GLMS 612: Professional Development Activity - Planning Sheet

Name: Christine Lopez

What database is the focus of your Professional Development Activity? Why do you believe it
is important to provide assistance with usage of this resource?
For my Professional Development Activity, I will focus on Gale in Context: Elementary. I
believe it is important to provide this PD for my staff because no one is using this resource in
my building and they are struggling to find appropriate non-fiction content to support the
new curriculum and learning in their classrooms. I also liked Gale in Context: Elementary
because it provides lots of differentiation that will meet the varied needs of diverse learners
in our school.

Who is the audience for your Professional Development Activity?

The audience for this PD contains classroom teachers and support staff in our school.

What method of delivery will you use to employ your Professional Development Activity
(small group, 1:1 consultation, asynchronous recording, etc.)?
Because of scheduling, I will be delivering this PD in small group sessions, by grade bands.

Describe the research/planning that you conducted to create your Professional Development
Activity.
To plan for this Professional Development session, my first thought was to canvas the
databases we currently have available to us and then think about which would be most useful
for staff. We recently adopted a new reading and writing program and the materials we used
for instruction have changed. Old ways of researching and writing research reports have
been discarded and I know that teachers were busy working on finding material that was
appropriate for their diverse learners. Since there was such a strong need for non-fiction
informational text, I was debating between Britannica School Elementary and Gale in Context
Elementary and ultimately decided that Gale would be the best option to show for the first
PD session. I liked that this was more like an upper-level database and contained more
searchable content than Britannica. Additionally, the upper-grade teachers expressed more
of a need for non-fiction content and I felt that Gale gave our upper elementary students
more content when searching for a topic. If teachers would like these sessions to continue
(especially those from PreK-2), my next PD would revolve around Britannica School
Elementary. From there, I would introduce resources available to us through NOVELny. But
for this session, Gale in Context: Elementary would be explored. In addition to providing
students with a wealth of information, learners can use this database to evaluate information
found online. When compared to “Google searching,” which is what a lot of teachers have
their students do, we can introduce evaluating resources properly. Many of the students in
elementary school have never used a database and this would be a great introduction for
students and teachers to digital information and being a smart digital consumer.

Therefore, I dove into Gale in Context Elementary and clicked around to get a good feel for
the site. I contacted Gale to set up an account for our school through NOVELny so that I can
get specific feedback about usage. After chatting with Brian from our class, I wanted a login
for our school to track usage and gauge if the database was a resource teachers were using
once PD was completed. I really loved that tip that Brian gave and contacting Gale was pretty
easy. They have an email page to open up help tickets and should be returning my email
within a couple of days. Hopefully once I get a response, they can help me setup the school
page and walk me through the steps.

In the interim of waiting for a response from Gale, I visited the various resources that Gale
provides educators regarding training. On their site, there is a multitude of resources that
educators can use when learning about Gale in Context. Their content is geared specifically
toward which database of theirs you are using. I watched videos, clicked on PDF files, and got
a great grasp of the database and the benefits for teachers in using this resource.

After toying with the site and taking a deep dive into the PD the site provides for teachers, I
then tried it out with one of my fifth-grade classes that signed up for an open period. I
wanted an authentic experience with using the database before presenting the content to the
teachers in my building. I learn best by trying and doing the activity before I present it to
others. I want to get a good handle on what it’s like to use the resource with students,
including all the issues that arise when using an online digital tool. After having that
experience, I started planning my PD session and the takeaways that PD would provide to
staff.

I felt that Gale was the right choice to present to staff because of its ability to meet the needs
of diverse learners. I liked that there was a read-aloud option for some of the text available
on the database. As the page is read to the student, the text is highlighted so the reader can
follow along. I also liked that there were certain articles that contained lower lexile
equivalents. There was also an option for translating the interface and the resources on Gale
in a multitude of languages. This is a particular benefit for our large ENL population. The
database is also available on all devices and is resized to fit the screen of the device you’re
using. The user-friendly tools and layout are universal on all devices. The database also
provides readability options where you can change font size, type, or color and can also
change spacing. I particularly liked that the open dyslexic font is available for readers.
Documents can also be downloaded and saved to be used anywhere, even without the
internet, and the synching to Google Classroom is seamless for teachers. In teaching digital
literacy and ethical uses of information, the site also provides citation for the resources
found. This will help lead the conversation towards the ethical use of information we find
online. The students can also start including a works cited page and be introduced to the
process of citing sources. .

How do you plan to leverage this Professional Development Activity to alert your learning
community of the resources/services available through the school library program?
Since this will be my third PD with staff, I plan on continually reminding them of the services
and resources in the library by reminding them of the other digital tools and services
discussed at previous PD sessions. I will also be providing the staff with a handout and digital
links on the Google Shared Drive for our school of all the material learned in this PD session.
The Google Shared Drive also houses all the other handouts and resources given by myself
during library PDs. This has worked in the past and I have had requests to hold PD sessions
for various grades during the school day and after school as well because of prior sessions
and the resources teachers gained from the PD meetings. I also plan on emailing them the
handout that is provided with this assignment so that it’s relevant and the link to the shared
Google Drive can be bookmarked. During the PD session, I end the session by prompting
them to visit the library website and our shared Google Drive to access loads of resources and
I encourage them to sign up for open library periods if they haven’t done so already. I also
send reminders to all staff when library periods are open for the month to encourage classes
who have not visited the library to sign up for a period.

Upon delivery of your Professional Development Activity, reflect upon the experience. How
was the In-Service received? What would you have done differently? What would serve as a
good follow-up for the Workshop?
So far, I presented this PD activity to grades 3, 4, and 5. From the feedback that I’ve received,
I believe that the teachers really loved Gale in Context: Elementary. They were excited when
exploring the database together and instantly started looking up topics that their students
were currently researching. They loved that the resource was available on multiple lexile
levels and that it could be synched to Google Classroom seamlessly. Because of the PD, I had
a second-grade teacher reach out to me to ask about the resource and I worked together with
her to curate resources for the varied topics that her children selected. Gale was a great
resource for this! Since I’ve given PD sessions before, I specifically asked to give these
sessions in a more intimate grade-by-grade way because I’ve found that when there are too
many grades attending the PD, the instruction isn’t as individualized as I had hoped. We are a
very large school and simply having grades 3-5 alone would’ve been 40-50 staff members in
the library at one time. When given the opportunity to give this PD, I wanted to cater each
experience to the teachers and support staff on each grade and be able to troubleshoot and
answer questions that were specific to the grade. I always ask teachers to bring their devices
so they can have time to explore and play around with the database or the digital activity we
have planned because they simply don’t have the time to do so during the day. I also want
the PDs to be valuable, hands-on experiences because they are received well in my building.
Staff members are more likely to use a resource and try something out when they feel like
their voices are heard and their issues are resolved.
As a follow-up to this PD session, I would love to show this to grades Pre K-2 and scaffold the
activity for our younger students. I would also love to give additional PD workshops on other
databases like Britannica School Elementary, especially for the younger grades. Having taught
both upper grades and lower grades in the classroom, I always felt that the PDs given about
information literacy and digital tools/databases for elementary students were geared toward
upper-grade students. I want to provide more PD for younger grades so the students and
teachers in the early elementary classrooms feel comfortable using digital content.
For the entire school community, I would add an item onto my “library menu” of services and
lessons that can be taught during open library periods to include using databases. I would
want to add this resource onto the students’ Clever portal for easy access. The database can
be used independently when students need information when researching.
The next time I give this PD, I am hoping that Gale responds back to my request and creates a
personal login for our school so that I can track usage. They did not respond in time for me to
give them that link so we used NOVELny instead, which is another great resource to share
with educators.
Provide MLA citations for all the resources you referenced in creation of your Professional
Development Activity.
Works Cited

Brittanica School Elementary. school.eb.com/levels/elementary. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.

Canva. www.canva.com/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

Gale in Context Educator Resources.

go.gale.com/ps/staticResource?userGroupName=nysl_ca_dmvacces&inPS=true&prodI

d=ITKE&type=EducatorResources. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.

Gale in Context:Elementary. www.gale.com/c/in-context-elementary. Accessed 11 Nov. 2023.

NOVELny. novelnewyork.org/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.

Screencastify. www.screencastify.com/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

Slides Carnival. www.slidescarnival.com/. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

Training Support for Elementary (Gale in Context). support.gale.com/training/products/itke.

Accessed 29 Oct. 2023.

Provide access links to any documents from your Professional Development Activity that you
wish to share.

PD Brochure for Gale in Context: Elementary

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UhflMElRh4yNDrq22-vxe1wg1tDLHrKc/view?usp=sharing