With the convenient access to the Internet, most people don’t go to the library any more. In fact, the library can still provide great resources and tools for teachers to enhance their teaching. Today we had a library session with the education librarian, Ms. Clemens. The purpose of this tour is to help our students to become familiar with the good resources so that they can get started with the planning of their unit lessons for the Junior practicum.
Ms. Clemens started out the session with an introduction to our college library system. She showed students how to use the library guide (http://libguides.tcnj.edu/) and identified major links to support the teacher use of library resources to support good teaching. She demonstrated how we can use the catalog search to find good information. She then took students to tour around the library floors. The first floor is the reference section. The second floor contains plenty resources for teachers, such as journals and magazines. We can also find charts, posters, big books, and textbooks for teachers to check out and to be used in the classroom. All the books were sequenced with the Dewey cataloging system. We learned that Section L is mainly for education resources while some resources for math and science may also be available in Section Q.
Most students immediately found useful resources that shaped up their unit lessons. They found it truly valuable to use the library resources. In the past, students always struggled with time and workload for their final unit project. They had to juggled with things of urgency and importance for their priority. This time they got started early and developed concrete ideas which shaped up their unit ideas and guided their directions to proceed for the remaining semester.
With all the books that can be checked out from the library, we advised our students to use these resources with care so that they don’t ruin or lose the materials. It could be a costly and time-consuming process to obtain library items once they were lost. From what I know, the process of putting a book in a library collection, starting with requesting, acquiring, cataloging, and shelving, takes plenty of man power. That’s why library books are very expensive.
After they were properly introduced to use the library, students seemed excited about the treasures they could located. Many believed that they were off to a good start. They would certainly come back to the library more often in the future.
Along with the library research tour, we also learned to develop concept maps and outlines using a software tool, named Inspiration. We also learned a few good Web sites where we can find existing, ready-to-use templates and worksheets:
http://superteacherworksheets.com/
http://www.teach-nology.com/worksheets/
The library research tour was very beneficial. Thank you, Ms. Clemens.
