Rhode Island is committed to ensuring that all educators receive fair, accurate, and meaningful educator evaluations that provide information that can help all support professionals improve and refine their practice. Currently, local education agencies (LEAs) in Rhode Island may submit a district-designed model for approval that complies with the…

Rhode Island is committed to ensuring that all educators receive fair, accurate, and meaningful educator evaluations that provide information that can help all support professionals improve and refine their practice. This document describes the process and basic requirements for the Rhode Island Model Support Professional Evaluation and Support…

This article describes a library renovation project in a community college that involved using existing space and reorganizing it to support the way students learn both individually and collaboratively. The article also looks at the importance of the academic library as place.

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" were released just as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was refreshing its National Educational Technology Standards for Students in late 2007. These standards outline what students will know and be able to do with educational…

Today's principals must have knowledge of content area standards and be involved in curriculum planning and pacing. They assign strong master teachers as mentors to new teachers. They are involved in what's happening in their classrooms and practice ongoing assessment of the classroom teaching, focusing on improving student learning. Today's…

The release of AASL's "Standards for the 21st-Century Learner" and "Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" has provided school library media specialists with the opportunity to "develop new visions for learning" (AASL 2009), and to rethink what their roles are, and what skills and characteristics are required of them to…

Library media specialists in Hawaii, like many of their colleagues elsewhere in the nation, are exploring ways to design and implement a type of student-oriented assessment that focuses on student performance. To tackle the issue of assessment in Hawaii's school library media centers, twenty-four K-12 library media specialists are currently…

This is a collaborative column by K-12 library media specialists and academic librarians who write about the motivational strategies that have worked for them in teaching IL skills. Students who do not raise their hand to answer a question and are reluctant to learn something new often suffer from something called "fear of failure." They…

In study after study, three priorities appear to make a difference to the principal's view of the teacher-librarian. First, teacher-librarians who collaborate with classroom colleagues make a difference to literacy and student achievement; those who don't, don't. Second, teacher librarians who perform leadership roles in the school and in the…

The leadership role of the library media specialist is very important because it enhances the achievement level of the students. Information Power, Building Partnerships for Learning encourages library media specialists to be members of the leadership team, organize learning opportunities for members of the learning community, develop curriculum…

Reviews research on the relationship between children's television viewing and their school achievement and describes learning activities related to television that are designed to teach vocabulary, grammar, and reading comprehension; promote independent reading; and encourage students to become more critical viewers. (Author/EM)

Based on extensive research, this guide offers library media specialists and teachers solutions and practical applications of educational technology within subject disciplines to help improve the achievement of at-risk students. Included are lesson plans, successful case studies, and project ideas for replication in language arts, science, and…

A study of undergraduates found that grades, class year, focused academic library activities, informal faculty interaction, active course learning, and conscientious writing resulted in gains in critical thinking, suggesting that academic librarians should design library-research-skills courses to increase student-focused use of the library and…

Summaries of research findings on the following topics are compiled in this document: (1) students in schools with well-equipped resource centers and teacher-librarians perform better on achievement tests; (2) developing student competence in research and study skills is most effective when integrated with classroom instruction through cooperative…