AASL Best Websites & Library Blogs

Everyone loves "free," especially those in education where many teachers do not have the financial backing to obtain necessary resources. In looking at some of the websites listed on the AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, I am so upset that I did not know about some of these prior to now. Some of my favorites:

Google Keep: As I am part of a Google-based county, I find myself drawn towards Google things, which is why I initially looked into Google Keep. As someone who is Type A and hyper organized, I have notes and lists EVERYWHERE. When I am doing research or working on an extended assignment, I tend to have numerous working documents going, where I jot down notes and ideas. I have to-do lists for both my personal and professional life, both in physical form and electronic. I have an on-going note on my phone with teaching ideas. The only problem with this is that the electronic notes I gather are spread across three computers and my phone, which makes organizing things difficult.

Enter Google Keep. Google Keep is a syncing notepad that connects to Google Drive. As many teachers and librarians are like me and do not limit their work-related thinking and planning to the hours in which they are in the school setting, Google Keep is perfect because it serves as a place to corral all your notes and ideas in one place, regardless of when and where you have them.

CommonLit: I was introduced to CommonLit by our school reading specialist last year and I love it!!! CommonLit is a reading resource with a library of free, leveled texts. They run the gamut in terms of genre and accessibility, and you are able to filter the texts based on genre, grade level, reading level, themes, literary devices, SOLs/CSSs, etc.

As an English teacher, I enjoy using CommonLit to find paired passages for my students in order to prepare them for the Reading SOL, but I think you could use it is a variety of ways as a librarian. If the history classes are studying the Holocaust, you could cull through CommonLit to find poetry and short passages that would pair with that topic. You could filter out texts that work with a school-wide event (anti-bullying, suicide awareness, etc.) and have those texts available on the library or school website. It says that the texts on CommonLit are geared towards 5th-12th grades, but I think you may be able to find ones that are suitable to younger students as well.

Poets.org: I really like the content Poets.org has to offer. There are literally thousands of poems listed on the website, ranging from well-known poems to more obscure, from all time periods, and stretching across every possible theme imaginable. It is super user-friendly too, allowing the poems to be sorted by theme/topic, author, time period, etc.

Poetry tends to be something that students either love or loathe, and I have found that with English / Language Arts, poetry ends up being its own separate unit that is thrown in almost as an afterthought. In utilizing Poets.org though, teachers / librarians could offer a sampling of poetry to students daily through signing up for a poem a day, or linking poetry to what it being taught in the classes with the thematic sort. Librarians could aid in doing paired passages with the poems by having students select a theme from a book they are reading, either for class or as a choice read, and then finding a poem that has the same theme. As Poets.org allows for more choice, it may allow students who are more resistant to poetry to enjoy it more, especially since there are so many poems and poets included that are not typically taught in school. It could also be really fun to use Poets.org to help generate poems for a Poetry Slam in the library.

In looking at the library-related blogs that were offered as ones to follow, I was really drawn to both The Daring Librarian and Renovated Learning. Both offer a nice taste of the traditional library ideas (book selections, summer reading, etc.), while also incorporating what it means to be a librarian in the 21st century. Both bloggers utilized fun, conversational tones, which helped me to want to continue reading their posts. One thing that I really liked about Renovated Learning is that you can subscribe to her blog. Since I use my late night nursing sessions with my daughter to read the blogs that I subscribe to, I immediately added her to my list of go-tos because I would love to learn more about how she incorporated Makerspaces into her existing library.

And a shameless plug because she was not listed on the librarian blog list, I LOVE Kate Olson, the "professional reader" behind Loud Library Lady. I first started following her on Instagram because her book reviews were always spot on, but the more I read about her being a librarian for MULTIPLE schools at once, the more intrigued I became. Being in a county where each school has one, if not two, librarians of their own, I was baffled by how Ms. Olson managed jumping back and forth between schools and grade levels. Her insights and lessons are great, and I feel that as a budding librarian, I could learn a lot from her. :)