Library Floorplan

 Here is my library floorplan with the UDL and ADA guidelines in mind with planning. 

Here is the link to virtual tour of my floorplan:

https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1840806136542921572

Universal Design for Learning

     I was very excited to learn about Universal Design for Learning. I feel a connection to this because my sister is a self-contained Sped teacher. She had a librarian at her school (who is actually a Sam Houston Library Science Grad) who went above and beyond to create a library for my sister’s students who have more profound disabilities. She procured resources and created lessons so that all the students were able to participate in meaningful library lessons. From talking with my sister, I could see how important and impactful it was to her students and her to have these students, who might be overlooked or marginalized, be given the treatment of any other student. I think the principles and guidelines outlined in the UDL are crucial to providing ALL students with the most effective library lessons and experiences. 

I am currently a kindergarten teacher at a school with a high ESL population. I have also previously taught PreK at a Title I school. I have students come from a wide range of backgrounds with a wide range of abilities. I feel like these teaching abilities have given me a good framework to build upon for my library.  Some of the guidelines that I am currently using are providing options for perceptions by giving alternatives for visual learners (giving visuals for my ESL students or my low students who can not read yet), providing options for language by clarifying vocabulary and symbols (again giving context to my ESL learners or students with underdeveloped vocabulary), clarifying syntax and structure (giving sentence stems for speaking and writing), providing options for comprehension by activate or supplying background knowledge. I also provide options for physical action by giving students different ways to respond to questions. Because my school has such a high number of ESL learners we are very intentional in our planning. We make sure to have differentiation built into our plans for whole group, small group and interventions that we provide for students.

 There were also some principles and guidelines that I can start now incorporating into my current classroom. I think that I can be better about giving students more options for expression and communication, such as using multiple media for communication or composition. I think I can also be better about having students use their executive functions by having them be more aware and monitor themselves and their work/understanding. I also think that I can start incorporating means of engagement into the classroom. I give my students some autonomy over their work but I could follow more of the principles of recruiting interest. The last piece is areas where I feel like I need to learn more about them to better implement them into my classroom. I feel like I do well with providing some forms of alternatives for visual information but more of the specialized alternatives I don’t know nearly enough about. Those options that are more specifically geared towards disabilities are where I would need to research and learn more about what technology and resources are out there and how they can be incorporated into student learning. That also goes along with providing multiple means of action and expression. There are tools to help students learn the new information being presented but there are also different tools to allow students to show or extend their learning. I feel strongly about letting students be creative in how they show their knowledge but I see that I am lacking in giving students tools beyond their creativity. 

    After looking through the guidelines and principles of UDL I feel like the area that I would really want to explore more of is technology/resources to offer students to give them alternatives for processing the information and then being able to show their understanding afterwards. I looked online first for some resources and more of a breakdown of what technologies are out there to help students. One site I found was Reading Rockets. They discuss a wide range of assistive technology available to students. They talked about what kinds of disabilities may need this technology, and what it can do to help students. They also discussed some of the options for each type of technology as well as tips to evaluate if it’s the right fit for the child. Another great site that I found was SeeWriteHear. I found this site very helpful because it broke down the different alternative formats with lots of other commonly asked questions to support my learning-like which fonts are best for large print and are enlargement and are large print the same? Since this is an area that I’m not as familiar with, just having these definitions and explanations really helped me better understand what these more common alternatives are and what the nuances to them are. Another resource I plan to utilize is the librarian I mentioned earlier in my writing. Courtney is a librarian in my district so I know that she will be a great mentor as I move forward with my librarian career. I know that she has successfully implemented a UDL library for her students. I know from my sister that she had to overcome many different obstacles to be able to bring this to her students so I know she would be invaluable to learn from and help assist me in bringing these principles to life for my future students.

Podcasts

LINK TO OUR PODCAST HERE!!! 

https://open.spotify.com/show/3lOO5qXe8NvrgxxbhoFk80 

 Creating a podcast is something that is definitely outside of my comfort zone but it was a great experience to have! Podcasts are hugely popular so it only makes sense that they are adaptable to the world of libraries. I worked with a group of other Library Science students to create a podcast. As familiar as I am with listening to podcasts, creating one was a huge learning process for me. I looked into several different online sites for podcast hosting. Podbean was the first one that I looked into and it was the most user friendly to me. I was easily able to create an account and then start making the podcast. Some of the other suggested sites, you needed pay to create a podcast and that wasn’t something I was interested in doing. I’m sure those are higher quality sites with more features, but for someone like me, wanting to give podcasts a try but not ready to fully commit, that was disheartening. I looked into Soundcloud as well. I found it initially really hard to find the podcast hosting section of the site. It seemed more geared towards music and listening to podcasts. I think that could make it less likely for a student or someone starting out to use the site. I also looked at Spotify. I know that they are a very popular music streaming site (I’m an Apple Music user) so I thought that might be interesting to check out. It would be something good to familiarize myself with. I ended up using Spotify to publish my podcast. I originally was going to use Podbean, but I wasn’t sure how to edit the podcast, which I needed to do. I went through Spotify and it was a great tool to use. It created a transcript of the audio, which made editing it a breeze! There were so many other features that I didn’t fully explore but I imagine you could create really great work through Spotify!

There are so many ways that a podcast could be used in a library. Librarians could create a podcast to get information out to students about books and resources in the library. They could also create one to provide professional development to teachers. Librarians could create a podcast for parents to be involved and engage in what’s going on in the library. Students could create a podcast to extend their learning or book talk with one another. Librarians could use podcasts to grow themselves professionally or be inspired by new ideas. Librarians could connect students with podcasts that pertain to their interests. 

There are so many great podcasts out there. One cool podcast I found was the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. They aim to provide short, but informationally packed podcasts with bust teachers in mind. They create professional development content by teachers for teachers. I also found that the AASL had a recommendation of library focused podcasts (https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/two-podcasts-created-by-and-for-school-librarians/) . One of their featured podcasts was School Librarians United with Amy Hernon. It discusses the actualities of running a library. I am hopefully going to be starting my first year as a librarian next year, so I thought these seemed like a great resource to have! All these podcasts are available on Apple Music, Spotify and more.