Making the Media Center Truly a Center of Learning

Imagine a media center full of students and teachers doing the usual
“library things,” plus up to 40 other students engaged, totally engaged, at
learning resource centers. The concept was brought to the Fort Benning,
Georgia, schools by principal Del Hicks 11 years ago. After a couple of
years of testing at one school, it went system-wide in 1987.

What is a learning resource center? Each of our six elementary schools does
its centers differently, but the basic program allows small groups of
students to come to the media center to use games, filmstrips, educational
machines, read-alongs and other activities that reinforce what the teacher
is covering in class. The teacher can work with smaller groups back in the
classroom, thus avoiding the workbook/ditto sheet dreariness for all groups.
This happens in an “open library” with no weekly scheduled “library period,”
although library skills classes are given as needed.

Speaking from my experience, here are some of the conditions that should be
in place to implement the program:

Support at the top. Explain to the principal that the concept will give you
a method of supporting the teachers’ instruction on a daily basis, will give
the students a chance to use the media center often, will appeal to many
learning styles, and will make the media center a dynamic hub of the
educational program.
Support of the faculty. Don’t try to convert all the teachers at once. Some
will question the wisdom of such a break with the traditional concept of a
school library. Involve willing teachers in selecting materials.
An aide and resources. At least one full-time aide is essential to running
the centers. Ask the principal to let you sit in on interviews of applicants
and look for someone who loves to stay busy, can think on her feet, can
listen to eight conversations at once, and loves working with children. For
starting up, it would be nice to get at least $1,000 to buy games and other
materials, but you can do it with less.
The scheduling, organization of materials, and procedures should be designed
to fit your personality and organizational style. What follows are
suggestions based on seven years of refining the concept at Edward A. White
Elementary School. Use what works for you.
Getting Ready
Start planning a year in advance. Explain the concept at faculty meetings in
terms of what it will do for teachers. If you have a teacher from a school
where the program has been done before, you’ll probably have a strong
advocate. For schools where the library is treated like a special area
(along with art, music, and physical education), the first reaction of many
teachers will be, “What! Give up my planning period!” Work with the
principal to offer an alternative to “library period,” so the teachers will
still have a planning period.

Meet with teachers at each grade level to see what skills they teach that
would lend themselves to center activities. Take inventory of the materials
and equipment you have already. You’ll need several sound/filmstrip
projectors with headphone jacks, cassette tape recorders with headsets, and
as many teaching aids as you can find.

The most successful activities in our program have been board games that
stress specific skills, such as getting the main idea, cause and effect,
sequence of events, and library skills. Most of these games can be found in
school supply catalogs, and are a bargain at $20-25 each.

When selecting games and teaching aids, consider how well the item will hold
up with heavy use, whether it is self-checking, how much time you will need
to spend explaining it, and how appealing it is to the students. Avoid
flimsy folder and table games and battery-operated machines with probes and
cards. (Students tend to mark that correct answer with the probe.) You won’t
be able to watch every activity all the time. Machines that give an audible
response to incorrect as well as correct answers encourage students not to
guess.

Process the games and teaching aids. Mark the accession number on all game
pieces. You’ll be finding pawns, dice, cards, and other strange pieces all
over the place, or in the wrong box. Without the accession numbers, you
could go crazy trying to match them up. Buy some extra pawns, dice, and
bingo markers.

Don’t put out the original copy of the directions and answer sheets – they
won’t last a week. Rather, make a photocopy and laminate it. Reinforce the
corners of game boxes and put game pieces in self-closing plastic bags with
a list of the pieces.

Scheduling
Our schedule gives us 20-minute blocks for center activities. We allow ten
minutes to set up for the next groups. If teachers want a full 30 minutes
with their groups back in the classroom, the center groups must spend the
last ten minutes checking out books, reading magazines, using the computers,
or looking at displays. (We have a glass-enclosed bee hive in the room.) The
first-grade teachers have three reading groups and rotate them between the
classroom, the computer lab and the centers.

On the schedule, the numbers in parentheses indicate the number of groups
the teacher is sending at that time. A “group” for learning resource centers
consists of no more than four students. (Many of the games we use are
designed for four players.) When electronic teaching aids are scheduled
(such as GeoSafari), I assign two machines to a group, with two students per
machine.

Looking at the schedule, you can see that at 8:45 on Monday we have 10
groups (40 students) from five different classes. The next period,
9:15-9:35, we have only eight groups, from the same classes as the earlier
groups but with different students.

Fifteen of our 18 classroom teachers send all or half of their class to
centers four to five days a week. Our physical and staff limitations require
us to schedule no more than 12 groups (48 students) at a time. The schedule
is on a spreadsheet and easily changed as teachers adjust their classroom
routines. The teachers should give you a roster showing group assignments.
This prevents confusion when a student forgets his group or decides to try
to join a friend at a more interesting activity.

Planning
I try to get to the teachers’ classrooms during their planning periods to
select the activities for the learning centers. I feel this is cooperative
planning at its best. It can take from two to four hours a week at first,
but much less time is required after the system is running and the teachers
are used to the process and the materials. The teacher may have some
activities in mind, or she may ask for suggestions. In either case, I feel
it’s important for the teacher to make the final decision.

Each teacher is given a printout of learning center resources and another of
all other software. These lists help us make the most appropriate choice.
Also, I prepare a monthly list of seasonal materials (filmstrips about
holidays and events) that are on reserve and can be scheduled by the hour
for use in centers or in the classroom.

Some teachers plan for one week at a time, others for two or more. Some
members of teaching teams will each make a plan and then rotate the plans.

Try not to schedule many activities that take a long time to explain or
require close supervision. Instead, try to come up with a mix, including
filmstrips, easy-to-learn games, and read-along books. Some excellent games
for the upper grades need detailed explanations. You can go to the classroom
before the first group comes and explain the game to the entire class,
thereby saving start-up time in the media center.

Running the Learning Resource Center
If shelf space allows, lay out all the materials for the week by class. If
two classes are using the same material at different times, I note this on
the weekly plan.

Have a set procedure for students to find out what center activity they’ll
be doing when they come to the media center. Make a rule that students will
roll the die or use the spinner to see who goes first in the games. We have
a house rule that, after determining who is first, we always go clockwise in
deciding who goes second, third, and fourth.

To help us keep on schedule and to maintain our sanity, we also have a rule
that nobody leaves the table until an adult checks that all parts of a game
are put away, the filmstrip is rewound, and so forth.

Because many of the games cause excitement among the players, the noise
level can become a problem. Try to separate games which require talking from
the area where students are listening on headsets. Use back rooms, study
carrels, and isolated areas for noisy activities. The worst thing we can do
to students for excessive noise or misbehavior is to give them time-out.
They love doing centers!

Ask the primary teachers to send an aide or parent volunteer to the media
center with the very young. These workers will know the children by name,
know which ones need special help, and can explain the games and supervise
the activities.

Have “sponge” activities in case the filmstrip is only 12 minutes long, or
some bright students whiz through the game faster than expected. Puzzles and
other such activities work well. Buy them cheap at yard sales.

Often the library aide can supervise the centers alone. During especially
busy times or when there are games that need extra explanation or
supervision, you’ll need to jump in and help.

Establishing learning resource centers is not simple. It takes a basic
reorientation of the media program, support from administration and faculty,
a little money, some hard work, careful organization, and the ability to
handle an active media environment. The rewards make it worth the effort.
Teachers will love the way centers support their instruction and allow them
to work with small groups. Students are eager for the change of setting and
the fun of games. Parents find their children are more excited about
learning and get to the media center more often for checking out books and
doing research. And you’ll be content in the knowledge that your media
center has become the heart of the school.

Owen Ditchfield has been the Media Specialist at Edward A. White Elementary
School in Fort Benning, Georgia, for seven years. Before that he was a
language arts teacher.