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The LaSalle Intermediate Academy is designed to offer academic challenges to highly capable fifth through grade eight students beyond what is rrquired by the Indiana Academic Standards. The Academy provides a rigorous, comprehensive academic program in all subject areas distinguished by the application of technology and the infusion of math and science throughout the curriculum. The Academy is available to all intermediate students (5-8) who meet the criteria for admission as determined by the admissions committee.
LaSalle Intermediate Academy utilizes an inquiry-based approach to learning, therefore a Library website would be beneficial to the students and staff of this school.
The primary users of this site will be 5th - 8th grade inquiry-based learners of LaSalle Acadmey. The students of this school work independently on research projects throughout the year and even though they are considered highly capable they still struggle when it comes to finding quality resources on the internet.
Teachers and parents of LaSalle Academy students will be the secondary users of the website. Teachers can refer students to various places within the website as they begin embark on their journies into research. I would like to provide space for the teachers to post thier assignments for the students to refer back to while working independently on their research.
This site would provide opportunities for parents to check in on the assignments their kids are working on.
LaSalle Academy opened its doors to students for the first time in 2003. I was hired as the Media Specialist at that time so I have had the opportunity to observe the students in action. No matter how much we talked about web page evaluation and internet search techniques, they still managed to waste a lot of time playing in the vast wasteland of sites, hoping to stumble upon something useful.
This group of students are also avid readers, hungry for great books to read. They are always asking for recommendations and they love sharing what they are reading with me and other teachers. If they are not reading fiction then they are reading fun reference materials such as The Name Dictionary or The Birthday Book. They are fascinated with trivia and are always full of questions. They are like little detectives, fun for them is finding little facts or obscure information about a topic. I have spent time over the last several weeks talking to several of the students about what they would like to see on our site. They all agreed that having links to several sites about their topics would be a great starting point for them to go off on their own searches. They also stressed the need to have some fun sites to explore, perhaps some "educational games." (they are not allowed to play games on the computers in the school.) They would also love to see pictures of each other but they need to be different pictures weekly.
Every Tuesday we have Technology Tuesdays so on October 12th I was able to meet with the entire staff and we discussed the school and library website for about an hour. The teachers made suggestions about what they would like to see and what they thought would be helpful to the students. They really felt that the website should be student-centered with links to their research topics, photos, recommended books made by the teachers as well as the students, a place to highlight student projects, a calendar of scheduled library lessons and activities. They all seemed to agree that anything I could provide that would help guide the students with their research would be very helpful. They all suggested that I provide links to various lessons that I teach in the library like creating citations, finding books, plagiarism, notetaking, etc. I showed them a sample of the opening page and they were very pleased with the layout of the page. They didn't seem to have a lot of interest in a teacher resource page because they wouldn't have time to check out all the different sites but they thought it might be interesting to choose one website a week to highlight for them and they could bookmark it on their computers if they thought it would be useful to them.
The purpose of the website is to provide access to quality, developmentally appropriate internet resources for students of LaSalle Academy.
Our students need to be involved with the information they find on the internet. "Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, that leads to asking questions and making discoveries in a search for new understanding." (www.exploratorium.edu)
I want to provide them with a place to Read, question, discover, explore and imagine.
The goal of the website is to become an educational tool connecting students, staff and parents of LaSalle Academy to information considered best for student learning. The site should be an extension of the library and a reflection of the schools mission which is to support and empower learners. The school motto is The World Is Our Classroom. My goal is to get the website started with some of the pages desired by the school community and for it to continue to grow as students become more active in the webpage production process.
This site will be a working example of the inguiry process. Read, Question, Discover, Explore, Imagine will serve as the navigation bars throughout the site. Although each of the links will contain additional information, below is an example of the links leading students through the inquiry process.
ANCIENT EGYPT
The LaSalle library is a busy place hosting nearly 200 students before school starts. They enjoy playing online games, browsing the internet, reading, playing chess and looking up interesting trivia. The content needs to address the needs of these students.
The content needs to engage learners in the inquiry process. Middle school studnts are curious about a lot of different things from the meaning of their name to the pyramids of Egypt. They still believe that everything they read on the internet is true and they often become lost on the information highway as they try to find resources for their projects. I want to provide road signs and maps to help them navigate through the information. The site first priority is to provide quality websites to aid in their research projects as well as links to databases, hotlist, online card catalog and search engine.
Our students tend to become fascinated and curious as they explore topics in the curriculum so I would like to provide additional areas to explore beyond the actual research project. For example, after learning about Ancient Egypt they could explore hieroglyphics and learn how to write their own names or perhaps view an autopsy of a mummy on the National Geographic Site.
Our students also tend to be avid readers so I want to provide them with links to great books and book reviews and I would like to offer them the opportunity to share what they are reading with others.
Because of their curiosity at this age I want to provide them with additional links to fun and interesting material outside the curriculum.
It is important to provide them with some type of navigation through the site, however this group of students would appreciate more of an exploratory approach to finding the information they seek. Rather then using the typical navigations bars such as Electronic Resources and Project Links, I'm taking a more creative approach and using an ambiguous organization scheme that will arrouse their curiosty. Hopefully this will allow them to do a little more exploring and perhaps discover something new along the way completely outside the topic they were originally researching.
Created by Kim Kronk