As my mission and vision statements espouse, I feel strongly that the media center should be the hub of the school. When I was chosen to be the media specialist to open a brand new middle school, I had a chance to ensure that our media center and its collection would align with our goals, objectives, and content standards.
One of the first tools I created to help with this process was a curriculum chart of the middle school content areas. As I was new to Frederick County, and currently working in an elementary school, the middle school content was not familiar to me. I created the draft of my chart by pouring through the online curriculum documents for FCPS, jotting down what content areas and units of study were taught at which grade levels and in which courses. I then sent each section to the new department level chair for that curriculum area and asked for their input. After making modifications from that input, I began to use the charts as I met with book vendors. This helped me decide upon which sets of books to purchase. I wanted to make sure that I had adequate support materials for all of the content areas. I also wanted to make sure that I did not purchase a lot of materials in areas that were outside our content areas, for example in world history and science areas that were covered in elementary school of high school. My Curriculum Charts proved to be an invaluable tool in helping me complete my orders for the new middle school. Once school was underway in the fall, I again sent out the curriculum charts for further input from all the teachers, not just the department chairs. I used these charts in placing my final opening day collection orders. I had several book vendors comment on how thorough my charts were and how helpful they were to me.
In addition to ensuring that the media center collection can support the content area curriculum of the school, I also need to be able to align my information literacy standards with the different content areas. In the middle school, classes do not come to the media center for information literacy lessons. In order to teach them, I must align these skills with the core content lessons I collaborate on with content teachers. To help with this, I created an Information Literacy Skills Curriculum Chart. On this chart, I list all the information literacy skills by local (FCPS), state (VSC) and national (ALA) level. I then broke my chart out by FCPS indicators, then lesson activities, then collaboration project ideas, and finally linked it to the FCPS technology standards (since LMSs teach much of this as well). I am happy with this format because I can use it for lesson planning with the indicators readily available. The other columns help me collaborate with fellow teachers and show them ways we can teach both of our sets of indicators with the same lesson or unit. With this one-page chart in my lesson plan book to use, I do not have to consult another source. I have found it to be a very functional chart.
One final artifact I have included in this section f my portfolio is my Collaborative Planning Guide. This is a form I use at all planning sessions with teachers when we book media center time. This form is a quick way to set out the objectives for both their content area and my information literacy skills. It also breaks out each teacher’s responsibilities, lists notes on policies for the unit, and has room for reflection. I have used this chart all year with each unit and have found it very effective.
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