Acquisition

A Wish List booklet is housed at the circulation desk. If a student comes to me asking for a title that the media center does not have, they then write their name, the title of the book, and the author's name in the Wish List booklet. Student names are included so that the LMS knows which student to notify when the book comes in after being ordered.

As part of the annual Collection Development Plan, teachers are given a survey to complete where they can list books, authors, and topics that they would like to see added to the media center.

As funding allows, these titles are purchased. When kindergarten teachers wanted books about community helpers, the LMS worked together with them to find the titles that best suited their needs.

Whenever a student asks for a book that we do not have in our media center but can be found in another media center, that title is requested for them, and the LMS adds that book to the "Shopping Cart" for the media center.

The LMS wrote a grant with Donors Choose to supply books that had been written or illustrated by authors and illustrators attending FAME, with the intent of getting them signed to boost circulation. 

Many of these books were written/illustrated by minorities, which helps reflect the school's cultural diversity.

Three additional grants were also written to supply books that support the BEST Standards. This was done because teachers across grade levels had been asking for texts that supported the BEST Standards.

The LMS used the list of Mentor Texts provided by the Florida Department of Education to cultivate a list of best titles to support classroom learning while reflecting classics, as well as our diverse population.

Through these grants, the LMS was able to get the following funding:

$1074 in books for third grade

 $945 in books for fourth grade

$974 in books for fifth grade

The funding was used to purchase 10 copies of each title that was chosen.

Teachers immediately began checking out sets of books to use in their classrooms.

The LMS began using sets that were not being checked out as part of my library lessons.

For instance, since no one had checked out Casey at the Bat, it was used as a library lesson to support poetry and prose standards for fourth grade.

The lesson was supplemented with a Flocabulary video that helped identify the theme and author's purpose in the text.