artifact 5 - Summer Reading assembly

Artifact 5 - Summer reading assembly with local public librarians in the Timberlane SAU

for link to video:

1. What? (What is the CONTEXT of the artifact? What is it? When and why was it produced?)

Representatives from Kimball Public Library (Atkinson), Plaistow Public Library, Colby Memorial Library (Danville) and Sandown Public Library present their youth / teen summer reading programs and activities to students at Timberlane Regional Middle School in this video. I coordinated this reading assembly and a performance of live animals that were related to the "Dig into Reading" theme the public libraries had during the summer of 2013. It was produced about two weeks before the end of the school year in the gym at the Timberlane Middle School. There was one assembly per grade, each about 40 minutes. 

The goal I had in organizing and coordinating this assembly was to meet the goal for Domain 4 in Danielson's library media specialist criteria "participation in school and district projects." The reason I felt it was important to bring in all the local public librarians was to let my students know that with 8 weeks of summer vacation coming up, there were safe, fun activities related to books and reading available to them through their local public libraries.

2. So What? (What is the ROLE of the artifact? Why did I select it as evidence for meeting this standard? What does it say about my growing competence as a teacher?)

I believe this video shows that I am active in reaching out to other professionals in my local town. Because all of the librarians featured in this video are connected to the towns my SAU serves I feel it is important to be collaborative with them in helping our students have access and love of books and libraries. 

3. Now What? (What is the IMPORTANCE of the artifact? How did producing the artifact help me improve my professional competence and what will I do to continue to improve relative to this standard?)

This was my second year in this school of running a reading assembly of this kind. Each year I feel I learn a bit more. The first year I scheduled these as small assemblies of about 50-100 in my library about 8-10 times. This past summer I got each entire grade to meet at the same time in the gym and added an animal performance to hook student interest. Next year I believe I will NOT be inviting 8th graders to the assembly as I received feedback from the 8th grade vice principal and from 8th graders themselves who feel they are too old and will not participate in any summer reading programs at their public libraries. Despite the 8th graders being less than thrilled, I feel overall this was a success. I got good feedback from the local public librarians that their summer reading programs had higher turnout than ever before and they were very appreciative of my efforts to get kids excited about their local public libraries.