Southwest Middle Florida Power Library Portfolio

Instructional Partnership

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Instructional Partnership

Instruction partnership is crucial to the SWMS Media Program. It is the key to our Media Center truly being the heart of the school.

Scheduling is done through Mrs. Friday. MESH teams and Reading classes are scheduled monthly. Other open days are scheduled for elective classes, ESE classes, and anyone else that wants an extra day in the Media Center. We also use those open days to plan events.

The MESH teams come once a month, as a team. What this looks like is that the students on that team come with their English teacher one month, their Social Studies teacher the next month, Science the month after that, and Math the following month. 10 minutes of the class period is devoted to book check out and announcements of Media Center happenings. The remainder of the class is used for enhancement of whatever is being covered in that class through the use of maker space stations, research lessons, coding, or creative projects.

Mrs. Friday also absorbs classes who do not have a substitute but have an absent teacher which increases access and allows students an opportunity to learn.

To have such great collaboration across the board, relationship building is key. Mrs. Friday works hard to build relationships with the teachers and provide resources and support to encourage their use of the Media Center.

Instructional partnership goes beyond just Mrs. Friday and the staff of the school. True instructional partnership includes partnering with local businesses, City Council and the Mayor's office, other schools, and our District Administrators. Mrs. Friday includes our City Officials in our Project Lit book club meetings, author visits, and other school events. Mrs. Friday serves as our Partners in Education Coordinator to get our school support from local businesses whether that is food donation, supplies, or volunteer time. Students in our Media program work with students from other schools such as our feeder schools and other local middle schools to share author visits, field trip opportunities, and to Skype and talk about books. Mrs. Friday also invites district leadership to come be part of every day lessons. Partnership includes everyone and at the Great Southwest, everyone is involved.

PrePlanning Presentation

Media Center Pre-Planning Presentation to staff that displays all the Media Center has to offer, programming for students, collaboration opportunities, and information about our reading initiatives.

Emoji Writing Prompts

Emoji writing was used with Reading classes and ELA classes this year to work on writing skills, editing skills, critical thinking, and public speaking skills.

Lego Creation Activity

The Lego Creation activity was used with 8th grade Reading students to work on writing skills and following directions.

Lego Battleship

Lego Battleship was used with Math classes to work on x-axis, y-axis, and plot coordinates

Ozobot Lesson

Algebra classes did an Ozobot lesson on velocity vs. slope.

Maker Space Element Challenge

Science students used various maker space materials and were challenged to build the elements they've been learning about. They had to have the proper number of protons, electrons, and neutrons for their element.

Energy Maker Space Challenge

7th Grade Science classes had to use maker space materials to demonstrate the different types of energy they'd' been learning about.

Illustrating Poetry

Art Classes came in for Black History Month, studied Langston Hughes poems, and then illustrated the poem of their choice.

Book Cover Redesign

Digital Arts students redesigned the covers of their favorite books, printed & folded them to look like real books, and displayed them all over the school. Mrs. Friday shared their work with the authors and many authors responded.

Green Screen Videos

Mrs. Friday worked with Chorus students and taught them to make green screen videos of their group songs they learned and choreographed.

Google Expeditions

Social Studies classes, ELA classes, Spanish classes, and ESE classes have taken virtual field trips to the locations of things they've been learning about. We've been everywhere from Washington DC to Mount Rushmore to Space.

Comic creation with Science classes

Students created comics to show what they know using Read Write Think's comic maker and/or Jarrett Learner's blank comic book pages.

Gifted Enrichment

Twice a quarter the Media Center is part of the Gifted Enrichment pull-out seminars. Mrs. Friday has lead seminar session covering everything from Growth Mindset to coding lessons to maker challenges to murder mystery activities to guest speakers for service animals and invention days.

ESE Enrichment

Once a month our self-contained ESE classes and our Autism support class comes to the Media Center to celebrate the books they've finished reading in their 15 book challenge and to do maker space activities and book checkout. These students also practice important life skills such as cutting, coloring within the lines, building and stacking, and they rotate helper roles behind the circulation desk doing jobs such as asking their classmates for their first and last names, scanning the books, stamping the books, and saying, "Have a nice day" to their peers.