Saturday, January 23, 2016

Thing 31: Evidence Based Practice – Getting Started

Okay, I’ll admit it I’ve been dragging my heels on collecting data despite many articles and presentations on the importance.  I’ve been lucky that my community seems to see the value in the library programs that my high-school counterpoint and I have created.  Still this is an area where I should do more.
I looked at the pdf for Evidence Based Practice for School Libraries: The 4th E = Evidence, I read Show Them The Evidence of Your Success, and I watched the Show Me the Data! Webinar which I found to be the most helpful.  The presenter emphasized that we need to work beyond total circulation data.  She suggested that we focus on our Principal’s priorities.  Since I am a member of the professional development team, the curriculum team and the school building leadership team, I certainly am aware of the priorities.  I need to start to record data that shows how spending is being used (who, how many times, how used). 

I should look at circ data for targeted students.  For instance, I taught our fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade reading intervention students how to search the catalog and limit the results to items in our collection that are at their reading level.  I could look at how many books these particular students are checking out.  I also should have collected data on how many times I saw these students showing their classmates how to do it!

I liked the idea of using a Google Form to collect collaboration data.  I would have to remember to bring up the form every day, so I would have to add it to my homepages, I think.
 I think that a Google Form would be a good idea for collecting facilities data as well.  I constantly have teachers meeting in the library, staff meetings, district meetings, peer tutoring, preK students receive therapies in the library, the reading department and some members of the special ed staff test students in the library.  The afterschool program even uses the library sometimes.  I never considered collecting display data. I guess I have to start paying attention to it.  While I often have students gather the materials for the displays, in general, I seldom have allowed them to select them –this year was an exception.  One third grade class helped create both our December holiday display and our January one.  While I don’t think there is time for video reviews at this point, I could encourage students to write a one or two sentence blurb to stick out of the books that they select.
Collecting Instructional Data is something that I have always done, though I’ve not always gone beyond the SLO requirements of connecting my instruction to results.  I like the idea of a whiteboard to collect student responses to an exit prompt about what they did or did not learn.

I have never really collected data to document how I differentiate instruction.  The aforementioned lessons to the intervention students are an obvious case of differentiating.  Her individual intervention seemed natural to me. She talked about showing circ data for specific students that you are working with, that you greet and help when they come in the library.  In my library, I try to greet EVERYONE who enters unless I am teaching another class.  I believe that there are very few students who would be hesitant to ask for help and those exceptions are because the students are young and particularly shy.  (One kindergartner who HATES to talk does jump to mind.)  I do reading and interest inventories with my older students and try to follow their interests so that I can recommend books and buy new ones.  I think that in general even my current, new administration is aware of how I differentiate for the students because my coworkers and even the parents talk about it.

I will try connecting my data with pre and post assessments.  I already have access to both my SLO data and the Fountas and Pinnell scores.  I have access to the state test result data in some form as well.  I used to write an annual report, but it seemed as if no one ever read it.  Maybe the new administration will, so I will add it to my to-do list.


I also took at look at Joyce Valenza’s On capturing evidence in a few new containers.  Her first suggestions include three  things that I always have known that I should do, but I never remember to do.  I think that I have to leave the camera out on the desk because I never think or have the time to get it out from its case.  Even before I read this article, when I pondered the next steps, taking more photos was one of those steps!  Exit tickets are something I always mean to do and that I encourage my teachers to do that I don’t do myself!  Database analytics used to be something that I ignored because with IP authentication, the high school data was intermixed with my elementary data.  Now, however, most of our databases are just password authentication, so I could look at the analytics and I should.  I plan to explore more samples of annual reports both through the weblinks and through our own BOCES which asked for them last year.