Language Arts Standard 1 Artifact: Pattern Books/Author Study: Laura Numeroff

This lesson was chosen because I believe it utilizes the literacy techniques of retelling to construct meaning and responding to literature.  I read two "pattern books" written by author Laura Numeroff (If You Take a Mouse to School and If you give a Mouse a Cookie) to demonstrate her "circle story" pattern.  We discussed the pattern in Numeroff's books and the students created their own pattern books.  While this lesson was both popular and mostly successful with the students, there were some students who experienced difficulty with the concept.  I learned that some students need prompts to facilitate thinking/creativity and will demonstrate the concept more explicitly by writing the prompts "if you"....and "you will..." or similar terminology on the board.  In addition, I plan to include a rubric of acceptable/unacceptable language for the books.

Language Arts Standard 2  Artifact: Study Research Model Proposal

This artifact was created as part of a school librarianship class taken in the spring of 2009.  It was selected because I believe it demonstrates my ability to "communicate ideas in writing to accomplish a variety of purposes".  This assignment is intended to persuade school administrators to adapt a school-wide research model and outlines the reasons in support of this as evidenced by research.  I have grown significantly in my ability to write documents to be read by school administrators and understand the importance of using educational "buzz words" to effectively communicate the intended message.

Language Arts Standard 3 Artifact: Make Me Wanna Holla: Fostering Literacy in the Hip Hop Generation @ the Library

This artifact was created as a final project for a young adult literature class and was chosen because I believe it reflects an understanding of how to "analyze an audience to determine culturally important strategies to share ideas effectively".  This website was created with the goal of encouraging young adult librarians/teacher-librarians and other community members working with African American male teens to use the web site for fostering literature appreciation in an underserved group.  This website offers tips for "reaching" this population and uses culturally relevant bibliographies and other resources to achieve this purpose.