Shanna Floyd

Collection Evaluation and Development Plan

FRIT 7134Spring 2013
March 12, 2013

Collection Evaluation and Development Plan
Description of the Site/Environmental Scan
Midway Elementary School is one of three elementary schools in Pierce County. As of
2010, the countys population was 18,758. The county is mostly rural and agrarian with limited
industry. As a result, we have a small tax base and limited funding.
MES is a Title I school located in the western part of the county. It is the newest school
in the county, having just opened in the summer of 2010. We currently serve 522
prekindergarten to fifth grade students in a school built for about 450. The classrooms consist of
two prekindergarten classes, four kindergarten, first, second, fourth, and fifth grade classes, and
three third grade classes. The table on the following page summarizes student demographics.
The administration team at MES consists of our principal, one assistant principal, an
instructional coach, a counselor, and a media specialist. Our faculty includes 25 classroom
teachers, one gifted teacher, one ESOL teacher, two special education teachers, two intervention
specialists (reading and math), and 1 physical education teachers. We also share a speech
teacher, a physical education teacher, and a music teacher with another school in the county.
The media center is centrally located within the school building. It is relatively small for
the population it serves and for the age of the building. There is a computer lab connected to the
media center, which is used for specials rotations. The collection consists of 6,066 items, which
averages to 11.6 items per student. The average age of the collection is 1994. The collection is
limited because very little funding was set aside for purchases. Instead, it mostly consists of
hand-me-downs from other school in the county and donations. The media specialist has
sponsored book fairs and other fundraisers to supplement purchase funds.
Student Demographic Data
Total Enrollment 522
Student/Racial Background
African-American 8
Asian 2
Caucasian 462
Hispanic 35
Other 0
Student/Family Characteristics


Economically Disadvantaged 53.5%
Limited English Proficient 4%
Early Intervention Program 17.8%
Special Education
Students with Disabilities w/ Speech Services 0.9%
Students with Disabilities w/o Speech Services 4.0%
Speech Services Only 3.3%
Gifted 9.4%
Migrant 1.0%
Attendance Rate (% >15 days in Grades 3-5) 2.4%
Our school has access to Discovery Education Streaming and GALILEO. We also have
subscriptions to BrainPOP, BrainPOP Jr., BrainPOP ESL, Tumblebooks, Follett DESTINY One
Search, Study Island, Renaissance Place, and Reading A-Z. Our school no longer blocks access
to YouTube, so teachers are exploring many more resources available there.
The standard I chose to utilize to evaluate the collection is a fourth grade science
standard. There are currently 79 fourth graders on one team of four teachers. The team includes
one reading teacher, one math teacher, one science teacher, and one social studies teacher.
Grammar and writing standards are split among the reading, science, and social studies teachers.
There are five special needs students in fourth grade. They are served by two special education
teachers in one reading segment and one math segment. There are also four English learners in
fourth grade. They are served by the ESOL teacher for one segment during social studies.
Students identified as gifted are served by the gifted teacher one day a week in a pull-out
program. In addition, two of the general education teachers are gifted endorsed. The reading
levels of these students range from first grade to high school levels. About 33% of fourth graders
read below grade level and about 20% read above grade level.
Curriculum Review
Grade: Fourth Content Topic: Ecosystems
State Standards:
S4L1. Students will describe the roles of organisms and the flow of energy within an ecosystem.
a. Identify the roles of producers, consumers, and decomposers in a community.
b. Demonstrate the flow of energy through a food web/food chain beginning with sunlight and
including producers, consumers, and decomposers.
c. Predict how changes in the environment would affect a community (ecosystem) of organisms.
d. Predict effects on a population if some of the plants or animals in the community are scarce or
if there are too many.
The focus of this standard is understanding the roles of various organisms in an
ecosystem and how organisms are interdependent. In the course of the unit, students will sort
organisms into producers, consumers, and decomposers; illustrate food chains and food webs;
and use illustration and graphic organizers to explain the effects of both changes and a surplus or
scarcity of plants and animals. They will also complete the culminating activity below.

Culminating Activity: Writing a letter to local community residents explaining what is going on
with the depletion of vegetation, why it is happening and what can be done to stop it from
continuing.

GRASPS Goal: (a) Students will identify why the vegetation at a local state park is being
overeaten. (b) Students will come up with a solution to this problem.

Role: You will be a State Park Ranger/Cadet assigned to help Ranger Tom find out the reason
that the local residents gardens, small trees and underbrush are being eaten down to the point that
they are dying. Your task is figure out to figure out why this is happening and what can be done to
stop it.

Audience: Residents of Smyrna Mountain and the surrounding community.

Scenario: Ranger Tom Brown has been a park ranger at Smyrna Mountain for over twenty years.
Ten years ago, local residents insisted on having all of the wolves removed from the park. The
residents were concerned about a rabies epidemic and thought that the Red wolf population was
one of the main carriers. The wolves were removed. Since that time, the residents have noticed a
major increase in the White tailed deer population and the Cottontail rabbit population. Now the
residents are upset because something is eating all of their gardens, small trees and underbrush.
Your task is to figure out how what is eating the gardens and other vegetation. Why has this
started happening and what can be done about it?

Product: You will need to research and draw the food chains of the White Tailed deer, the Red
wolf, and the Cottontail rabbit. You will also need to draw a food web including the White tailed
deer, the Red wolf, and the Cottontail rabbit. After reviewing the food web, you will need to make
a hypothesis about why the vegetation is being eaten, and what has made things get unbalanced?
What needs to happen to bring everything back into balance? After you have shown your
hypothesis to Ranger Tom and have gotten his approval, you will need to write a letter to the
residents of the area discussing the situation. You will be advising them of what is eating their
gardens, and other vegetation. Your letter will also need to let them know why this is happening
and what needs to happen in order for the ecosystem to be balanced again. You will need to
include the following scientific terms in the letter: ecosystem, population, predator, prey,
herbivore, carnivore, adaptation, extinction, environment, energy, sun, ecosystem, balance,
habitat, scarcity, over populated, under populated.
Because this is a science standard, and because so many of the activities require research,
most of the resources needed will be informational text. This will meet the following Common
Core Georgia Performance Standards related to reading informational materials:
ELACC4RI4: Determine the meaning of general academic language and domain-specific words
or phrases in a text relevant to a grade 4 topic or subject area.
ELACC4RI9: Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak
about the subject knowledgeably.
ELACC4RI10: By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including
history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4-5 text complexity band
proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.
Collection Evaluation
I began my evaluation of the collection by performing a DESTINY Power Search. I
began by using the keywords food chain. I only received one result in nonfiction (615.9). It
was an excellent, recent (2010) book which talked about both food chains and how they are
affected by change, but it was disheartening to find such an extremely limited selection on my
first search. I continued by using the keyword ecosystem, which returned three results. These
books all dealt with the interdependence of organisms. I also performed searchers for producer,
consumer, and decomposer. The only related result I received was one book for decomposer. All
of these books were located in the same section (Dewey numbers 570-599), so I spent some time
browsing other books about plants and animals in this section. Many of them mention what a
particular animal eats, and so could be used in the unit. However, the focus is very narrow and
they do not relate back to the food chain or food web.
Finally, I performed a search using the keyword animal, which returned 568 results, all
books. They were located in the nonfiction (570-599), green dot (beginning reader), easy,
fiction, biography, and reference sections. Many of these books were fantasy or other fiction that
could not be related back to the standards. I did find one series of books, the Animal Pride Series
by Dave Sargent, which could be related back to the unit, although they do not explicitly deal
with the standards. I also found two Magic School Bus books related to the food chain. All in
all, I found the collection very limited as it relates to my standard.
Three of the books I found were in excellent condition. Some of the books were in good
condition, but the majority of the books were in poor condition. This is a result of having so
many hand-me-downs and donations, combined with the frequent circulation of any book related
to animals. I believe most of these books would have been weeded if there were any books with
which to replace them.
The books that actually meet my standard were actually quite recent, probably new
purchases by our media specialist. Three had publication dates of 2010, and one had a
publication date of 1997. The Animal Pride Series was published from 1992-1996. The Magic
School Bus books were published in 1992 and 1995. The rest of the books had an average age of
1993.
The first four books I found that matched my standard all had reading levels in fifth
through seventh grade. The Magic School Bus books are on a third and fourth grade reading
level. There are no books for students who read below a third grade level, which is a need in
fourth grade. Another need in fourth grade is books in other languages, specifically Spanish.
There are no books in Spanish that related to this standard in our collection.

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Summary of Collection Needs:
1. Books are needed on all reading levels. There should be books that are accessible to the
variety of reading levels present in fourth grade.
2. More recent books are needed. This will help bring the average age of materials closer to
what is recommended.
3. Books are needed in English and in Spanish. As the EL population grows in each grade level,
there will be a greater need for books in Spanish.
4. We need more books to address all the elements of this standards.
5. Purchase more books in sections other than nonfiction.
6. Purchase a variety of formats, including e-books, audiobooks, and DVDs.
Materials Order/Budget Summary
I browsed three vendors when selecting materials: Permabound, Follett Titlewave, and
Bound-to-Stay-Bound Books. Many of the titles overlapped at Permabound and Follett. The
search tools at Bound-to-Stay Bound were very powerfulI was even able to limit by date
published. I selected books, e-books, audiobooks, and DVDs that matched my standard. I found
several titles that were published in English as well as Spanish. I used reviews to weed out some
books that were not up to par. Because of the need to meet a specific standard, some of the books
I selected did not have reviews. I also selected two books that were published before 2005. The
first, Aliens From Earth: When Animals and Plants Invade Other Ecosystems, had excellent
reviews and addressed a topic that was not addressed by other titles. The other was a Magic
School Bus title that I chose because of the high interest generated by these books. The final
total for all materials was $3994.90.
Web-based resources related to my unit may be found on the Ecology tab at:
http://www.netvibes.com/sfloyd#ecology