Week 5: NoveList Plus

I am sooooo excited about this week's assignment. I think it is the most relevant assignment to my teaching job so far. I am actually looking for reading materials for my reading classes this week so it will be a wonderful tool to "help connect my readers with books they will love!"

Here is what I found out (Discovery Exercises)...
1. How does the use of the "view" component make my job connecting readers with books easier? I like the grid feature because you can see the covers of the books. If a student noticed a book but didn't remember the title, but knew it was about __________ (subject), the grid feature would work really well. The detailed feature is also nice for older students to for a quick summary. The Title Only and Brief are pretty similar and will be used for a quick reference.

2. How does using the Read-alikes from NoveList make my job easier and promote better customer service in your library (or classroom)? I think students will be more willing to try out another author that is similar, especially series readers that get hooked to one author or series and will not leave it and just keep rereading it over and over. Here they can find out the information themselves because sometimes the librarian or teacher is not familiar enough with the author they enjoy or they are not familiar with authors that are like the original author's style.

3. How does NoveList help increase the awareness of the collection (the librarian and I) have worked so hard to build for both new and older items. What are my take aways for this exercise? I love NoveList. I use Scholastic.com to find similar books and authors; however, it is really disappointing when we don't have the books. Here I can search the books we currently have access to. I also love the Teaching with Books feature and Looking for... Award Winners and Books to Movies. The recommends feature is also a plus! The Recommended Reads List that sorts books in subjects and genres is awesome. I always spend hours looking on Amazon. Google, and Barnes and Noble for lists  of books on specific topics.

I need to check out the folder feature and I don't really know how the star system works...

4. Check-in with other blogs... what did I find about the responses to Question #3?
Well, this was a bit difficult to do for several reasons...

• Some bloggers were so excited about this assignment that they really didn't separate their answers into the question/answer format so I had a hard time looking for the answers to Question #3 quickly or it was difficult to find the actual answers for the question.
• Some people are a little behind in their assignments (I certainly know how this feels!)
• Some bloggers didn't even deal with the questions in their posts; (I don't even think I answered the question completely due to my enthusiasm for this site and what it offers.)

That being said. This was my favorite assignment so far and the one that I can readily use to drive my instruction and increase student learning and engagement, especially around literacy.