Inquire at Fairforest Elementary School

 Inquire: Fairforest Elementary School

School Librarian: Elizabeth Lies

    Elizabeth Lies is the certified school librarian at Fairforest Elementary School, which is a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) school in the upstate of South Carolina. This school is also a Title I school. Lies implements the learner competencies of the shared foundation of Inquire within the school library. One way Lies implements these competencies is through teaching research and digital citizenship skills. Lies instructs and encourages students to safely research and provides students with safe websites to use. 

    The school library's schedule is fixed, which makes it difficult to find time for collaboration and planning. Lies meets with each class once per week for an hour. The hour encompasses a lesson and circulation of materials. The lessons are often research based. There is an emphasis and school culture on inquiry. Lies works closely with students on inquiry based projects to help deepen student understanding through completing at least one mini research project per class each month. 

    One example was a Titanic project that 4th and 5th graders completed. They were given a variety of websites to utilize to conduct their research and take notes. A lesson on plagiarism and citations is given to each class beforehand. The classes then present their information in a format of their choosing - Prezi, PowerPoint, Google Slides, etc.

    Other technologies utilized are Chromebooks, Google Suites, Ozobots, other robots, and iPads. I am not yet familiar with Ozobots so that is something I would like to look into the possibly implement in my own school library. I would also like to implement lessons on plagiarism, citations, and digital citizenship skills once I begin working as a school librarian.