The AASL National Conference in downtown St. Louis offered three days of meaningful learning and fresh ideas for VPSD librarians Becky Custard and Lesley Louder. Through table sessions, presentations and vendor resources, they gathered tools and strategies they brought back to Valley Park right away.
“One of the most helpful discoveries was through TeachingBooks,” said Becky Custard, VPES Librarian. “While I’ve used TeachingBooks before, I didn’t realize it includes an Early Literacy Toolkit. It’s a valuable resource that’s still fairly unknown in our district, and I’m excited to share it more widely.”
Mrs. Custard also attended Kristen Mattson’s Digital Citizenship session and received Edtopia’s Digital Citizenship Curriculum Framework. “This resource will be especially helpful as Michelle Wirick, VPES STEM teacher and I continue building strong digital citizenship learning into our units,” she said.
Mrs. Louder shared that her goal for attending was to fine tune makerspace work and gather more ideas to support literacy instruction. VPMS began engaging students through makerspace activities like Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins and hosted the teen librarian from Grand Glaize last October to help students sign up for library cards. The middle school reading program kicked off in ELA classes the first week of November and that program was launched school wide this month.
Overall, the conference provided new resources, book recommendations and practical ideas to strengthen literacy and learning across Valley Park.