Book+Room+BLT

=__**Book Room Building Leadership Team (BLT) **__=

__Members:__ Sarah H, Tiffany, Melissa, Bobbi, Jennifer W, Peggy, Sara S. (not present but sent email input that has been included in discussion and in notes below)

__F____irst Meeting:__ October 10, 2012 7:30 am (notes from this meeting are in blue and black) __Second Meeting__: November 28, 2012 3:30 pm (all notes from this meeting are in red)

Key Questions that were addressed and discussed at the Oct 10th meeting.

 * What are the benefits of having a book room at our school? **
 * knowing that all students will be provided high quality learning materials that are appropriately differentiated for content, interest, background and learning processes
 * teacher can make powerful instructional decisions with a leveled book room in order to help student continue their growth in reading
 * teachers can more efficiently plan for high quality reading instruction

Loft - other areas considered but rejected: OT area, library closet, conference room
 * Where will the book room be? **

Unsure - but a team of people need to be assembled after gathering of books from classrooms to go through and determine which titles will be leveled, which will not and which will be given away to students. (see next question below)
 * How many titles do we want to be included initially? (I have the costs from NLC) **

We need to communicate to all staff that the books currently in the loft are from the title room -these are the only source of leveled readers that the intervention staff has. Staff needs to honor this resource and not take without permission from the intervention team until all levled readers are cataloged, inventoried and organized.

We need to be thinking about a system of organizing the book room that makes finding books easy once desired book is located on the database/inventory (colored coded tubs or baskets, bags or other system . . . . . that visually indicates different categories or genres, non-fiction vs. fiction, etc).

Once book room is very organized and set up to go, we need to orient every teacher and train how to check out and in books. We need to then continue training and retraining how to select books that align with best practices in teaching reading.

Need to weed out "junk" - how to we define "junk"
 * Do we need to determine which guided reading sets are worthy of being in the book room? (quality vs. quantity) **

Team should include:


 * Two K-2 teachers
 * Two 3- 5 teachers
 * teachers that have been teaching reading using leveled readers for greater than 6 years
 * teachers that have taught multiple grade levels
 * teachers who have the time to do the work - on a Saturday

Two possible ideas for getting classes leveled - 1) pay a small group of teachers to obtain training and do the work; 2) NLC has a team that will come to level the books, once all staff is trained and the school is considered an ECAR school.
 * How do we get the book room leveled and inventoried? **

Questions for NLC:
 * Will they weed out the junk for us?
 * What is included in the service?
 * Do they produce and put the stickers on?

**When do we want to have our book room leveled?** As soon as possible depending upon the following variables:
 * when all books needing leveled can be collected and organized
 * when NLC has time
 * when we have the money

**How will we pay for a the leveling of a book room?** FMCE Grant? Box Top Money? PAC fundraisers? Specific fundraiser for the Book Room?

 **We need to budget for book shelves.(High School wood shop build shelves? Parents build shelves?)**

Key questions referenced in discussion, but not yet answered by the Book Room BLT: // What system of check out/borrow should we put into place once book room is ready? // // Do we want to go see others that have completed their book rooms? // // How do we define "junk" when going through the weeding process? //

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Immediate Next Steps: **
 * Teachers send their multiple sets of books to the book room
 * Elaine Vigil moves to the OT area
 * Sarah emails NLC for specific of the service they offer - Richard Clare, NLC, reports that they need to know an estimated time and amount of titles in order to proceed forward with scheduling their team to come and do the book room. Team would like Sarah to ask the following questions:
 * 1) Do they level chapter books? What about easy reader chapter books?
 * 2) Will they "weed" out the junk? Or do we need to do that first?
 * 3) After the book room is completed, how will we continue to add titles to the book room and the compelted database? Will they have to come back? Or will there be a way we can do this ourselves a few titles at a time?
 * Bobbi will talk to High School about building book shelves. - Woodshop students will build. We need to measure the height, width and length given to woodshop students. Then they will estimate the amount and type of lumber. Then we will try to get lumber donated.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Near Future Next Steps:**
 * Teachers send their multiple sets of books to the book room - ask teachers to estimate the number of multi-set book titles they have in order to get an estimated number of titles for estimating needed funding
 * Teacher "weeding" team is selected - Hold off until we get more information from NLC
 * Teacher "weeding team gets rid of junk - Hold off until we get more information from NLC
 * PAC/SAC presentation for funding needs - Sarah will recruit members of the BLT to come to next PAC meeting to inform parents of Book Room need and initiative
 * Conversations with FMCE to determine if this is a worthy cause for teacher grant application - Sarah has emailed Chris Jones to inquire if this is a worthy cause for application with their organization.