Welcome to the School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning project, a 3-year project that brings together teachers and school librarians to curate and create sets of STEM resources. The goal is to support professional learning cohorts to elevate and expand the role of school librarians, and transform their capacities as instructional leaders toward advancements in STEM learning.This project is led by ISKME, in partnership with the New Hampshire Department of Education, Granite State College, and New Hampshire's Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Network. The project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

Contains handouts, slides and material used in the 2016 ALA Annual Conference AASL presentation on the 3-year IMLS project, School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning. June 26, 2016, Orlando, FL.

Literacy is an important aspect of science. To be literate in science means students are able to understand, read, and write in terms of science. This lesson is designed to get students to think critically about real world application. The lesson incorporates technology and Bloom’s highest level of thinking, creativity. Students will learn about writing scientific names of organisms and classifying organisms, how organisms interact with each other and their environment, and the impact of natural disasters.

8th Grade Science teacher Peter Hill from King Middle School in Maine shares a quick strategy tool and strategy he refers to as "word cloud". The "word cloud" is generated by a computer program that takes words from an article and generates a "cloud" with different sizes of words with the size emphasizing the frequency of the word. Mr. Hill uses this as a quick pre-reading activity to increase curiosity and engagement and to have students anticipate what the article or essay is about and what the main idea is. Teachers might also consider a twist to this idea and have student groups create their own word cloud after reading a selected text.11

This module supports the content covered in School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning (SLASL), Webinar #1: Selecting Standards & Creating Learning Objectives.     MODULE #1 SLIDES: Selecting Standards & Creating Learning ObjectivesIn this module you will prepare for completing parts #1-9 of the planning template by:Evaluating collaboration best practices for your innovative project;Analyzing the role of a standard in creating a unit of learning;Applying understandings of standard components to the creation of essential questions;Examining the role of the summative assessment in guiding inquiry units; andEvaluating  student objectives for specificity and effectiveness. Follow-Up TaskI. Create Your Unit Template: Create a copy of the Unit Template, linked below, as a Google Document. You will draft your unit in your new document. When your unit is final in a few months, you will publish it into OER Commons.      UNIT TEMPLATE: Text-Based STEM Inquiry(Important note: please add Joanna Schimizzi, Letha Goger, and Gail March as able to comment on the draft unit when you set it up your Google doc. We will be there to cheer you on with feedback and support along the way!)II. Complete Sections #1-9: Prior to our next webinar (March 30th), please plan to work together to complete sections #1-9. Please stop when you have completed Sections #1-9 and do not work ahead!

Recorded webinar session from March 2, 2016, presented as a professional learning component to STEM teacher and school librarian participants of the IMLS funded School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning (#SLASL 2016) project. Webinar #1: Selecting Standards & Creating Learning Objectives.

This template provides an approach for creating a STEM investigation that includes text-based inquiry to build student STEM literacy skills. It is populated with examples and resources to support your authoring. The template was created to support library media specialists and STEM teacher cohorts in year two of the School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning project, led by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management (ISKME) in partnership with Granite State University, New Hampshire, and funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Educators who chose to remix this template will trade out example language with their own language and design.

The world’s youth will have a significant role to play if we are to bring about the widespread behavioural change needed to shift towards more sustainable lifestyles and consumption habits. It is important for young people to understand that behind over-consumption lies increased exploitation of resources, rising poverty, widening inequalities and persistent conflicts, all of which will worsen with climate change and eventually will minimize their opportunities for a better and sustainable future. The poorest of the poor, those who cannot consume enough to meet their basic needs, are the worst hit by climate change. Most of these are young people under 24, who make up nearly half of the world’s population, with most living in developing countries.