Book Suggestions for Professional Development Communities

[Linda Dougherty]

Looking for book suggestions to use for professional learning communities in a high school.  Any suggestions that would cover teacher librarian collaboration, web 2.0 technology, etc. as well as personal learning networks. My co-librarian and I are volunteering to lead two separate book groups of teachers.  Our discussions and practice will be the basis for individual professional development plans for this school year.  Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

[Linda Dougherty]

Here are the two titles my co-librarian and I selected for our professional development book studies that we are offering to the faculty. Never Work Harder Than Your Students by Robyn Jackson, ASCD imprint also has an online study guide. For this study, we are going to use Edmodo to guide the discussions. The second title is ISTE's Retool Your School: The Educator's Essential Guide to Google's Free.... I'll lead this one by setting up a Google Sites within our new district domain network for Google Apps for Education. The new versions of Google Sites is very similar to a wiki format where I can post discussion, suggested projects, and organize after school 30 minute sessions on a Google calendar.

[Anita L. Vance]

These two books gave substantial material for discussion.

Choice Words
How Our Language Affects Children's Learning
In productive classrooms, teachers don't just teach children skills: they build emotionally and relationally healthy learning communities. Teachers create intellectual environments that produce not only technically competent students, but also caring, secure, actively literate human beings.

Choice Words shows how teachers accomplish this using their most powerful teaching tool: language. Throughout, Peter Johnston provides examples of apparently ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a study by accomplished literacy teachers, the book demonstrates how the things we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people.

Assessing Student Learning in the School
Library Media Center
Edited by Anita L. Vance; Assistant Editor, Robbie Nickel
School library media specialists have a crucial role to play in
the assessment of student learning. This volume, featuring
contributions from participants in AASL’s sold-out 2006 Fall Forum,
provides answers to this important question on many levels.