Middle School Collaborations

We encourage you to read through some of the great collaborations happening at the middle level with middle school media specialist(s) and the teachers.

Roberta Hance, League Middle: I have done a couple of things so far this year. I started by working with the 6th grade Science teachers bringing them to the library and teaching them how to make a simple circuit with a battery, copper tape, and LED lights. This was Greta Cleveland's idea. Then last week I worked with 8th grade ELA teachers on a unit of research. We co-taught and I introduced the "CRRAP" test, SCDiscus, and citations. I am doing the same thing with 6th grade ELA teachers this week, except using the "FART" test.

After Christmas break, I'm working with the Social Studies teachers and showing them SCDiscus, EBSCO ebooks, and digital magazines that I have ordered.

Dina Genco, Lakeview Middle: 7th Grade ELA teacher Kaye Jones sends students to the library with a "book prescription." Basically she chooses a fiction book for each student based on their reading ability and interests, writes the prescription and sends the student to the library. It has been so much fun to pull the book off the shelf with each student, do a mini-book talk about the title with the student to get them excited about the book and discuss why Ms. Jones "prescribed" that book, or find a read alikes if necessary. A student of Kaye's saw me in the hall and reported his reading progress and how "Ms. Jones makes reading fun!"

Michelle Higdon, Greer Middle: I am doing a lesson this week on Genres with our Multi Cat Sped class. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17PkT_PKRT6ZAV1y_QAvlhoAF4xOsJbQzYa6vRj7ta58/edit?usp=sharing

Kathleen Carey, Greenville Middle: Collaboration with 8th grade Literature teacher

We viewed short professional book talks and evaluated them for message, appeal, tone, point of view and use of music. Then had students select books to read to produce their own Book Tok. Click here for presentation and click here for the Book Tok rubric.

Mrs. Carey shared the Elements of Suspense with 8th graders for Halloween.

Students learned the story in 3 parts:

1. Listened to an audio recording of the author sharing the exposition of the story.

2. Mrs. Carey read the rising action and climax.

3. Viewed a video with the falling action and resolution of the story.

After the story was shared, the students identified elements of suspense: fear, anticipation, tone, mystery and foreshadowing.

Jennifer Tazerouti, Tanglewood Middle: The students at TMS are finishing up their school-wide read of Restart by Gordon Korman. Students and their teachers are reading together each day. Our 7th grade math teachers integrated the novel into some math lessons. Students have participated in trivia contests and are enjoying the final chapters of the book.

7th grade science students used Merge Cubes to go on a virtual field trip to a cell! Students used ipods and merge cubes from the library and the teachers and library staff worked together to install the app and prepare the devices.

Gaelyn Jenkins, Riverside Middle:

We have done several collaborations involving teaching students to use SC DISCUS databases, including a project with Mrs. Sanchelli (ENG1) where students used databases including Biography in Context and Historical American Newspapers from the Library of Congress to create a collaborative Collection in Destiny to gather their sources and then created website or video about a person who took a stand. See their work here! The librarian created a website for the project including resources, documents and forms from the teacher, and helpful things like a question stem randomizer to help students with developing great research questions.
Mrs. Hansen (ENG 1) collaborated with us on Inquiry standard 5: "I can reflect throughout the inquiry process to assess metacognition, broaden understanding, and guide actions, both individually and collaboratively by creating a fake Instagram for a To Kill A Mockingbird-connected character with informed inquiry from other voices and perspectives." Along with the template for the fake Instagram page, we also pulled selections from other books like March (John Lewis), The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas), and Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson) to provide the other voices and perspectives from Black writers, giving context where needed.
We created a virtual field trip of "Haunted South Carolina" for our ELA/8th grade Social Studies teachers. 8th grade social studies was doing a Colonial Horror Story, so we also created this randomizer using vocabulary from their unit to help students get started!
In the past we have done Book Tastings with ELA classes. This year is much more difficult to do that, but we decided to try it and students do a "Genre Personality Quiz" to get some ideas of how the interests of each class trended. We pulled appropriate books, focusing on the students' indicated interests and taped short synopses to the front of the books so no one would have to touch them. Students moved about the library, staying socially distant, looking at the books and indicated on a menu what their choices would be. They turned in the menu and returned to class while we pulled the books for them and we were successful in getting every student their first or second choice!

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