Poster Presentations
Thursday, October 19 | 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Conference attendees may use the AASL2023 app for an up-to-date and comprehensive listing of all conference events. The app will launch in early October.
After the presentation window on Thursday, the posters will be moved into the exhibit hall for the remainder of the conference.
Authors Engaging Students: The Relationship between Author Visits and Student Motivation to Read and Write
Learn how one district is maximizing student motivation to read and write through asynchronous author visits during library lessons. Through analysis of circulation data and 2nd grade focus groups, we are able to focus on program elements that support student voice and choice while developing an intrinsic love of reading. Learning from different authors helps students develop empathy and awareness, become more engaged in discussions, and recognize their own potential as readers and writers. Walk away with the information you need to make a case for supporting author visits to your school library.
Strand: Research
Black Girl Magic: How to Diversify and Light Up Your Library Collection
Come explore must-have titles that feature Black girl characters in fantasy, science fiction, and thriller literary genres. We will share ways to assess gaps in your library collection. Then, learn how to increase diversity in your book collection by gauging student interest and creating a space where every student feels seen and valued.
Strand: Collection Development
Books + Maker Activities = Standards Achieved
Come and see some fun ways to meet AASL, ISTE and content standards through putting books and activities together. Diverse books appropriate for K – 8 will provide a wide range of reading choices. Activities will include high tech and low cost options. You’ll leave with ideas to use immediately when you return to school.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Building Community Through School Library Event Planning
Three elementary school librarians will share their collaborative work in developing library events with the intent to include students of all skills, abilities, and interests to be part of the library throughout the year. These events also aim to include students, staff, and families through a variety of ideas, both large and small, to build a sense of community within the school library. QR code at presentation provides links to resources.
Strand: Design & Create
Calling All School Librarians: Website Evaluation has Changed, and We Must, Too! (And We Need YOUR Help!)
We’ve got some ‘unlearning’ to do and it’s going to take all of us! As academic librarians and professors, every day we work with students on their research at the college level. Unfortunately, we are seeing gaping holes in new college students’ ability to evaluate sources for credibility and to understand and successfully navigate the steps in the research process. This poster will address better techniques for website evaluation that rely on critical thinking skills and not checklists, give advice for communicating this model to teachers and administrators in K-12 schools, and provide tips to embed critical thinking about research sources into the curriculum. We hope to impart the importance of this topic because we need all librarians, regardless of specialty, to help us get the word out: Times have changed and we are doing a disservice to our students by not changing our old ways.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Collaborating With Your Admin and Teacher Teams to Inspire DEIB Work Schoolwide
Librarians, as the resource experts in a school, are particularly poised to assist the entire community with both major and minor shifts in initiatives. Find out how you can connect your skills to those of your administrators and teachers to affect change to either start or revise Diversity Equity Inclusion and Belonging efforts at your school. The presented plan is done in a way that shows thought and analysis to ensure it can withstand outside groups or forces who may wish to challenge our process.
Strand: Collaboration
College Readiness: Academic & School Library Partnerships, A Statewide Organizational Approach
This poster session outlines a partnership between two statewide librarian organizations rethinking how joint collaborations can lead to innovative programs. By joining forces, this initiative bolsters the importance of school media specialists at the high school level and provides opportunities for rethinking possible partnerships between academic librarians and school media specialists.
Strand: Collaboration
Copyright Mastery Quiz
Every school librarian has to teach their teachers (and hopefully students!) about copyright. Rather than stand and lecture at a Faculty Meeting, maybe we could try using a Mastery Quiz to get everyone reviewing and thinking about the practical applications of Copyright. Mastery quizzes require you to get the question right before you move on to the next question. Can you engage your faculty with only 5 or 6 questions? Give it a try!
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Creating AASL’s Guidebook to Driving Inquiry in School Libraries
This poster outlines the work that the 2023 ALA Emerging Leaders Team A completed for AASL to write an activity guidebook for school librarians on the Shared Foundation of Inquire. Access to the 70+ page guidebook and an infographic on the importance of inquiry in schools will be provided. The guidebook includes scenarios, discussion questions for school librarians, activities, and a resource matrix so users can find all tools and materials to implement immediately. K-12 librarians will walk away with content for how inquiry can be applied to the Domains Think, Create, Share, and Grow.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Creative Approaches to Integrating WWII Graphic Novels and Primary Sources in the Classroom
This poster will present strategies for connecting Library of Congress primary source materials to graphic novels, specifically Displacement by Kiku Hughes. Historically, the exploration of primary sources is closely linked to the social studies curriculum as well as traditional school tasks and assessments. However, connecting those primary sources with a popular and engaging medium like graphic novels can breathe new life into the traditional research tasks of finding, analyzing, and citing primary sources and create opportunities for collaboration between social studies teachers and school librarians.
Strand: Collaboration
Cultivating Productive Struggle: Robotic STEM Education in Guilford County Elementary School Libraries
This poster session will outline the steps used in one school district to begin a school library robotics program, from choosing a curriculum, to onboarding participating school library media coordinators, implementing beginning of the year lessons, and initial positive program impacts. This poster will provide participants with insights regarding moving STEM and robotics in the school library from theory to practice.
Strand: Design & Create
Decoding Media with Elementary Students
Media Literacy Education is a hot topic in today’s schools. In today’s media saturated world, students must be able to successfully access, analyze and evaluate the vast amount of information they encounter on a daily basis. How do you take the tools for media decoding and make them relevant to the elementary classroom? Media decoding for our youngest learners has a unique set of tools. Learn the best practices for teaching constructivist media decoding to elementary students.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Developing Leisure Reading Habit among School Children: Analyzing the Role of School Children, Family and Teacher
Developing leisure reading habits at an early age helps school children become avid readers and lifelong learners. The study aimed to explore the current status of reading habits among school children and to identify the factors affecting their reading habits. The significant effect of the type of school denoted that school environment, reading activities, and teachers’ skills played an important role to support primary graders’ reading habits. The study would add to the body of knowledge and have implications for parents, school teachers, principals, librarians, education policymakers, and the government.
Strand: Literacy
Getting Reading Right with Choice, Voice, and Accessibility
Finding right topic of content fit is imperative to get kids interested in reading, accessibility is just as important. What if the format you are giving the student the book in, is not one that is accessible to them? Learn how to create reading success by providing students with a more accessible format. School librarians share evidence-based practices and a simple strategy to ensure all students get the reading support they urgently need. Learn how the large print format can make a big difference for developing and below-grade-level readers, emerging bilinguals, and students who stress about reading. Hear about giving students choice in format and what students voiced about large print. Research and first-hand experience show how large print supports a more satisfying reading experience, better engagement, and over time, higher comprehension skills. Get your hands on books, data, and knowledge to increase comfort and confidence with young readers. Strand: Collection Development
Growing STEM Thru Gardening in Libraries
Does your school have a plot of vacant overgrown land? Have you considered the value of repurposing and realigning school grounds and goals? Young Middle Magnet is a public middle magnet school located in East Tampa’s College Hill neighborhood, built upon limestone influenced soils, yet with repurposing and goal realignment, Young has engineered a renewed vision. Growing STEM thru Gardening in Libraries will engage students in inclusive library programming through collaboration with science and STEM educators, providing immersive hands-on problem based learning tasks that connect people, ecology and health, Young Middle Magnet seeks to cultivate inclusivity through building community in gardening. Sustainability and Global Planting serve as key learning strands throughout the Magnet curriculum at Young Middle Magnet. Growing STEM through Gardening in Libraries will serve as the catalyst for the students of Young to embrace the natural world, the sciences of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and Digital and Media Literacy to pave the way for: 1. restoration and repurposing of vacant land/ecosystems 2. promotion of biodiversity thru the planting of native plants 3. fostering social inclusion 4. contributing towards a healthy balanced environment 5. and encouraging a realignment of the relationship between people, food and nature.
Strand: Collaboration
Growing Together: Crafting Impactful Communities of Practice with School Librarians in Professional Development Workshops
WebJunction program engaged in with 15 school librarians across the country to help them develop and implement transformative projects in their libraries; 2. the development of an online resource called The School Librarian’s Information Shelf that was informed by that mentorship project; and 3. the design of professional development workshops that featured reflective, hands-on, and collaborative activities to facilitate community-building and peer learning among school librarians.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Innovating the Library Program with MITT: Meaningful, Innovative, and Transformative Transliteracy
Learn about the innovative library program at The Out-of-Door Academy Lower School in Sarasota, Florida. Recognizing the needs of the students to grow as critical thinkers, risk takers, curators, collaborators, creators, and respectful digital citizens, a traditional library program has evolved into MITT (Meaningful, Innovative, Transformative, Transliteracy). Learners enter a space where they are surrounded with information and resources in different forms: books, robots, green screen studio with lights and cameras, computers, iPads, virtual reality viewers, and more. Students are provided with experiences where they are encouraged to think critically, be creative, innovative, and learn to collaborate and communicate effectively in a variety of ways. This poster presentation will share how the MITT program has shaped the learning and thinking at The Out-of-Door Academy, and provide ideas of how to take a library and program to the next level, supporting learners as they think, create, share, and grow.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Investigating Principals’ Perceptions of the Role of School Librarians: A Mixed Methods Approach
This poster presents the findings from a mixed-methods study that examines how Massachusetts principals perceive the role of school librarians as defined by the AASL. Factors are identified that shape these perceptions, including those that relate to principals’ formative and professional experiences with school librarians and the demographics of their district. The study was based in Massachusetts, but the findings could be transferred more broadly. Recommendations in the area of collaboration, professional development, and research will be made for school librarians, school and district leaders, state education agencies, and higher education institutions.
Strand: Research
Makerspace STEAM Night: How Lady’s Island Middle School used the AASL STEM Special Event Grant
Learn how Lady’s Island Middle School (LIMS) librarian Joanna Sargent used the 2023 AASL STEM Special Event Grant. In early October, the LIMS school library held a special maker night with women and BIPOC engineers to give our students career ideas and encourage STEM careers. Students chose in advance 1 of 3 possible maker projects and then were introduced to engineers who led them (and parents/guardians) through the design process. They went home with a related book and the project. This poster has links to the planning process, supplies and the budget for the maker night as well as ideas for implementing your own STEM/STEAM Maker Night.
Strand: Design & Create
MISelf in Books Inclusive Book List – How to Start Your Own
Our poster will be an overview of the MISelf in Books project, an inclusive books list curated annually by school librarians in Michigan. Our poster will include the 5 Ws and 1 H, with an emphasis on why and how so the successful project can be replicated by others.
Strand: Collection Development
Missouri’s New Instructional Standards for School Librarians–Aligned to AASL Standards
Missouri’s new instructional standards for school librarians are aligned to AASL standards and include the Big Ideas of Reading Engagement, Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and Innovation. Including PK-12 Learner Expectations and Competencies, the standards are organized into grade-bands K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-10, and 11-12 to ensure usability and adaptability by librarians in fixed or flexible schedules and whose districts are traditional or working toward competency-based education structures. This poster session highlights the process that the Missouri Association of School Librarians Standards Task Force followed to create these standards in less than one year, the standards themselves, and the next steps toward implementation and state adoption.
Strand: Teaching & Learning
Mobile Makerspace: A Systemic Approach to Access and Opportunity
Stop by to learn about Parkway School District’s Mobile Makerspace, a districtwide program for providing equitable access to STEM experiences. Makerspace kits are checked out to individual school librarians for one month. The librarian collaborates with their school community to use the kit to create innovative teaching and learning opportunities.
Strand: Design & Create
Normalized Barriers: The Structure and Performance of School Library Routines
Like any workplace, the work of school libraries revolves around routines. And while these routines can help get work done, they can also be a source of consistent frustration, discomfort, and annoyance. The blueprints for how this work is supposed to be done can be particularly problematic for librarians with non-dominant identities. As the routine is repeated, these barriers are normalized and standardized. Using audio diaries and interviews with school librarians, this poster presents preliminary findings of a study aimed at uncovering barriers in the blueprints of school library work routines, how these barriers are experienced differently by librarians with varied identities, and the workarounds librarians implement to overcome those barriers.
Strand: Research
Taking Literacy to the Streets – Lit Limo
Come along with the Richmond Public Schools Lit Limo as it hits the streets and shares literacy throughout the city to all of our children. Tips and points will be shared from scheduling to funding.
Strand: Literacy
Using VR In the Classroom
Wondering how to integrate some of the newest technologies into the curriculum? The overriding factor is to remember that tech is a tool and should be integrated for it to be a true authentic learning experience. This poster session will address the how-to’s of having students create their own Virtual Reality Tour.
Strand: Design & Create
We Are ALL Readers: A Community Responds to Book Challenges
Come see how a group of children’s authors/illustrators, school librarians, public librarians, and community members created a diverse children’s books festival in response to local book challenges and bans. The We Are ALL Readers Children’s Book Festival in Rhode Island educates about the power of children’s books to serve as windows and mirrors and celebrates the diverse books and authors who are being targeted in some communities. See how librarians, creators, and caring citizens harnessed their passion and talents to create a festival that includes StoryWalks® featuring diverse titles, virtual author visits at Title 1 schools, a Beanstack reading challenge featuring titles by featured event authors, teaching resources, and a day long event spotlighting picture book, middle grade, and graphic novel authors and illustrators, crafts, book giveaways, and a pop-up book store. We Are ALL Readers is an example of one way that librarians, authors, illustrators, and community members can respond to book challenges while also celebrating the beauty and importance of diverse books.
Strand: Leadership & Advocacy
You Have Power: Leaders Know Their Powers and How to Draw on Them
Presenting the 5 bases of Power identified by Raven and French in 1959 and the 4 types of power described by Lisa VeneKlasen and Valeries Miller in A New Weave of Power (2002). Librarians will see how they can draw on their understanding of these to build relationships which in turn create advocates for libraries and librarians, with a particular focus on advocating for underrepresented populations to individuals and institutions external to your library.
Strand: Leadership & Advocacy
225 N. Michigan Ave, Suite 1300, Chicago, IL 60601