D-West Library Report

9th Grade Orientation: All freshmen received a two-step orientation through their Language Arts and History classes. They completed a Breakout Activity that included our makerspace, our green screen studio, our genrefied fiction collection, and received a tour of our facility. In the second half, we explored their tech tools, ensured that their accounts worked and gave them quick tips on our resources. Libguide

10th Grade Orientation: Because the librarian was out on maternity leave last year, we ran a mini-orientation for the sophomore class as well to ensure that they could enjoy full access to our library programming and resources.

Green Screen Use: Our new green screen studio was used by multiple classes to film spots for the morning announcements and for headshots for back to school night.

Lifestyle Diseases Project: We worked with 9th grade health classes on a small research project. This year we brought in a few databases and used google docs as well. Libguide

Independent Reading Selection: We worked with three separate groups: reading classes, 9th grade LA, and our AP Language students on book selection. For each group, we pulled a selected group of books (by genre, level, and theme) for the students to explore.

1920's Magazine Project: We worked with the 11th grade history classes on this project. Our focus this year was in exploring how to use our citation software: NoodleTools. We also introduced Chicago as the preferred citation style for History classes at West. Within NoodleTools and with our databases, we looked at the differences between the citation mechanics for different resources. Libguide

Crisis in the Middle East: We worked with the 9th grade history classes on this annotated bibliography project. We focused on the use of NoodleTools and using annotations, searching within a Gale Database, and we introduced a new source evaluation tool that we will be utilizing in our courses.

Note Taking in Gale: We also did a mini-lesson with 10th grade history classes on how to take notes and highlight within the Gale database. This skill will be widely used as they progress with their research at West.

This fall we are lucky to have a student teacher from Kutztown University. Mrs. Disante has enjoyed working with our freshman class in their orientations, pictured here using our green screen. She has also been working with our library club students and running collaborative lessons with our teachers.

• Presented history specific resources and tools to the history department and started collaborative discussions with several history faculty to integrate more library resources into their classrooms.
  
• Met with history teachers to begin discussions of lessons focused on fake news and information literacy in a "post-truth era."

• Participated in a PLC to expand a Senior History Paper grounded in problem based learning

• SAS Team meetings: Monday and Wednesdays, period 6
  
• PAC Team meetings
• Met with district librarians and technology team members to bring the Pennsylvania E-Book Consortium to DASD through MackinVia.

The STAC got off of the ground in September at West Library. While we have adult staff tech support on Tuesdays and Fridays in the STAC, and library staff tech support every day, the addition of peer to peer student support in the library has been a wonderful support for our students. STAC hours will continue to grow through this school year.

Students in the library have the opportunity to sit together and de-stress by participating in large, collaborative coloring pages.

Library club and West students are participating in our first caremaker project, making browsing totes for our elementary libraries. This year, we hope to engage in several caremaker experiences, where we make to learn but also to give.

Our students have been using our chalkboard poles to participate in communal conversations. The first was about our favorite reads. The second involved students placing encouraging sticky notes on the poles and asking West students to take what they needed.

Senior Tulasi Nidamarthy is starting a Reading Olympics team through Library Club. We had 10 students sign up to be initial members of this team and they are meeting monthly.

Parent Volunteer

• Pia Disanto, every Tuesday AM

Student Volunteers

• Josh Homa
• Dean Robinson
• Adarsh Tambi
• Jillian Guy

In the above graph, the bottom axis represents days in September. The right axis is numbers of students signed in. Our average was 362 students a day.

The above chart represents student sign-ins in September by period. We were open for 18 days in September.

• Total circulations: 991

September:

221 MLA projects created (increase of 100 from last September)

23 APA projects created (increase of 15 from last September)

123 Chicago projects created (increase from 0 from last September)

West Libguides recieved 1738 hits during the month of September.

The mission of the library program in the Downingtown Area School District is to provide a dynamic learning environment that instills essential 21st century literacy skills through direct and collaborative instruction and the use of a wide variety of print and digital resources. Our goal is to ensure that students have the opportunity to become inquiring and engaged global citizens who are empowered to be critical thinkers, enthusiastic readers, skillful researchers, and ethical users of information.

Find this library report and more on our blog: http://adventuresinlibrary.blogspot.com/

Email: mnass@dasd.org
Website: http://dasd.libguides.com/west
Phone: 610-269-4400
Twitter: @dwestlibrary