The idea of reading a classic out loud during lunch each day of National Library Week was to make high school students participate in the library campaign. A library media specialist at Cleburne (Texas) High School discusses the planning, promotion and implementation of the programme.

In this article, the author shares some tips for the new or not-so-new library media specialists. During the first week of school, the library media specialist's life will be filled with teacher work days, mandatory meetings, piles of stuff with no apparent purpose, and a line of teachers and other staff who want something from the library. There…

Discusses ways to evaluate school library media programs and how to demonstrate quality. Topics include how principals evaluate programs; sources of evaluative data; national, state, and local instruments; surveys and interviews; Colorado benchmarks; evaluating the use of electronic resources; and computer reporting options. (LRW)

Designing curricula around the standards, with clearly delineated strategies, expectations, and evaluative procedures, is thought to assure that growth in student achievement may be tracked. While this process can sometimes be nebulous, one thing is certain: clearly understanding what is involved in reaching a degree of excellence and determining…

In March 2003, a total of 394 media specialists throughout the state of Kentucky completed an online survey regarding the professional development needs. The public relations subcommittee of the Kentucky School Media Association Board of directors generated the questions and collected data from the three parts of the survey-demographics,…

Georgia's Choice/America's Choice (GC/AC) is a school reform model, which was adopted in approximately 160 schools across the state to focus on student work and achievement, to align the instructional process and to place emphasis on results. Library Media Specialists (LMSs) are important to school community's spirit of acceptance and should serve…

Book folders are an effective way of assessing and encouraging student reading of the high school level. The use of book folders, and how teachers utilize them, and how both reading and information literacy skills are promoted when teachers and library media specialists collaborate on this project are described.

Calls for proper assessment of students' abilities are on the rise in the U.S. and the No Child Left Behind Act is one example of the efforts undertaken at the state and national level. The role of library media specialists in the authentic assessment of students where they perform tasks that demonstrate their grasp of essential knowledge and…

Students need much assistance if they are to successfully use the Location and Access procedure of problem-solving. Guidelines are presented on how classroom teachers and library media specialists can help elementary students manage this Big6 stage.

In this article, the author talks about the changing role of the elementary library media specialist. Unfortunately, library media specialists (LMSs) are too often left out of the literacy loop. Traditionally, their roles in literacy were to be the support team, the purveyors of books, the sometimes nearly invisible element in literacy, but this…

When Oprah Winfrey began her successful book club in 1996, she continued a tradition that public libraries have provided for decades. Oprah placed a spotlight on reading that encouraged many women who had never read a book "to read." Book clubs sprang up in neighborhoods, bookstores, and on Web sites. Library media centers began offering book…

The key to improving students' attitudes about reading is to expose them to more contemporary literature--books to which they can relate in settings and themes--books that they are more likely to enjoy. This article describes a collaborative literature circles project between an English teacher and a media specialist that was extremely successful…

This article introduces a group of teens who become reviewers for the Newbery Awards. A targeted young adult audience of 35 students taught by Jane Hester, a gifted instructor at Kennedy Junior High School, was chosen with careful attention to their reading abilities and willingness to participate in the arduous task of reading critically 25…

With the advent of No Child Left Behind, Adequate Yearly Progress, and school budget cuts, school librarians have had to become more data driven than ever before. Thinking in terms of student learning and achievement has brought about an interest in evidence-based practice (EBP). In this article, the authors discuss three steps to understanding…

School library media center scheduling, particularly the fixed versus flexible scheduling controversy, continues to be debated in spite of decades of advocacy for flexible scheduling. According to van Deusen (1999), flexible scheduling is "a plan wherein classes meet for instruction in the library resource center when they have a specific need…