• The mission of this special area course is to provide opportunities to ensure that students and staff are effective users of resources, ideas, and information.  Additionally, we promote the power of literacy and its place for our students as they prepare to function successfully in life and work in the future.  These literacy skills include the use of higher-order thinking, collaboration, innovations, and information and media literacy.  We recognize the essential role of the school library media program, its facilities, resources, and personnel in the educational process as a catalyst for all academic instruction and a dynamic force for excellence in education.

    Our Goals

    • Provide intellectual and physical access to materials in various formats
    • Provide scaffolded instruction that fosters competence and stimulates interest in reading, viewing, and using information and ideas
    • Provide continuity in instruction: teacher to teacher, grade level to grade level, building to building
    • Provide students with the essential concepts needed to become lifelong learners
    • Provide appropriate materials to support state approved core content curriculum standards and district approved curricula
    • Provide an atmosphere that fosters comfortable, confident, independent library users and an appreciation of the library as a source of literature, information and resources
    • Provide the promotion of literature appreciation with the availability of a wide variety of literature types for staff and students
    • Utilize reading as a means for personal growth

    Standard 1: Access information efficiently to inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge

    • Recognize the need for information
    • Formulate questions based on information needs
    • Identify various potential sources of information
    • Develop and use successful strategies for locating information
    • Seek information from diverse sources and formats (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital)

    Standard 2: Evaluate information critically and competently

    • Determine accuracy, relevance, and comprehensiveness of information
    • Distinguish among fact, point of view, and opinion
    • Identify inaccurate and misleading information in various formats (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital)
    • Select information appropriate to the problem or question

    Standard 3: Use information accurately, creatively, and responsibly to share knowledge and to participate collaboratively and productively

    • Organize information for practical application
    • Integrate prior knowledge with new information to create new understandings
    • Produce and communicate information and ideas in appropriate formats
    • Use problem-solving techniques to devise strategies for improving process or product
    • Practice ethical behavior when using print and digital resources (including freedom of speech, intellectual freedom, copyright, and plagiarism)
    • Participate collaboratively to broaden understandings

     Standard 4: Appreciate literature and other creative expressions of thoughts and ideas and pursue knowledge related to personal interests and aesthetic growth

    • Read, view and listen for pleasure and personal growth
    • Develop a knowledge of genres and literary elements
    • Derive meaning from informational texts in various formats (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital)