Competency 9- Internet

English Club.com provides resources for students and teachers learning and teaching English as a second language. http://www.englishclub.com/teach-english.htm As a middle school librarian, I would like to build a large bank of resources for my campus. This site would be an excellent addition. The highlights of the teacher's section include a specifically ESL forum, lesson plans, daily mini lessons and cartoons, and inter-school activities. The student section offers games, blogs, language tips, and history tidbits. I found the English news article in the ESL World section an interesting addition. In the interest of providing authentic language learning situations and mitigating the effects of the digital divide on this population, I found this site to have merit. This search was performed using Google.

Competency 8- Multimedia

As this my concern is providing for ESL students, we must look at the specific needs for this population. As the figure shows, border counties need to be especially prepared for the needs of the ESL learner, but all districts are obligated to provide a quality service to these students. Schools receive special funding for non-English speaking students and students who they fall below the poverty level. Sadly, many ESL students fit into both categories. What does this mean for the library? Though our district may receive extra funds, educating an LEP student classified as lower-income costs more than educating his native English speaking, well-off counterpart. Therefore the materials for these students in the library are critical and must be cost effective. We need to understand what the learners need for each stage of language acquisition, have at least an adequate amount of materials, and provide support for the classroom teacher. We need to be aware that this group learners will most likely measure behind their peers in technology skills and address this issue. Finally, we need to understand our districts ESL program and suit our program to these goals. I searched using Google Images.

Sharp, John. "Laying the Foundation" 39 Window on State Government. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. 12 April 2008 http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/taxforms/96-599/chap03.pdf

Competency 6- (Successive Fraction)

The previous screen shots show the query and results from a successive fraction search I performed in DIALOG. I started with the general term "library" and repeated with "school", then "English and Second and Language". When combined, I had two extremely relevant hits. Both articles would be of use to a teacher of bilingual students. Although DIALOG was extremely intimidating initially, the practice sessions prepared me to search with ease. I was pleased with my results and spent $2.02!

Competency 6- (Citation Pearl)

Using Project Muse, I searched for journal aritcles that would help teachers who were perhaps new to ESL students. I began with ESL and library. The article by Shelley Stagg-Peterson and Daphne Heywood discussed how the library could support the students at school and the families of the students as well. Using the terms language, children, and literacy, I refined my results. Many of the results concered French, however the debate of immersion, billingual, or inclusion crosses language lines, so these will apply. I pulled the term Latino from one result because the majority of ESL students in my area are Spanish speakers. The results follow:

MDisar-Competency 6 (Specific Facet)

I conducted this search in LibLit. "ESL" was the most specific facet, and that search yielded 47 results. These covered a broad spectrum including public libraries and adult services, neither of which I needed. Next, I added "junior high" which was the thesaurus term for middle school. I did not get any hits, so I just used "school". The database had nineteen relevant articles on selecting materials for students, including adolescents, collaboration with other school personnel, and methods for instruction.

MDisar-Competency 6 (Building Block)

This search used ERIC FirstSearch and the building block strategy. Above is my query using the terms ESL and Middle School and libra*. Below are the five results. I was especially pleased with two and three which covered picture books for ESL students in middle school and chapter books, respectively.

MDisar- Competency 4

I chose the RSS feed from the American Library Association, www.ala.org, because is it a well respected institution with a long history. The journal covers a wide variety of topics including youth services.

MDisar- Compentency 5

One challenge I had as a middle school language teacher was finding interesting, age appropriate material for beginning level ESL students. I choose the book How Teacher/Libraian Collaboration can Support Student Learning by Educational Research Service because my goal is to actively work on collecting resources for teachers of this growing population.

Tags from LibraryThing
collaboration(1) library media(1) school library(1)


http://www.librarything.com/work/4318459

MDisar-Competency 3

"Language Learning and Web 2.0 Technology" would be useful for any informational specialist in a middle school library setting who is attempting to help teachers utilize new technologies, including blogs, wikis, and podcasts, into their lessons. Graham Stanley geared this presentation toward ESL learners though it could be easily applied to other types of learners. The Second Life application he discusses was of particular interest to me. I used Yahoo Podcast to search for this podcast.

http://blip.tv/file/155608/?skin=popup

MDisar-Competency 2

Teachers Call (http://teachers-call.com/2008/01/give-call-a-try.html )
"If you don't currently use computers in your language teaching, you might want to ask yourself why you don't. Apart from not having access to computers - which is common for many teachers, there isn't really any good reason to not use computers in a language learning classroom."

This blog provides many simple ideas for incorporating technology (the Web, blogs, standard programs, pod casts) into a classroom or library setting, and would assist the media specialist in aiding classroom teachers to explore new technologies. ESL strategies are present.

I used the blog search engine blogsearch.google.com to locate this blog.

Purpose Statement- Competency 1

The purpose of this blog is to fulfill the requirements of a graduate class LS5013, and through it I hope to become more comfortable and confident with this medium. I will also explore the challenge intermediate (or upper level elementary) public school librarians face acquiring quality resources for beginning level students with English as a second language and their teachers.