Melissa Merritt Collection Development Assignment FRIT 7134 / Fall 2012 10-14-2012 http://melissammerritt.pbworks.

com/w/page/59933130/Library

DESCRIPTION OF SITE AND LEARNERS I currently volunteer at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School in Knoxville, Tennessee. The school serves grades kindergarten through the fifth grade. There are approximately four hundred and ten students who attend the school. The students are served by six pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers, three first and three second grade teachers, four third grade teachers, three fourth grade teachers, and three fifth grade teachers. There are four Encore teachers who instruct in physical education, art, music, and library class. The school employs five teaching assistants and eleven student support service staff members. This equals twenty six teachers, five assistants, and eleven support members. Knox County has approximately 437,000 inhabitants. The county serves forty nine kindergarten through fifth grade schools, fourteen middle schools, and sixteen high schools. The focus of my project is aimed at fifth grade learners. There are three fifth grade teachers this year. They serve fifty nine fifth grade students. The fifth grade population is about seventy four percent white, twenty five percent African American, and there is one Hispanic and one Asian child. Sixty percent of the students get free or reduced lunch. There are eight children with learning exceptionalities. This includes one child who has English as a second language, a child with cerebral palsy, a high function autistic child, and several students with reading deficiencies. The fifth graders reading levels ranged from the grade equivalency of 1.4 up to 10. The average reading level was 5.4. Last year, the former fourth graders were tested in the areas of reading, math, science, and social studies by taking the TCAP test. The potential ratings were below basic, basic, proficient / average, and advanced. In reading, twenty percent of students were basic, sixty percent were proficient, and twenty percent were advanced. In the subject of math, ninety five percent were proficient and five percent were advanced. In science, twenty five percent were basic, fifty percent were proficient, and twenty five percent were advanced. In social studies, sixty six percent were proficient and thirty four percent were advanced. I interviewed a fifth grade teacher named Ms. Proffit and received information from her in addition to the data I received from the Media Specialist, Ms. Scoggins. Ms. Proffit was formerly a science teacher, but moved to social studies last year. She teaches her homeroom

class reading and math, but she teaches the whole fifth grade social studies. She said that due to a twenty five thousand dollar literacy grant she was able to buy many books for her class and she also searches yard sales and used book stores for materials. She relies heavily on Discovery Education, BrainPop, and primarily the internet to find information for her lecture content. She has used the public library and there is also a Knox County Reading Center that she has used infrequently. From the conversation that I had with her, I gathered that the students did not get the use to the library much for research, but that she could benefit from some resources so some of my purchasing choices were aimed at a person who was new to teaching history in addition to being aimed at the student population. Ms. Proffit does go by state standards and has a textbook, but she realizes that some students are visual learners so she presents a flip chart on her Promethean board. Her presentation style varies, but generally she states her objective for the day, provides background knowledge, and then lectures using her flip chart and she has the students take notes. She also shows videos. She gives multiple choice tests created by the county, but she always makes up her own written tests. This is a way to hold students more accountable. She said that when she gets to World War II and the Cold War era, the students are close to the time to take their standardized tests and so she spends more time on World War II, but has to rush through the other areas to prepare her students for their tests. She has only taught the subject one year prior so at this point she has not developed specific activities pertinent to this time period, but she does allow students to make posters or create projects using computers. She expressed frustration that she only has four computers in her room and two are very old. She also realizes that not all children have computers at home. Because the library is treated as a classroom, it is also hard for a teacher to take students there to do research on the computers. The media center houses seven thousand nine hundred and five books in its collection. Also in the media center are twenty three computers and a Promethean Smart board. However, the Media Specialist teaches several library classes every day. To my knowledge, there is no open library time. This would make it difficult for students to do research without interrupting class. Students do come in independently to check out books during library classes, but it seems as though it would be very difficult to utilize the library for research projects as a class unit.

CURRICULUM REVIEW For this collection development analysis, I will be examining and adding content to the resources pertinent to World War II and the Cold War. I could not locate the Tennessee standards online so I am going with the Georgia standards. The resources included will be based upon the following standards: SS5H6 The student will explain the reasons for Americas involvement in World War II. a. Describe Germanys aggression in Europe and Japans aggression in Asia. b. Describe major events in the war in both Europe and the Pacific; include Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, D-Day, VE and VJ Days, and the Holocaust. c. Discuss President Trumans decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. d. Identify Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hirohito, Truman, Mussolini, and Hitler. e. Describe the effects of rationing and the changing role of women and African- Americans; include Rosie the Riveter and the Tuskegee Airmen. f. Explain the U.S. role in the formation of the United Nations.

SS5H7 The student will discuss the origins and consequences of the Cold War. a. Explain the origin and meaning of the term Iron Curtain. b. Explain how the United States sought to stop the spread of communism through the Berlin airlift, the Korean War, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. c. Identify Joseph McCarthy and Nikita Khrushchev.

COLLECTION REVIEW To review the collection, I visually inspected the library initially and had the media specialist help me search her catalog to locate the books she had that pertained to World War II and the Cold War. She had six books and about World War II and none about the Cold War. The publication dates of the books ranged from 1998 to 2004. These were the six books that she has: Airplanes of WWII by Robinson Masters1998 World War II by Simon Adams 2000: This title was checked out fourteen times last year. The War at Home by Judie Klum 2003: This title was checked out twice last year. The Holocaust by Seymour Rossel 1989: This title was checked out twice last year. Pearl Harbor by Tamera Britton 2003: This book was checked out four times last year. World War II: Letters from the Battlefront by Virginia Schomp 2004: This book was checked out five times last year.

I noticed that the books were old and the collection needed to be updated with more current books. I noticed that the content was very lacking and needed to be enhanced. Some of the books were in poor condition. These books do not seem to be checked out a lot, but the World War II book was checked out fourteen times in a small school. This seems to indicate a desire for more books about the topic. The topics were from an American perspective and were not multicultural in nature. The limited number of books does not seem to meet the needs of the curriculum if the teacher has to go out and buy her own books to be able to teach the material. Summary of collection needs: 1. There need to be more books, videos, and other resources pertaining to World War II and the Cold War added to the collection. 2. The books need to be of a more diverse nature in terms of topic and culture. Specifically, there should be books included about the countries who were the key players in World War II. 3. The collection needs some fiction books dealing with these topics. 4. The collection needs to have more recently published titles.

BUDGET SUMMARY To carry out this study and implement a plan to enhance the collection, I spoke with the Media Specialist, Ms. Scoggins. I asked the fifth grade teacher Ms. Proffit about the types of books she may want to use or books from which students might benefit. I used a myriad of sources to search for books included BookList, NoveList, Titlewave, and Amazon. I considered the relevancy to the curriculum. I thought about how often the books might be used based on the limited check out information available. I considered price points. I looked at grade levels and book reviews to determine the appropriateness of books for a fifth grade audience. For some books, I could not find reviews, but the descriptions of the books gave me a strong impression that they were comprehensive works that would cover great spans of time and would serve the purpose of multiple books thus saving money.

Keywords Used: World War II The Cold War Roosevelt Truman Stalin Hitler Winston Churchill England Japan The Soviet Union The Great Depression 1920s Mussolini Nazi Anne Frank The New Deal Pearl Harbor The American Experience In World War II Herbert Hoover Internment camps Kamikaze Anti-Semitism