your students? Come join C&C Ambassadors as they share our FREE resources and their experiences teaching this positive content.

Back to School: How to Teach Copyright This Year
Aug 4, 2021: Webinar recording here.
C&C educators welcome you back to the 2021-2022 school year as we introduce our FREE K-12 resources for teaching copyright and fair use. See firsthand how they are used with students in the classroom and online.

Introduction to the C&C K-12 Curriculum
Feb 4, 2021: Webinar recording here.
C&C educators introduce the K-12 curriculum and demonstrate ways to integrate them into your regular teaching.

Meet the New C&C "Game" on Alludo - Gamified Professional Development
Jan 28, 2021: Webinar recording here.
C&C educators and Alludo guides demo the new C&C game in Alludo.

_______________________________________

In addition, we published a resource sheet with general information on using copyrighted materials in your online lessons: Copyright and Distance Learning: Tips and Resources for Teachers and Administrators.

An online, self-paced course covers the basics of copyright and how to teach it.
Earn the badge at your convenience. Start at our professional development page.

Be sure to check back for updates to this training schedule.
As always, we welcome questions at[email protected]

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Office Hours & Webinars - Copyright & Creativity

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Back to School-Teach K-12 Copyright: Ready to Go & It's All Free August 2, 2023 | Webinar Recording here Are you tasked with teaching copyright to K-12 students or teachers? Do you lack resources or need to fill in gaps in your own knowledge so you're more comfortable instructing your students?

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The value of school librarians for literacy

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The value of school librarians for literacy

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Presented by Guy Kawasaki

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Mike Caulfield: Verified Methodology for Fighting Misinformation

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Reading Comprehension in the Age of EdTech

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Reading Comprehension in the Age of EdTech

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Doctor on How Screen Time Hurts Kids' Cognitive Development

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2025 Pew Research report on Digital Divides in the US

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2025 Pew Research report on Digital Divides in the US

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What we know about internet use, smartphone ownership and digital divides in the U.S.

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Today, most Americans subscribe to home broadband internet and own a smartphone, while about four-in-ten say they’re online almost constantly.

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Teaching about AI

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“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological” – Neil Postman

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Recommended by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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Indigenous Reads Rising – Book Reading Circle

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We Rise Welcome! Indigenous Reads Rising is a celebration of Indigenous children’s literature of Native Nations, centering those

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From Library Girl Jen LaGarde, a blog to follow!

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Your Library - Wrapped: A Mid Year Approach to Data Sharing and Advocacy

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Although I rarely share it outside of the context of my classes, I have been recording a podcast for my Rutgers students for several years now. Titled Voices of Literacy, I use these recordings to chat with library leaders from various contexts. The goal of these interviews is to provide my students with the opportunity to listen to people who know a lot about library work grapple with big issues and ideas. I do not want, nor do I expect, the guests who appear on this podcast to have all the ans

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Not to be ignored

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Replacement for Google-a-Day?

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Revealed, a Daily Puzzle Game | Britannica

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Uncover something interesting: Guess the topic using the fewest Reveals and Hints. Topics include People, Science & Tech, History & Society, and more.

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Daily Do Now - Activity slides (2025-26)

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator

Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

When students read visual narratives, the activity in the brain is similar to how readers comprehend text-based sentences. However, when students learn to read graphic novels with an analytical eye, depth and complexity are added to the reading process.

With graphic novels, students use text and images to make inferences and synthesize information, both of which are abstract and challenging skills for readers. Images, just like text, can be interpreted in many different ways, and can bring nuances to the meaning of the story. In this form of literature, the images and the text are of equal importance -the text would not fully make sense without the images, and the reverse is true as well.

Graphic novels can also challenge students to think deeply about the elements of storytelling. In a traditional text, students uncover meaning embedded in sentences and paragraphs. In graphic texts, students must analyze the images, looking for signs of character development, for example, or clues that help build plot. All of this experience developing textual and visual reading skills contribute to students' understanding of their world - the ways the text and images all around them communicate - and in turn help them in crafting their own stories.
Resources
Barbee, M. Comic Books as Models for Literacy Instruction. International Reading Association. 2015.

Brenna, B. How Graphic Novels Support Reading Comprehension Strategy Development in Children. Wiley-Blackwell. Literacy Journal, UKLA, pp.88- 94. 2012.
Brown, Sally. A Blended Approach to Reading and Writing Graphic Stories. Wiley Online Library. 2013.
Bucher, K., & Manning, M. Bringing Graphic Novels into a School's Curriculum. The Clearing House, November / December 2004.

Cohn, Neil. The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. London: Bloomsbury. 2013.
Eisner, W. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. W.W. Norton & Company. 2008.
Gillenwater, C. Graphic Novels in Advanced English / Language Arts Classrooms: A Phenomenological Case Study. Dissertation, Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2012.

McCloud, S. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. William Morrow Paperbacks. 1994.
Comic in the Classroom: Why Comics?
The Impact of Structures and Meaning on Sequential Image Comprehension

Neil Cohn, Martin Paczinski, Phil Holcomb, Ray Jackendoff, Gina Kuperberg,

-Tufts University
http://www.visuallanguagelab.com/P/NC_pn&b_abstract.pdf

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The Research Behind Graphic Novels and Young Learners

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By Leslie Morrison, CTD Summer Leapfrog Coordinator Graphic novels have become a popular format in classrooms, partly due to their appeal to reluctant readers. More recently, a growing body of research, focused on how the brain processes the combination of images and text, indicates that graphic novels are also excellent resources for advanced learners.

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Access Denied: How Banning Books reduces Reading Volume and Achievement

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Access Denied: How Banning Books reduces Reading Volume and Achievement

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D. Danielle V. Dennis

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Online Flipbook created with Publuu Flipbook Maker.

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New Lesson on AI from Project Look Sharp 

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New Lesson on AI from Project Look Sharp 

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You will probably need to log in on a free account to see this and its resources.

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Project Look Sharp provides lesson plans, materials, training and support to help teachers integrate media literacy into their classroom curricula.

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Commonsense Media--Why and How teens use AI Companions (2025)

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Commonsense Media--Why and How teens use AI Companions (2025)

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The Impact of elementary librarians on reading and mathematics

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The Impact of elementary librarians on reading and mathematics

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Available in the SU Library

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Available through the SU library

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Copyright essentials for Higher Education

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Copyright essentials for Higher Education

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Walk with a Purpose | American Libraries Magazine

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Instead of simply highlighting censorship statistics or bemoaning what we can’t read, the Freedom Walk celebrates our right to read.

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How Can School and Classroom Libraries Support Struggling Readers? – Choice Literacy

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In her article Room for Beliefs, Debbie Miller says, “Step outside your classroom door and look back in, as if for the first time. What do you see? Do you want to come back inside? Or do you want to run and hide?” I loved this article when I first read it and it helped me to think about the messages my classroom gave to the students who entered.

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The School Library Systems Association of NYS sponsors symposiums with recordings open for all. Check out High Impact Literacy Practices in the School Library!

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Yes, Audiobooks Are Real Books! – Canadian School Libraries Journal

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Parents Magazine tips to improve students' reading fluency

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Parents Magazine tips to improve students' reading fluency

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Literacy Experts Give Parents 7 Tips To Improve Kids’ Reading Skills

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Kids’ reading level is at all time low. Parents can play a key role in helping them develop this crucial life skill—here’s how.

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Strategies to Support Struggling Readers Which Don't Require a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology

I have a confession to make. It involves a basic failure on my behalf. What's worse, my failure impacted students whom I care deeply about: students with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges. It involved waiting for test results before putting accommodations in place for students who were struggling in my class. Of course I didn't fail them intentionally, and by about the third time I got an evaluation back that pretty much said what I imagined it would, I started putting help in place for the student right away. The discovery of my own blind spot led me to wonder if other teachers were accidentally failing their students in similar ways.

For many years, this is what I did: I would identify a student who was having problems, make some basic observations about what was particularly difficult for him, and then request further information about the student in the form of screening, special tests, and/or a learning evaluation. I would then wait for a report before taking further action. I am often haunted by memories of a particular former eighth-grade history student whose contributions to our discussions put him at the top of the class, but his written answers on tests and essays were always weak and minimalist and put him only in the high C range. At the time, I thought it was sufficient to label this descrepancy and recommend that he get a formal evaluation. I suspected a test would reveal that he was dyslexic. His English teacher concurred. Unfortunately, his father would have nothing to do with outside testing, so my brilliant student received low Bs in my class and never got the help he needed to express what he knew.

But really, what was I waiting for? If asked, I would have responded that I needed more specific information about the student before I could know best how to support him. To many readers, I am sure that response sounds legitimate and reasonable. However, my confession is aimed at fellow teachers who will understand why my delay was unnecessary. I know that I am not alone when I admit that I can usually make general assumptions about what a learning evaluation is going to say before the results are in. Most often the report confirms what I had intuitively guessed about the student. As personally validating and satisfying as that confirmation often is, it should not be a prerequisite to providing timely critical accommodations to my students.

Immediately employing accommodations makes sense for many reasons. First, evaluations take time to schedule and complete. Why waste time waiting to have suspicions confirmed before helping a student? Secondly, there are those untidy problems of cost and access. Testing and evaluations are expensive and for many an unobtainable luxury. For a variety of reasons, public schools can be stingy with these resources, and many independent schools wrongly assume that parents can afford this expense on top of the cost of the school's tuition. Consequently, many students who need the help that an evaluation can provide are denied it.

I need to be clear about something-I remain an enthusiastic proponent of testing and evaluations. Teachers are greatly assisted by the critical information that they yield. Outside testing provided by learning specialists offers a unique opportunity to isolate many classroom variables and specifically reveal and identify students' academic strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, testing helps assess how extreme students' gaps are, and what level of response is necessary. That information is a real gift to teachers, parents, and most importantly, students, and it is a gift that keeps on giving because tests allow future teachers to understand the student's profile. Lastly, evaluations are required for students to qualify for accommodations on high-stakes tests such as SATs, ACTs and state exams. All indentified students should be provided access to them.

Meanwhile, without test results in hand, here is what teachers can do to support their struggling students (in addition to trusting their instincts)...

For A Student Struggling with Understanding the Classroom Reading Assignments

Suggest listening to audiobooks or identify a willing adult to read the assigned book to the student. Recommend that students read along with the audiobook version or to follow the words alongside the reader. The more often a struggling reader is exposed to the way they words look, the better. Exposure to the page helps students learn the architecture of sentences. This also helps with spelling and conventions.

Suggest use of assistive technologies currently available that read material aloud to the student. The Kindle, the iPad, or Google's Nexus tablet, would be examples of this kind of technology, but there are many similar devices being introduced into the market all the time. Click here to read a comparison of these tablets.

If the book/content has been made into a film or covered in a film, suggest that the student watch it to help give a context to the story or content.

Offer extra time to finish reading assignments. Dyslexic and struggling readers need more time to read assigned material.

Provide class syllabuses in advance. Allow the student to read assignments ahead over the school breaks and the summer. This can help the student get a head start so that when the school year takes on its full momentum she is prepared and has had an opportunity to work ahead to absorb the increased volume of work.

Recommend reading books with larger fonts. Hardback versions from the library are visually easier and E-readers offers the ability to adjust the font size as well.

Recommend books that may be shorter or less dense but equally rich in ideas and story for independent reading time. (Click here for a kid-tested reading list.) It is important to recommend the book with enthusiasm, the same enthusiasm typically reserved for more sophisticated titles. Read well-written, easier books yourself, out loud to the class, and recommend them to all students so the struggling students can read them without shame. The objective is to get struggling readers to read AND to like it. (For more on creating a classroom culture for struggling readers, click here.)

Recommend graphic novels. (Click here for a listing of kid-approved ones.) Graphic novels provide struggling readers with a way of strengthening their vocabularies, build their reading confidence, and foster their appreciation of story. Graphic novels can also help support a reader's understanding of everything from Greek Mythology to Shakespheare.Dictating ideas to an adult can help a student get started with their writing by generating an idea bank that they can draw from. (They also won't get caught up worrying about how to spell those words).

For a Student Struggling with Written Expression

Suggest that the student dictate an outline or brainstorm ideas to another adult (teacher or parent) who can record them. Depending on the circumstances, this can help students get started with their writing and help launch their ideas by generating an idea bank that they can draw from (they also won't get caught up worrying about how to spell those words).

Offer an opportunity to do work on a keyboard.If students are so labored in their handwriting and/or symbolic memory that everything they write is minimalist and/or incomplete, keyboarding can free up expression. Instead of worrying about what shape each letter is, the computer determines that for them. Word processing also helps record ideas in a standard readable font and allows a student to recognize more readily what they have just written. Note: if students are better served on the computer, have them immediately get to work on their keyboarding skills. This is not only a very important mechanical skill for all students, but also crucial for students who have handwriting issues.

Suggest and/or provide the use of assistive technologies and software for help with spelling. Something as basic as Microsoft Word can help with regularly misspelled words. It is a huge relief for students not to have to worry about the correct spelling of every word. It corrects basic words automatically. Franklin Spellers or similar handheld devices that assist in the spelling of words are also helpful, particularly when students are not using a computer to write.

If the classroom has access to iPads or other tablets with speech-to-text capabilities, encourage struggling writers to use speech-to-text apps to help them get their words down on the page. They can brainstorm or do the actual composing without being hung up about spelling and the mechanical struggle of writing. (Learn about how using speech-to-text on the iPad transformed a student's fifth-grade year...click here.)

Encourage the student to find a personal spelling strategy that doesn't depend on memorization of word lists. Some students are never going to be spellers, regardless of their heroic outcomes on Friday tests. Take the time to reassure those students that spelling is a mechanical, not an intellectual, skill. Because misspelled words do negatively impact clarity, students need to understand that it is important to find ways to identify misspellings and correct them. Editing may involve using the spell check on a computer, a handheld speller, or a helpful peer or adult in their lives. Every poor speller needs to find his/her most efficient and effective proofreading strategies. The world is full of people who will judge students negatively if they turn in work with misspellings. Consequently, they must figure out how to get the help they need, aside from carrying the correct spellings around in their heads.

Students who Struggle with Written Assessments and Tests

Experiment with offering ways to provide EXTRA TIME... . Students who struggle often need extra time. In fact, sometimes, extra time is all they need. Is there a way to offer your student who lacks a formal diagnosis extra time in a way that doesn't create equity issues or logistical ones? Aside from timed tests that are designed to check automaticity of a special skill, there are few instances that justify making speed more important than giving a student a full opportunity to express understanding. However, this can be challenging. Sometimes offering a chance for all students to return to finish an assessment up at recess, or during a study hall, is a way to make that work. Most often, students who do not need extra time will not take it. This is obviously an individual call because in certain situations extending the test time may raise the potential for cheating or equity complaints.

Make it transparent to the student what is being assessed. Is it automaticity? Is it a spelling test? Is it understanding of the material? Is it a measure of writing skills? The student should be clear about what is being evaluated and so should the teacher. For example, if the student can orally explain what he or she knows, but cannot make that clear in writing, consider having the student demonstrate his knowledge orally, in addition to the written version. If testing for geographical knowledge and the student mispells many of the countries, yet it is obvious that he knows the correct answer, that should count. Conversely, if the student turns in a final draft of a paper with misspellings, penalties should stand. Students need to find effective editing strategies. Giving struggling students a pass in that situation is misleading and doesn't ultimately help them.

Provide typed class notes for students who can't listen and write at the same time. This is not cheating. Some students need to focus all their attention on listening and attending to the information being explained. Writing impedes their ability to take the information in. If teachers are interested in facilitating an understanding of the content, then we need to be willing to do whatever is necessary to make sure that happens. Sharing notes can liberate struggling students to concentrate in class, while note-taking helps others consolidate the information through another modality. Students who use the teacher's notes should also read them aloud into a recorder and play them back, discuss them, or rewrite them on their own time in order to reinforce their learning through another form of processing.

Another modified option is to provide the whole class with a structured outline of the main ideas with room for students to fill in the rest (it also helps to model a note-taking format).Each student is different, but everyone benefits from processing information in multiple forms (listening, discussing, writing, drawing, reshaping, rhyming, applying, sorting, etc.). The teacher's job is to help students identify how they process information most efficiently and effectively.

Employing these strategies has allowed me to proactively help students reach the goals that I have set for the class. In many cases, these changes have been humbling as well as validating. For instance, when I allowed a child extra time on a test and discovered she did in fact know more then she had been demonstrating in the timed situation, or when a student brilliantly explained orally what he had failed to convey in writing, I felt thrilled for the student, but shamed by the missed opportunities to make earlier adaptations.

Most importantly, these strategies help me address the access gap between the haves and the have-nots with learning issues in my class. Since no one can claim that every student who deserves accommodations is receiving them, I want to know that I offer my students who don't have formal evaluations whatever tools they need to succeed, particularly when I intuitively know they need something different. I will continue to recommend formal evaluations whenever I can, but I don't predicate certain accommodations on them anymore, and neither the gods of teaching nor my division head has struck me down for not waiting to help a student.

See more study tips- from dyslexic students for dyslexic students.
updated 4/29/14

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Kids Can't Wait: Strategies to Support Struggling Readers - Yale Dyslexia

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The discovery of my own blind spot led me to wonder if other teachers were accidentally failing their students in similar ways.

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Author of MEET ME AT THE LIBRARY, Island Press, 2024. "...offer belonging instead of othering."

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Reimagining the Public Library to Reconnect the Community

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Opportunities for shared experiences among people from different backgrounds are shrinking. Nearly every trend line shows the U.S. in the grips of increased polarization, segregation and social isolation. There is an urgent need to reverse these trends. Libraries, as public assets, have the unique opportunity to bridge socioeconomic divides and rebuild trust. But in order to do so, they must be truly welcoming to all. This talk centers on ways that we as a city might work collaboratively in creating a library that is welcoming to all, and that bridges socioeconomic divides through examples of productive partnerships in Memphis.

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Jenn LaGarde on info and visual literacy

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Jenn LaGarde on info and visual literacy

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Jennifer LaGarde on Instagram: "Exploiting our emotions in order to influence, manipulate and radicalize is a tale as old as time, y'all. The difference now is the reach these strategies have thanks to the technology we use to communicate. 

TL;DR: Librarians, information literacy and media mindfulness are more important than ever. 

Shoutout to @historycoolkids for sharing this cartoon today. Checkout their post for more info about the cartoon."

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106 likes, 6 comments - jennlagarde on September 4, 2025: "Exploiting our emotions in order to influence, manipulate and radicalize is a tale as old as time, y'all. The difference now is the reach these strategies have thanks to the technology we use to communicate. 

TL;DR: Librarians, information literacy and media mindfulness are more important than ever. 

Shoutout to @historycoolkids for sharing this cartoon today. Checkout their post for more info about the cartoon.". 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jennifer LaGarde (@jennlagarde)

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Creating and Evaluating Privacy and Security Micro-Lessons

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Special Ed reading techniques that can work in libraries

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Special Ed reading techniques that can work in libraries

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We Shouldn’t Accept That Some Kids With Disabilities Just Won’t Learn to Read

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Rodriguez: Teachers need evidence-based, structured, supplemental foundational curriculum to help struggling readers master challenges.

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READING LESS AND LEARNING MORE WHEN EVALUATING DIGITAL INFORMATION

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Constructivist media decoding in elementary school: Media literacy instruction across a school year

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Constructivist media decoding in elementary school: Media literacy instruction across a school year

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Constructivist media decoding in elementary school: Media literacy instruction across a school year

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In 2021, Ithaca College’s Project Look Sharp conducted a pilot project to demonstrate that school librarians were in a unique position to provide media literacy instruction and function as building and district leaders to mentor teachers in media literacy integration. The initiative taught librarians to use constructivist media decoding (CMD) – an inquiry-based, curriculum driven approach to media analysis and production. This article, informed by the evaluation of that effort, offers a qualitative view from three elementary school librarians who were part of the pilot cohort. They describe how they implemented CMD in ways that can be duplicated by other educators and also, importantly, how their experience using an inquiry-based method transformed their teaching.

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Whitehurst--Teaching Media Literacy with Social Media News

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Whitehurst--Teaching Media Literacy with Social Media News

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ePub from the SU Library

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For SU faculty, students and staff only. SU users should contact 315-443-5727 or submit an EZproxy help request for questions. ESF affiliates are not eligible for EZproxy access unless currently enrolled in a course at Syracuse University.

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Truthiness and fake news are not new phenomena, but educators are often surprised when their students offer naive evaluations of what they read and see online. According to a study done by the Stanford History Education Group in 2015-16, middle, high school, and even college students are "easily duped" and struggle with determining the credibility of information on the Internet.

This collection shares resources designed to inspire students to think critically about the complex messages we receive constantly, through various media. Included find articles, videos, protocols and hands-on activities that offer students the opportunity to analyze and discuss news and "news-y" messages. Practice discerning messages, authorship and bias is necessary for all astute consumers of digital media. Most of the resources are for middle and high school students.

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Truthiness and fake news are not new phenomena, but educators are often surprised when their students offer naive evaluations of what they read and see online. According to a study done by the Stanford History ...

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Lesson Plans to Teach Media Literacy and Fact-Check Misinformation | PBS LearningMedia

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Be MediaWise is a series of media literacy lessons that teach specific fact-checking skills to help students sort fact from fiction online.

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Graphic novels and being OK to be yourself

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Why Tony Weaver Jr. Wants Everyone To Embrace Being a ‘Weirdo’

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With his graphic novel memoir, which he calls “the nerdy kids’ instruction manual for self-love and self-confidence,” Tony Weaver Jr. wants to change how people may think about reading.

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We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses.

But it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make the reliability and credibility decisions. It is up to the reader or viewer to negotiate truth.

News literacy is complicated. In our attempts to discern truth, we are confounded by a 24/7 news cycle. News hits us across media platforms and devices, in a landscape populated by all degrees of professional journalists and citizen journalists and satirists and hoaxers and folks paid or personally moved to write intentionally fake news. All of this is compounded by the glories and the drawbacks of user-generated content, citizen journalism, and a world of new news choices.

Professional journalists themselves face new practical and ethical challenges relating to anonymity, privacy and safety, as well as reliability in their attempts to verify sources of breaking news from social media and user-generated content in all media formats. (The Verification Handbooks are a wonderful lens into this complicated process.) The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics lists four guiding principles; the first of which is seek truth and report it.

Even news that is vetted by editors and publishers sometimes emerges from that process a bit processed, perhaps leaning in a particular direction.

And word choice itself is connected to truth. Over the course of the last decade we've seen professional news organizations and governments struggle with the politics and potential loadedness of words, notably terrorist and illegal immigrant. (See the AP Stylebook Blog and Reuters Handbook of Journalism.)
On news literacy
In its glossary, Stony Brook University's Center for News Literacy defines news literacy as:

The ability to use critical thinking skills to judge the reliability and credibility of news reports, whether they come via print, television or the Internet.

Our kids need new types of filters. Beyond larger notions of information literacy, I see the case for a specific focus on news literacy. Not as a lesson of good vs. bad. Not as an attempt to pitch traditional media against social media or peer review against popular publication. Not through the examination of hoaky hoax sites. And certainly not as a one-of, checklist type of lesson for a 9th grade social studies teacher in September.

We need to teach the important lessons of everyday civics for new consumption and production landscapes. These lessons involve sustained critical thinking, a practice to engage in regularly as we read and view and inquire with learners of all ages acros s disciplines.

A recent Stanford Graduate School of Education report, Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Literacy assessed the news literacy of students from middle school through college.

Students were asked to perform such tasks as: determine the trustworthiness of tweets, distinguish between news articles and opinion columns, identify ads on a news website, compare and evaluate posts from a newspaper's comment section, identify the blue checkmark that distinguishes a verified Facebook account from a fake one, consider the relative strength of evidence presented by two posters in a Facebook exchange, decide whether or not to trust a photo on a photo-sharing website, determine whether a website can be trusted in an open web search, search to verify a claim about a controversial issue, assess the reliability of a partisan website, identify the strengths and weaknesses of an online video. (p. 6) (Note: Most of these tasks could authentically be taught in our libraries during the natural course of any inquiry project.)

The Executive Summary shared disturbing results:

By high school, we would hope that students reading about gun laws would notice that a chart came from a gun owners' political action committee. And, in 2016, we would hope college students, who spend hours each day online, would look beyond a .org URL and ask who's behind a site that presents only one side of a contentious issue. But in every case and at every level, we were taken aback by students' lack of preparation . . .

Never have we had so much information at our fingertips. Whether this bounty will make us smarter and better informed or more ignorant and narrow-minded will depend on our awareness of this problem and our educational response to it. At present, we worry that democracy is threatened by the ease at which disinformation about civic issues is allowed to spread and flourish. (pp. 5-6)

I see a serious need for librarians to build a few seaworthy arks from the news media flood to aid students in discerning credibility, reliability, and bias in context of their information needs and the context of the text itself. I can see us introducing the broad notion of triangulation to children for whom the word may be difficult to say.
What's going on? Fake news
In the weeks leading up to the election we were drawn to stories about Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump and WikiLeaks' confirmation that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS.

Fake news is not new. But its potential for virality is and our awareness of it is newly awakened. Some suggested it played a role in the outcome of the election. Google and Facebook both announced that they would try to eliminate fake news from appearing in their result lists and newsfeeds by blocking fake news sources from using their ad networks.

This video TEDEd by Damon Brown offers a student-friendly explanation as well as strategies for analyzing news sources:

And fake news is but one flavor of news that is less than accurate. It is but one bucket into which readers and viewers should sort types of truthiness.

Fake news itself comes in a variety of flavors:

Pure fake news sites use fabricated stories to lure traffic, encourage clicks (click bait), influence or profit using intentionally deceptive, but highly intriguing, often sensational information.

Hoax sites also share false information with the intention to trick readers/viewers

Satirical sites present news with a comical, often exaggerated spin

Born digital images and edited images alter and often misrepresent visual reality

In addition, sometimes journalists just get things wrong. Their sources they choose to interview may not offer truth or a full picture. Stories reported in process lack the wisdom of hindsight and may be missing full context.
Post-truth or truthiness
Oxford Dictionaries recently announced post-truth as its 2016 international Word of the Year. Oxford defines the word as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

It is well worth noting that the concept is not new. Oxford traces post-truth's history from a peripheral term simmering for at least a decade to its dramatic spike this year: in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US, and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particu lar noun, in the phrase "post-truth politics."

Back in 2005, Stephen Colbert introduced the Word truthiness, now defined by Wikipedia as a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person making an argument or assertion claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

While we need to reject the notion of relying solely on from-the-gut verification systems, it is important to recognize that we are not always looking at a binary situation.

Credibility decisions are complicated. Most news is not simply fake or true. News from traditional sources can be suspect as well. Professional journalists engage in rigorous fact-checking and adhere to sets of professional ethics, but they are not entirely immune to bias or agenda or the pressures of a deadline. A single story may tell a part of a larger story at the moment of its publishing. Of course, traditional newspapers feature writing of all sorts-straight reporting, editorials, features, columns, advertisements and comments in their digital versions. Several traditional news sources are to various degrees either right or left leaning. While some admit their bias, others do not.

It is impossible to dismiss the complication that our political news consumption habits have shifted. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Tumblr played huge roles in disseminating political information during the past election season. A May 2016 Pew Research Center study found that a majority of U.S. adults - 62% - get news on social media, and 18% do so often. In terms of the total population, this translates to social media news reaching 67% of U.S. adults. The two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population. Consider this results of this report in the context of with the decline of the newspaper industry also documented by recent Pew Research Center data.

Some Rules of thumb:

Check About and About me pages: Clicking on or investigate authors names to consider their credentials in context should be a regular part of the research journey. (See other tricks below.)

Interrogate urls: We see quite a bit of domain manipulation these days. For instance, what looks like an .edu domain, followed by .co or "lo" is likely a fake or deceptive site. If you are you seeing a slightly variant version of a well-known URL, do a little investigating.

Suspect the sensational: When we see something posted that looks sensational, it is even more important to be skeptical. Exaggerated and provocative headlines with excessive use of capital letters or emotional language are serious red flags.

Go back to the source: When an article mentions a study, if you can, go directly to the source and check its bona fides as well.

Go back to the story again (and again): When was the story written? What is its context? Breaking news will continue to break. Early reports are built from limited information so you'll want to watch a story grow into a fuller picture.

Think outside the reliability box: The old checklist-type tools we used to evaluate websites do not necessarily work. ACRL's Framework reminds us that the notion of reliability can be fluid. Experts know how to seek authoritative voices but also recognize that unlikely voices can be authoritative, depending on need. On Twitter's 10th birthday this year, Poynter, the respected journalism portal, listed 10 Twitter How Tos -guides for using Twitter for journalism from its own archive. Students can benefit from these tips too.

Triangulate: Try to verify or corroborate the information in multiple sources, including traditional media and library databases. You can begin to rule out the hoaxes by checking out sites like the nonprofit, nonpartisan FactCheck.org, or popular sites like Snopes or Hoax-Slayer.

What exactly are you reading?: Even when you find yourself in a traditional news site, identify what type of writing you are reading. Is it news reporting, or a feature story, or an editorial, or work by a guest blogger, or a review, or an op-ed or a disguised ad, or a comment?

Check your own search attitude and biases: Is your search language biased in any way? Are you paying more attention to the information that confirms your own beliefs and ignoring evidence that does not?

Use a little energy: Have you simply satisficed or have you done your due diligence in seeking and validating the best possible sources across media sources?

Stop before you forward (or use): When you see a widely shared or forwarded link, be suspicious of a hoax or a fake story. Can you verify the information outside of the social media platform on which you discovered it?

Be suspicious of pictures!: Not all photographs tell truth or unfiltered truth. Images are normally edited or process, but sometimes they are digitally manipulated. Some are born digital. A Google reverse image search can help discover the source of an image and its possible variations.

Remember Time Magazine's darkening of the OJ mugshot?

Remember Sandy?

Infographics are carefully constructed visual media messages. The data, the evidence, the sources, and the arguments they present beg careful deconstruction, scrutiny and analysis. (See my post.)
Some news literacy vocabulary to introduce in talking about credibility:

cloaked sites appear unbiased and professional but actually advocate on behalf of an organization or cause while concealing their true sources of funding and purpose.

confirmation bias: the tendency to believe information is credible if it conforms to the reader's/viewer's existing belief system, or not credible if it does not conform

container collapse: my own term for our trouble discerning the original information container, format or information type-blog, book, pamphlet, government document, chapter, magazine, newspaper, journal, or section of the newspaper or magazine or journal-once publishing cues are removed and every source looks like a digital page or a printout.

content farm or content mill: a company that employs a staff of freelance writers to create content designed to satisfy search engine retrieval algorithms with the goal of attracting views and advertising revenue.

In news media an echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an "enclosed" system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresentedecho chamber: "." (Wikipedia)

fact checking: the act of verifying assertions either prior to publication or after dissemination of the content

filter bubble: When search tools present with the stories we are likely to click on or share based on our past activity, potentially affirming our biases, we need may be experiencing what Eli Pariser calls a filter bubble,

herding phenomenon: as more journalists begin to cover a story, even more journalists are likely to join the herd, imitating the angle the story initially took rather than developing alternate or original approaches or angles.

native advertising: paid, sponsored content designed to look like the legitimate content produced by the media outlet

satisficing: a portmanteau of the words satisfy and suffice introduced by Herbert Simon in 1956 to refer to the tendency of people, bounded by time limitations, to select good enough information over optimal information

sockpuppet: an online identify created to pose as a party unaffiliated with the media puppeteer in order to deceive.

triangulation or cross verification: Researchers establish validity by using several research methods and by analyzing and examining multiple perspectives and sources in the hope that diverse viewpoints will can shed greater light on a topic.

virality: the rapid circulation of media from one user to another. When we forward sensational stories, often from social media without checking their credibility in other sources, we increase their virality.

Resources for a post truth teaching toolkit:

ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Authority Is Constructed and Contextual: Though aimed at university students, this important document reframes the way we consider authority and is well worth examining with high school students and faculty. The Framework recommends the following student dispositions:Learners who are developing their information literate abilities

develop and maintain an open mind when encountering varied and sometimes conflicting perspectives;

motivate themselves to find authoritative sources, recognizing that authority may be conferred or manifested in unexpected ways;

develop awareness of the importance of assessing content with a skeptical stance and with a self-awareness of their own biases and worldview;

question traditional notions of granting authority and recognize the value of diverse ideas and worldviews;

are conscious that maintaining these attitudes and actions requires frequent self-evaluation.

False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and Satirical "News" Sources: a dynamic Google Doc filled with tips from Melissa Zimdars, Assistant Professor of Communication and Media at Merrimack College.

The Center for News Literacy from Stony Brook University's School of Journalism, offers an impressive Digital Resources Center that includes

Ripped from the Headlines: Fresh news literacy lessons, based on the latest news, ready to use in class

Course Pack: organized around eight major concepts, the 14-module curriculum takes students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Each lesson stands alone or can easily be integrated into your program. Don't miss the very useful new Glossary.

Get a Global View: Instructional resources from the Center's international partners

DIY News Literacy Lessons: Inspiration and lessons templates for creating your own instruction around news literacy concepts.

News Literacy Project: Begun by an LA Times investigative reporter and supported by several newspapers and news organizations, the NLP is an innovative national education program that equips middle school and high school students with the tools to be smart, active consumers of news and information and engaged, informed citizens. Don't miss the four modules, lessons and Check Tool in the Checkology Virtual Classroom.

NewseumED: Learning tools on media literacy. Don't miss the Resources for Promoting Dialogue Post Election and Today's Front Pages

Center for Media Literacy: Dedicated to leadership, education and professional development, the pioneering CML offers a free Global OnRamp (in multiple languages) built around its research-based framework and five key questions for deconstructing and constructing media.

Media Education Lab: Teaching Resources: The University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communication and Media offers a wealth of resources. Don't miss Mind Over Media, a crowdsourced website that contains diverse examples of contemporary propaganda on a wide range of social, political, economic and environmental topics, as well as the six-lesson CCSS-aligned high school curriculum unit on contemporary propaganda.

Frank Baker's Media Literacy Clearinghouse: Don't miss the Media's Role in Politics

Verification Handbook for Investigative Reporting: Aimed at professional journalists, but very useful for high school, this companion to the Verification Handbook for Emergency Coverage, which addresses breaking news, provides the fundamentals of online search and research techniques for investigations and takes a deeper into techniques for user generated content investigations

Time For Kids shares a video News Matters in which 6th graders discuss what they are learning about critical thinking and the news. critically about the information they come across.

Project CORA: Community of Online Research Assignments an open access resource for faculty and librarians

Fake News vs. Real News: Determining the Reliability of Sources NYTimes Learning Network

SchoolJournalism.org: News, Journalism and Media Literacy: This rich portal, administered by the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, contains a wealth of resources and suggested tools for teachers of journalism and the rest of us. Check out the interdisciplinary News Literacy Model Curriculum and Lesson Plans as well as the Six Principles of News Literacy

Teaching Information Literacy Now, from SLJ Librarian of the Year finalist, Laura Gardner

Fake 'News' in a 'Post-truth' World from reflection from Professor Judi Moreillon who shares: Fake "news" and a "post-truth" world call all school librarians to step up and lead

Resources for building a news literacy toolkit

FactCheck.org: Annenberg Public Policy Center's nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Check out the post That Chain E-Mail Your Friend Sent to You is (Likely) Bogus. Seriously, for its Key Characteristics of Bogusness and the Viral Spiral page for claims previously checked

Washington Post's Fact Checker: The purpose of this Web site, and an accompanying column in the Sunday print edition of The Washington Post, is to "truth squad" the statements of political figures regarding issues of great importance, be they national, international or local.

PolitiFact.com: a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics, run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times. (Note: I discovered their truth-o-meter after I created the little image for this post.)

Snopes: Since way back in the 90s, Snopes has been dispelling urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.

Hoax-Slayer: Australian Brett Christensen has been debunking email and social media hoaxes and spam since 2003

Craig Silverman's BuzzFeed blog: The founding editor for BuzzFeed, Canada has been writing for many years for a variety of publications on media accuracy and verification issues.

Whois Lookup: This tool allows you to investigate the domain behind a website

CRAAP Test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose posted by the Meriam Library, California State University, Chico.

Kathy Schrock's 5W's of Website Evaluation

Does This Website Smell Funny to You? Amy Gillespie's FART test posted in Knowledge Quest will grab middle schoolers' attention

Evaluating Sources Using the RADAR Framework: RADAR stands for relevance, authority, date, relevance, rationale. Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478.

Previous NeverEnding Search posts: Other favorite resources:

Abilock, Debbie. (2012). True-or not?. Educational Leadership, 69(6), 70-74. Debbie shares her quick and dirty rules of thumb-digital reading strategies, in fact-that will intrigue students, spark their curiosity, and serve as sensible entry points to more sophisticated analyses of ideas. Don't miss the section on Weighing Truths in Wikipedia.

Stanford History Education Group. (2016). Evaluating Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Literacy.

Stebbins, Leslie F. (2015). Finding Reliable Information Online: Adventures of an Information Sleuth. Rowman & Littlefield.

Stevenson, Sara. (2016). Information Literacy Lessons Crucial in a Post Truth World. Knowledge Quest.
And finally . . .
Nurturing information literate, responsible, active citizens is what librarians do. There are no guarantees of truth from any source. We teach students to be discerning consumers of information. We teach them to deconstruct media messages and construct their own messages. We teach them to interrogate their sources. As the landscape continues to shift, librarians must update our own skill sets and toolkits to guide students in navigating a growingly nuanced universe of news. We must also examine and recognize our own biases so that we are open to contrary and conflicting ideas. This is our banner to wave, our curriculum to co-teach.

Of course, following the paths I've described for critical vetting of the news is work!

This is a new landscape from the one we taught in even five years ago. We need new compasses for navigation.

I do not believe we can stem the tide of fake news and truthiness and political memes and viral rumors and quick rushes to judgment. I do believe that together we can build a few arks.

Welcome to the brave new world of truth.

Filed under: credibility, ethics, evaluation, media, news, news literacy, politics, technology, truthiness, user generated content

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Truth, truthiness, triangulation: A news literacy toolkit for a "post-truth" world

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We were guaranteed a free press, We were not guaranteed a neutral or a true press. We can celebrate the journalistic freedom to publish without interference from the state. We can also celebrate our freedom to share multiple stories through multiple lenses. But it has always been up to the reader or viewer to make [...]

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Follow Elissa Malespina, the AI School Librarian!

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Follow Elissa Malespina, the AI School Librarian!

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Social media is one of the most effective ways to connect with students. But creating fresh posts every week can feel overwhelming. This year, I simplified my process. By combining ChatGPT, Canva Bulk Create, and Canva's built-in scheduler, I planned 43 weeks of posts-Monday through Friday-so that the library now maintains a consistent Instagram presence, without the weekly scramble.

Here's how I did it.

Organizing by theme gives rhythm and predictability-both for students and for my workflow:

I used ChatGPT to batch-create 43 unique entries for each theme (215 posts total). The output was formatted as a spreadsheet, ready for direct import into Canva.

I made a branded template for each category. With Canva Bulk Create, I uploaded the spreadsheet and let Canva generate all 43 graphic versions automatically.

Canva's Content Planner-sometimes overlooked-is a built-in scheduler. From within Canva, I clicked Share → Schedule, chose the platform, date, and time, and set the entire school year of posts to go live automatically. A huge time-saver, especially since Canva Pro is free for educators.

A few lessons I learned along the way:

These posts aren't just content-they're conversation starters.

I display the book recommendation in the library and point it out alongside the Instagram post.

I ask students if they cracked the emoji puzzle that week.

Feel Good Friday posts give me a meaningful way to check in with students before the weekend.

This approach turns social media into a real connection with students-not just a broadcast tool.

Here's the exact prompt I used. Free readers can replicate my process-paid readers get my ready-to-use templates.

Prompt:
You are creating weekly Instagram posts for a school library. Generate 43 weeks of content (September through June, one post per weekday). Each week should include five posts, one per weekday:

Monday: Weekly Book Recommendation (title, author, 2-3 sentence student-friendly blurb)

Tuesday: Research Tip (concise, practical strategy)

Wednesday: Digital Literacy Tip (short, actionable advice)

Thursday: Guess the Book Title Emoji Game (the emojis, plus answer)

Friday: Feel Good Friday (uplifting quote, fun fact, or reminder)

Output in spreadsheet format with these columns:

1. Week Number (1-43)

2. Answer (if applicable; leave blank if not)

3. Book Title/Author (for Monday or Thursday; leave blank otherwise)

Rules:

Keep text concise and engaging for grades 7-12.

Include varied, high-interest books.

Keep tips to 1-2 sentences.

Emoji puzzles should be solvable and fun-include answer.

Avoid repeating content within the 43 weeks.

With ChatGPT, Canva Bulk Create, and Canva's scheduler, I created a full year of engaging posts-215 total-without weekly effort. The result: a steady digital presence that meets students where they are, and more time for teaching and supporting them directly.

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A Year of Library Social Media in One Weekend: How I Did It with ChatGPT and Canva

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How I built 43 weeks of engaging Instagram posts with AI, Canva Bulk Create, and Canva's built-in scheduler

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News Literacy in America: A survey of teen information attitudes, habits & skills (2024)

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The News Literacy Project conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,110 teens in May 2024 to assess teens’ information behaviors and news literacy education, aiming to promote critical thinking and well-informed youth.

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Talk is cheap: why structural assessment changes are needed for a time of GenAI

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Generative AI (GenAI) challenges assessment validity by enabling students to complete tasks without demonstrating genuine capability. In response to this challenge, institutions have developed and…

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Media Literacy

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Comics belong in the classroom | Gene Luen Yang

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eSchool News online periodical

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As schools embrace AI, an educator offers top tips, cautions, and predictions

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If used wisely, AI can extend educators’ reach, personalize impact, and unlock students’ potential for future success.

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Social Media and News Fact Sheet, Sept 2024

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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Digital news has become an important part of Americans’ news media diets, with social media playing a crucial role in news consumption. Today, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. When it comes to where Americans regularly get news on social media, Facebook outpaces all…

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The Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS) at the University of Oregon

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UO Center for Applied Second Language Studies

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Who refuse to use AI

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An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education

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We are a global community of education professionals who refuse the call for generative AI (GenAI) adoption in schools and colleges, and reject the narrative of its inevitability.

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Library policies for AL generated material?

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Generative AI is reshaping the publishing industry—and libraries are already feeling the effects. At present, AI-generated books are flooding the market, and AI audiobook narration is increasingly prevalent, sometimes with the assistance of established digital publishing platforms.

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From science writer Melissa Stewart

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5 Kinds of Nonfiction Get­ting Started 5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion Anchor Chart Intro­duc­ing the 5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion Activity Rein­forc­ing the 5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion Activity Using the 5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion to Teach Craft Moves 5 Kinds of Non­fic­tion and Stu­dent Purpose Inves­ti­gat­ing Non­fic­tion Like a Detective Explor­ing Active Non­fic­tion (with Choco­late Chip Cookies) 5 [...]

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Weeding: The Great Library Divide: Embracing Collection Maintenance with Enthusiasm | AASL Knowledge Quest

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I’ve been a school librarian for almost two decades, and one thing I’ve noticed is that people generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to weeding library collections. Either a person approaches weeding like I do—with great enthusiasm and a desire to clean up the collection and make it more accessible for students, make the space more inviting, create places for displays, and secure additional library funding. Or they approach weeding with great dread and trepidation, if at all, afraid that they are going to throw away something that someone might need someday, afraid that they may never get the funding needed to replace weeded books, and afraid of possible pushback from teachers or parents about the process.

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Downloadable bias infographic from News Literacy Project

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Downloadable bias infographic from News Literacy Project

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Infographic with six tips on how to think more clearly about news media bias and a list of different types and forms of bias in news coverage.

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ChatGPT is testing a mysterious new feature called ‘study together’ | TechCrunch

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The mode is apparently the chatbot’s way of becoming a better educational tool. Rather than providing answers to prompts, some say it asks more questions and requires the human to answer.

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Reading aloud can help comprehension and dialogue

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Reading aloud can help comprehension and dialogue

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Reading Aloud Succeeds as a Middle School Intervention

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Jennifer Sniadecki shows how reading aloud provides students with opportunities to experience success through thinking alongside their teachers and peers.

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Tim Smythe is awesome!

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Comics Blog w/Lessons = my blog where I write about my lesson plans and experiences in the classroom. http://historycomics.edublogs.org/

Categories - a sort of filing system of the graphic novels I own - organized by subject area. If you have suggestions for me to read and/or include, please contact me. If you use some of my lessons, are inspired by them, or want to share your own, please contact me.

In The News - this includes videos of my classroom, magazine articles I have written, etc.

LOOK FOR MY BOOK COMING OUT IN SPRING 20201 - TEACHING WITH COMICS. Will be published by Routledge.

@historycomics - I Tweet about my comics inspiration in the classroom and am quick to respond.

historycomicsguy@gmail.com - this is the email I use for all comics and education related questions and suggestions - PLEASE feel free to contact me with questions, if you want me to present to your school, or are a publisher/creator in need of educational materials.

Facebook - Comic Book Teachers - come join with us as we share ideas on using comics in education.

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Comics Blog w/Lessons = my blog where I write about my lesson plans and experiences in the classroom. http://historycomics.edublogs.org/ Categories - a sort of filing system of the graphic novels I own - organized by subject area. If you have suggestions for me to read and/or include, please contact me.

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Teaching About AI: Summer School Edition

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Find free tools and resources for summer school educators who are teaching about AI on this landing page from the News Literacy Project.

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Youth services librarians, like all of us in libraryland, are grappling with the implications of AI for our profession. I recently gave a presentation to colleagues from across New York State as they concluded a 6-week AI Youth Services Challenge. Designed by NYS youth services coordinators, the challenge helped library staff become more familiar with generative AI. Now archived, it offered participants the opportunity to explore the usefulness of various AI tools across a range of tasks. You can view it below.

My own presentation sought to provide additional context to the challenge by illuminating how young people are engaging with artificial intelligence and the ways public libraries can guide patrons through this rapidly evolving landscape. Here's some of what we discussed:

The Omnipresence of AI in Our Children's Lives

Simply put, AI is everywhere, in ways that are sometimes hidden and sometimes more explicit. For example, when a young child receives video recommendations from YouTube Kids, this seemingly mundane exchange is still one where they are interacting with an AI algorithm, providing human data to a training model. The outputs of artificial intelligence are on display across the internet, as the images encountered are increasingly AI-generated. CoPilot continues to insinuate itself into desktop computing, while Apple Intelligence and Gemini do the same for mobile devices. Social media is one more vector; Meta AI is now accessible via Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. There is also industry movement towards making generative AI available to children under 13.

Unsurprisingly, all of this access to AI has translated into use, with a recent report from Common Sense Education "The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School" indicating that 70% of teens have used at least one generative AI tool, with chatbots and search engines being the most popular. Concerningly, this same report revealed that just 37% of parents whose teen reported using at least one generative AI platform thought their child had already used the technology. To cap off this environment of uncertainty, 60% of teens report either that their school has no rules for how generative AI can be used or that they're not sure if there are rules, and most parents say that schools have not communicated with them about their generative AI policies!

The Potential for Harm

The combination of wide access, poor understanding, and little regulation, creates a risky environment for youth interacting with artificial intelligence. Chatbots, the preferred gen AI format of this demographic, have been linked to self-harm, may be addictive, and can dispense dangerous health advice. In the 2023 Center for Democracy & Technology report "Off Task: EdTech Threats to Student Privacy and Equity in the Age of AI," 45% of middle and high school students have used generative AI for personal reasons, including dealing with mental health and anxiety issues. Clearly, the stakes are quite high.

Where Public Libraries Come In

When a knowledge deficit exists in our communities, libraries have an obligation to step in. In this case, building a foundation of AI literacy, defined by non-profit Digital Promise as:

"...the knowledge and skills that enable humans to critically understand, evaluate, and use AI systems and tools to safely and ethically participate in an increasingly digital world."

Given the documented gap between caretakers' awareness of their children's AI usage and the actual extent of that usage, parents and caregivers should be a priority audience for a library's educational efforts, focused on demystifying AI, internet safety, and identifying/critiquing outputs. Curation of helpful resources can aid us in curriculum building, or in offering referral information to others. Some good sites to check out include:

Talk to Your School District!

As library staff assist students with their research, questions of the appropriateness of AI usage are likely to emerge. Are you familiar with your school district's official stance (if one exists)? You'll want to engage with your school district and their school media specialists to understand their guidelines on AI and its use academically. Do they have approved tools? Do they require an AI disclosure?

For example, the Northport-East Northport Union Free School District has an extensive document called K-12 Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidelines. It makes clear what tools are approved for use, and under what conditions. The Downingtown Area School District has a simple, 2 tiered AI disclosure that they require students to use when using AI academically (under AI tools for students).

Knowing where your school district stands on AI use positions the library to best aid students in their research, without running afoul of district policy! Furthermore, once the approved tools for student use are identified, library staff can become familiar with them to better support instruction in effective search and prompting techniques, though age restrictions may still require parental consent.

Until Next Time!

Artificial intelligence is a powerful technology with the potential to both help and harm. Navigating AI requires a cautious, informed approach in which public libraries collaborate with community partners to support our youth.

Items of Interest

As always, if you're looking for a speaker for your library event or staff development day, let's talk! I cover the intersection of emerging technologies and libraries, keeping it conversational, informative, and entertaining. I have limited availability remaining in late fall and winter, and have begun booking out into 2026.

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How Public Libraries Can Support Youth in the Age of AI - The Digital Librarian

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Navigating AI requires a cautious, informed approach in which public libraries collaborate with community partners to support our youth.