Feb/March 2021

We are welcoming Spring! We have "sprung" ahead, adults in the building are receiving Covid vaccines, and we are busy preparing the library media space for when students can safely be welcomed through our doors! In the meantime, we are doing lots of outreach with lessons and mobile book carts to meet students where they are. We even have a student teacher from URI, Mr. Matthew Keegan, joining us leading up to April vacation. It has been busy!

If you come across books with Barrington barcodes when you are doing your spring cleaning, feel free to send them in with no questions asked. There are no late fees. We are just thrilled to welcome them back to the collection!

BMS students are in a good position because they read two books from the 2021 RI Middle School Book Award nominee list over the summer and just needed to read at least one more to vote this month. Students may cast their vote here.

Alan Gratz did a virtual author visit on February 4th through An Unlikely Story bookstore in Plainville, MA. Lime Cluster connected with him that morning so all of their students at home and in school could participate. Alan Gratz is a huge fan favorite so it was amazing to have this opportunity. We purchased a copy of his new book Ground Zero for our library through the bookstore as a way to say thank you.

Mrs. Watson and I took some FAST time at the beginning of February to do research skill lessons on keyword searching, note-taking, and citing our sources. We reviewed the databases available to us as part of these lessons. Students were both in school and at home so when I created slide decks I included videos for each of the concepts to make it easier for students to refer back to later. Students are reading a core title about Claudette Colvin so I made her the historical figure of my research in all of my examples. We also worked on steps to creating the final product.

Mr. Dalessio engaged his humanities students in a research project learning more about Islam and Islamaphobia. During the second week of February, I Zoomed in to teach a databases lesson to assist them in the research process.

For the month of February, we decided to shake things up. We pulled titles, wrote descriptions, and wrapped them so that students could choose solely on the book blurb. Students had fun with this novel way of choosing! BMS parent and book lover Mrs. Jodi Multer even spent part of her weekend wrapping books with decorative ribbon for us!

I created student self-paced lessons using Nearpod and Google Slides for our third and final Common Sense Media lesson of the school year. I then sent out links to cluster teachers to assign to students to work on during the March 15 PD day when students would be working from home.

Grade 6: Finding Credible News

Learning Objectives:

• Learn reasons that people put false or misleading information on the internet.
• Learn criteria for differentiating fake news from credible news.
• Practice evaluating the credibility of information they find on the internet.

Key vocabulary:

• bias
• corroboration
• credible
• evaluate

Grade 7: The Four Factors of Fair Use:

Learning Objectives:

• Define the terms "copyright," "public domain," and "fair use."
• Identify the purpose of the Four Factors of Fair Use.
• Apply fair use to real-world examples, making a case for or against.

Key Vocabulary:

• copyright
• fair use
• public domain
• sampling

Grade 8: This Just In!

Learning Objectives:

• Define breaking news, and understand why individuals and news outlets want to be the first to report a story.
• Analyze breaking news alerts to identify clues of false or incomplete information.
• Reflect on the consequences of reacting right away to breaking news alerts.

Key Vocabulary:

• 24/7 news cycle
• bias
• breaking news

Mrs. Elaine Van Leer has been hard at work for months"genrefying" the fiction section of the library. It will be helpful for you to understand the process.

First, we decided on genre categories, and Mrs. Van Leer created spine labels.

We separated the genres into:

• horror
• mystery
• historical fiction
• realistic fiction
• humor
• romance
• fantasy/science fiction

Next, Mrs. Van Leer went shelf by shelf, book by book, assigning categories to them, putting the genre labels on the spines, and assigning sub-categories for them in the library catalog.

Mrs. Van Ler then physically moved thousands of books from their original shelves, to a cart, to other shelves (sometimes several times).

Mrs. Van Leer then used Canva.com to create new signage for the library. Digital Literacy teacher Mr. Davis assisted her in getting the Canon large format printer from the makerspace up and running.

It has been a HUGE labor of love, and when you see her in person, please thank Mrs. Van Leer for the care and detail she put into creating a much more "user-friendly" space for our students.

Mrs. Van Leer is also hard at work trying out new furniture configurations so that we can create more cozy and collaborative spaces. We have the time to re-imagine how the spaces can look, and with some of our bookcases on casters, we can try out new ideas. Of course, next year we will rely on observing the students in the space and their feedback to see if the spaces are working for our patrons.

Mr. Matthew Keegan is here for six weeks teaching and learning in the BMS library media center. He has hit the ground running getting into classes to teach lessons, bringing the mobile library cart around to classrooms, and learning the nitty-gritty tasks associated with successfully maintaining a library collection.

For the next Family "Un-Book" Club we will explore the format of graphic novels. Individuals can choose to read a graphic novel of their choice and plan to meet on Thursday, March 25 from 5-6 pm on Zoom. Please join us to chat about books in a stress-free environment! Email Mrs. Roy at roym@barringtonschools.org for more information.

Dr. Fernandes secured 25 copies of Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi for students and faculty that wish to participate in reading and discussing the 2021 Read Across RI book pick! If you are interested in securing your very own copy, please fill out this form. We will meet virtually at 4 pm on Thursday, April 8th for our book club discussion. Hope you can join us!