by Thomas Kling

Created on: November 22, 2008

In many schools, there is often a huge communal effort to help improve students' state test scores. The biggest burden often falls on the regular classroom teacher, but help is solicited from the special education teachers, reading and math specialists, and even special area teachers. However, one often over-looked resource is the school librarian.

Today's school librarian is no uptight old "shusher" and "Keeper of the Card Catalog." Many school librarians are incredibly knowledgeable and gifted with useful skills to help students reach their highest potential. Not only can librarians be extremely useful in finding materials to help teachers and students prepare for standardized tests, but more importantly, they can be helpful in maintaining important skills throughout the year.

Researching a topic is a vital skill that students will use throughout their lives if they are taught to do it right. There are also important sub-skills that are needed in completing standardized tests.

One of the first things students need to do once they have a topic, is to locate relevant information and be able to uncover a reference's main points and summarize them. There is always some degree of reading involved in a standardized test, even math these days, so students need to get to the meat' of what they are reading so they can understand it better and put it to good use.

Another important research skill is to be able to sift through information to find what you're looking for. Often students read passages on standardized tests and by the time they start answering the questions, have forgotten the important points in the passage. Even more maddening are the students who don't look back to the passage when they can't remember! Librarians are really good at thinking in an organized way and retrieving information, and they're good at teaching kids how to do it too! It's not something that can be taught in one class period, though. So make plans with your librarian for a series of times when you can bring your class down to practice these skills.

A skill that is very important to teach kids is giving credit to others for their ideas. Not only is this useful in teaching students not to plagiarize, and to be ethical, but on some state standardized tests, it's critical to cite readings or documents from which they based their information in order to get credit for it.

Besides helping students directly, librarians often have many resources for teachers in their professional development offerings. They may also know of websites that have demonstrated to be useful in helping students prepare for standardized testing. And, since librarians often interact with others in their profession, yours may know where to find other resources not available in your own library.

So before you just send your kids to the library on their own to do some research or drop them off there for specials, find out what your school librarian can and will do to help you raise your students' test scores. They're just waiting for someone to ask!

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