Library skills curriculum, part 7.

I haven't forgotten the series of posts I'm writing about developing a library skills curriculum for second grade.  (Start here)  I wanted to bang out a few of the planned lessons before posting any of them.

Here's what my first lesson looks like, in first-draft form.

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Lesson One.   How to behave in the library. How to treat library materials. What happens in the library? Who works in the library?

At Home: Review the library rules and discuss the reason for each. They can then be assigned as copywork or memory work:

• Speak quietly or whisper.  (People are working, reading, and studying. Noise is a distraction.)
• Drink only at the water fountain, and leave your food at home. (Spills and crumbs could ruin the books. )
• Walk from place to place in the library. (Running makes noise and might knock people over)
• Don't write on the library materials, damage them, or get them dirty. (They belong to everyone and are sometimes hard to replace.)
• Obey the time limits posted. (Other people need a turn.)
• If you need help figuring anything out, ask the librarian for help. (It is his job.)
• Don't put books back on the shelf. (They might go in the wrong place.)

Talk about the reference librarian, the children's librarian, and the checkout desk staff.   Read A Day in the Life of a Librarian.

Library Lab: Visit the local library when the children's librarian is on duty. Introduce yourselves. Tell the librarian that this year the child will be learning how to use the library and how to ask for help in the library. Ask if there are any brochures about special events that are coming up, like story hour, classes, or performances. Take some home!

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Meanwhile, I'm drafting the other lessons.  A question arose when I considered teaching children to search for nonfiction books:  Should I teach the child first how to use the library's computer system to search by subject, or should I teach them how to look directly on the shelves first?  I decided to save the computer for near the end.  I want the child to develop a mental model of the physical layout of a library and of the organizing system --- so that he can see that the computer is just a way to find quickly the information that he could, after all, figure out on his own.

For the lesson about the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system I spent some time with the resources linked in this post and produced a one-page "cheat sheet" for each system.  My idea is to have the child use the "cheat sheet" to find books on a general topic.  For each, I deleted, renamed, and combined some of the subtopics to make a child-friendly sheet that would fit on one page.  Here's a download of each.    Download Dewey.doc Download LibCon.doc