PISD District Libraries by the Numbers, 2011-2012

SECOND NINE WEEKS- October 20 - December 16

STATISTICS:
 13 schools reporting

Classes:                                                                  304 classes

Students served:                                                41,432 students

Community members served:                                  772 community members

Teacher collaborations:                                           440 teacher collaborations

Technology integrations:                                          271 technology integrations

Items circulated (all libraries reporting):             215,213 items circulated

EVENTS:

Book Fairs:                                                                 8 Book Fairs

Book Clubs:                                                              14 Book Clubs
Special Activities:                                                      18 Special Activities
Guest Speakers:                                                          8 Guest Speakers

LIBRARY HAPPENINGS AROUND THE DISTRICT:
All of our librarians are about sharing the love of stories through books, but also teaching the bundles with our classroom teachers.  Our Primary librarians have been busy introducing fairy tales, map skills and community helpers through their library collections.

Our Elementary librarians have been busy teaching the Super 3 and Big 6 research skills of learning how to ask questions, find answers, take noes, and report findings.  Along with research skills they have taught encyclopedia and dictionary skills.  They have advanced our students' literacy awareness of poetry and folktales and paired fiction and non-fiction books to further our students' knowledge on important topics.  They daily motivate our students to read through the award books on the Mockingbird and Bluebonnet reading lists through storytelling and book talks.  They have collected countless carts of books for use in our classrooms on topics, such as World War II, the seasons, holidays, biographies, etc. 

DMS Students

All our elementary librarians have taken the lead teaching our Gifted and Talented students. They have taken on this extra duty and are doing an excellent job, but their respective library programs are taking a hit.  Since our librarians have no assistance in their libraries, the libraries are closed during the G/T time, some libraries are closed up to 6 hours per week. This has really cut into library programs. Combining this with lesson preparation and additional duties, such as lunch duty, the invisible duties of the librarian are not getting done, such as collection development, mending books, cataloging new books, weeding worn or outdated books, shelving books on a timely basis, etc.

Our librarians teach the information literacy skills that are so essential in today's computer research. Our elementary librarians have introduced the online databases of World Book Online, Ebsco, and PebbleGo and how to find safe, authoritative websites on Nettrekker. They have taught the internet searching technique of keyword searching to help students get better results when searching the internet.



Book character fun at WVMS



Our secondary librarians show our students how the library is a treasure chest of information that is free to them throughout their lives, not only in school but as adults.  They have shown them how to use the online catalog to their advantage, accessing categories, lists, and writing recommendations for purchase.  They have taught the Big 6 research process to eighth graders this nine weeks and have worked alongside the ELA teachers students along the research process. The librarians are constantly motivating students to read good books through book talking and book trailers of the Lone Star and Tayshas award book lists.  Our middle school librarians created some fun for our students by having having them create favorite book characters from pumpkins.



WVMS Book Fair



Every librarian is a leader on her campus. Many are the administrators of the Accelerated Reading program,  the creators of the campus video announcements, active members of the DAAC and/or CAAC committees, members of the Technology and Literacy committees. Our librarians are continually learning



Adding to this our librarians have planned and hosted Literacy and Family Nights, FlashMob events, Book clubs, author visits, special speakers- Mr. Dupre talking about bullying, and several Veteran's Day speakers.

And what would we do with our libraries? Just look what our libraries are also being used for: Special teachers- interventionists, RTI, tutoring; testing; staff meetings;  Book Fairs; PTO meetings, community meetings; Math Pentathalon; author visits; Pflex; PALS; luncheons, etc., etc. Our libraries are in constant use.