Great New Features Added To Our Library Catalog!

We are excited to share two of our favorite features added to HMMPL's Evergreen Catalog that will help teachers plan lessons and create reading lists. 

Time saver... Learn how to search for items by shelving locations in the Hussey-Mayfield Library and create book lists that link to the catalog. You can create a book/DVD/CD list and share it with your class or save it in your account. Every year you can refer to this list.  To save you time, select items from this list and put them on HOLD. We will pull them for you as they become available.

Here is a list of 3rd-5th grade level World War II Juvenile Fiction Books.  They are located with the shelving locations: Fiction-1st Floor, Tween-1st Floor, and Newbery-1st Floor.

World War II jFiction Books 

We can create lists with specific reading levels and topics for you or teach you how.  Let us know and we will be happy to assist you!

Full STEAM Ahead: A STEAM Primer

Put together an art teacher, music teacher and a science teacher-what would you get?  At Dayton Regional STEM School in Dayton, Ohio, you would get origami butterflies, illustrated storybooks and watercolors of cells. At Taylor Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia, you would get music and paintings on the life cycle of flowers. These are just a few projects that were born from a STEAM-Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics-partnership between art science, and music teachers.

What is STEAM?

Advocated by John Maeda of the Rhode Island School of Design, STEAM integrates art and design with STEM concepts. Even though STEAM is grounded in the premise that creativity is the basis of all innovation, you might not think that art and science would be likely partners.  But are they similar or polar opposites?

Both Kate Cook and Jenny Montgomery from Dayton Regional STEM School claim that their partnership is successful because their content areas, art and science, can harmonize together.  “Both artists and scientists aim to explore and make sense of the world,” Cook said. “While we use different lenses, they are often complimentary.”

Working together inspired both, Cook and Montgomery, to think about content in different ways.  Much of what being learned in my biology class is, Cook says, “visual in nature.”  In science, students spend a great deal of time creating and interpreting models through repeat experimentation. And just as scientists explore discovery through experimentation, artists also create a design or structure using form and function, sometimes using engineering and mathematical concepts to build their desired artistic outcome.

In the end, artists and scientists take risks, make mistakes and start over again all with the ultimate end of innovation or discovery. With Jeremy Ferrar, Bianca Sanchez and Elizabeth Ashley at Taylor Elementary, they found through collaboration that their students learned to better communicate and work as a group. 

“Rather than telling them what to do,” said Sanchez, “we present them with a problem which forced them to think creatively.” 

In fact, multiple studies show that a strong arts education contributes and improves a student’s cognition, memory and attention skills in the classroom, an attribute that Taylor Elementary attests to.  (Hardiman, 2009) Further, a 2002 study by Americans for the Arts found too that an arts education strengthens problem-solving and critical-thinking skills thereby increasing a student’s overall academic achievement in school.  (Arts, 2002) So it seems that both disciplines use skills interchangeable with the other.

To see the full article, check out Full STEAM Ahead at Parent Guide magazine. 

What is Project Based Learning?

At Coons Rapids High School in Minnesota, Leah Sams’ biomedical class, over 25 weeks, investigated a staged death, using a manikin for a body. They performed labs on pills found near her body.  They did fingerprint and footprint comparisons.  They used fake blood drops with a similar viscosity as blood at various drop-heights to determine the splatter effect at various trajectories.  They then compared those labs to the drops found at the crime scene.  “The class really enjoyed the blood spatter lab,” said Sams. “They also enjoyed the body temperature lab where they calculated various temperatures, made inferences based on how long it took to get the victim’s body temperature when found, and completed a graph on the results.”  All of this work was strictly hands-on, project based learning of a realistic experience. 

Project based learning is not a unique concept.  Doing projects has been a long standing tradition in American education.  When educators talk about project based learning (PBL), they are really talking about projects like Sams’ dead body. PBL has been shown to help kids retain information better and for longer periods of time and to demonstrate improved communication and collaboration skills.  How it’s done varies.  Some schools use Project Lead the Way, which provides STEM curriculum for participating schools.  Other schools use curriculums from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Museum of Science in Boston.  Internet resources are vast with sites like Edutopia, NASA, NSF, How Stuff Works, Engineer Girls, GEMS, and others.  But the key aspect of PBL is that students are actually doing the work and coming up with real results.  As a teaching method, it is exciting; however, it requires a learning curve for teachers and their students. 

Dr. Shannon McKinney, Principal at K-5 Elementary School at Boren in Seattle, found that her teachers were more than ready to break out of the traditional school learning modes.  ”We knew that we wanted to integrate and present concepts in a project based learning model,” said McKinney. But it requires, says McKinney, planning and collaboration across the curriculum for it to be successful.  In the end, students and teachers end up focusing on real world, hands on projects like solving the mystery of a dead body.  They are getting their heads out of textbooks and behaving like real world experts. 

To read more about Project Based Learning and STEM see the following article Getting Their Hands Dirty: Project-Based Learning and STEM