Emily Mullis

Collection Development Plan (Revised)

FRIT 7134
Spring 2010
April 27, 2010

Description of Site / Environmental Scan

I currently teach 6th grade Reading at Bleckley County Middle School, in

Cochran, Georgia. In Bleckley County, there is one pre-k center, one primary school,
one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. There are currently
about 500 students enrolled at Bleckley County Middle School. Of these students, 58
percent are economically disadvantaged and qualify for free or reduced lunch. We have
2 administrators, 46 certified teachers, and 10 classified staff members. Recently, BCMS
became a Title I Distinguished School. The media center houses just over 7000 books,
and approximately 555 audiovisual titles. Also available for teachers to check out, are 24
laptops, 3 digital cameras, 4 CPS systems and an array of manipulatives and other
resources. Located in the media center are 7 computers that students may use for taking
AR quizzes or other class assignments.
In 6th grade at BCMS, there are 10 teachers. Several classes are inclusion, with 2
certified teachers in the room or a teacher and a paraprofessional. There are also several
resources classes that serve 6th grade students. There are 157 students in the 6th grade this
year. 70 percent are Caucasian, 25 percent are African American, and the remaining 5
percent are Hispanic, or Multi-Racial. The ability level of the students varies as much as
their ethnic background. 104 of the 157 6th graders are reading at or slightly below grade
level. 13 are gifted. Of the remaining 40, 17 are special needs students. The 23 students
that are left are reading slightly above grade level. Of the students with special needs, 7
are LD in the area of Reading. The others are either LD in another area, BD, or OHI. On
last year’s state tests, 96% of the students tested either passed or exceeded standards in
the area of Reading. In the area of Science, whose standards this collection will address,
85% of students met or exceeded standards.
 BCMS subscribes to Study Island, which is a great resource for Science teachers
to use. Students go on and listen to lessons and take quizzes on them. When a student
masters a specific lesson, he or she receives a ribbon for that skill and may move on to
the next skill. The students enjoy the game-style formatting of the program and really
seem to benefit from using it.

Curriculum Review

I chose to focus on weather and the water cycle for this assignment. This is
taught in first grade, fourth grade, and then again in sixth grade. For the purpose of this
assignment, I will look specifically at the sixth grade standards that go along with the
topic.

S6E2. Students will understand the effects of the relative positions of the earth, moon
and sun.
c. Relate the tilt of the earth to the distribution of sunlight throughout the year and its effect
on climate.

S6E3. Students will recognize the significant role of water in earth processes.
a. Explain that a large portion of the Earth’s surface is water, consisting of oceans, rivers,
lakes, underground water, and ice.
b. Relate various atmospheric conditions to stages of the water cycle.
c. Describe the composition, location, and subsurface topography of the world’s oceans.
d. Explain the causes of waves, currents, and tides.

S6E4. Students will understand how the distribution of land and oceans affects climate
and weather.
a. Demonstrate that land and water absorb and lose heat at different rates and explain the
resulting effects on weather patterns.
b. Relate unequal heating of land and water surfaces to form large global wind systems and
weather events such as tornados and thunderstorms.
c. Relate how moisture evaporating from the oceans affects the weather patterns and weather
events such as hurricanes.

S6E5. Students will investigate the scientific view of how the earth’s surface is formed.
f. Explain the effects of physical processes (plate tectonics, erosion, deposition, volcanic
eruption, gravity) on geological features including oceans (composition, currents, and tides).
j. Describe methods for conserving natural resources such as water, soil, and air.
S6E6. Students will describe various sources of energy and with their uses and
conservation.
a. Explain the role of the sun as the major source of energy and its relationship to wind and
water energy.

Tasks / Activities / Products Resources

 create a presentation that explains the  current media center resources (books, videos,

causes of changes in freshwater and etc.)

saltwater species populations  United Streaming videos

 map and graph the features of the ocean  computers with Microsoft Powerpoint

floor  exemplars of ocean floor models

 chart the weather for a month and create  various websites explaining ocean features
a visual that shows any patterns
 weather instruments
 create a tornado in two bottles

 create a cloud in a bottle

 create a weather forecast and explain the

effects of heat on weather patterns, wind

systems, tornados, thunderstorms, and

hurricanes

 create a content information on climate

and weather
 The additional resources, such as weather instruments, that will be purchased will be
housed in the media center. They will be available for checkout by teachers. Most of the
print materials will be available for teachers and students to checkout. The more expensive
items and things that would be better utilized in the classroom setting will be available for
teachers to checkout. In the media center, there is a teacher resource room that will house the
resources.

Collection Evaluation

Since I teach Reading and my classes visit often, I am very familiar with the
media center at BCMS. The non-fiction books are located on shelves below the windows
on the far side of the media center from where you enter. There are yellow shelf markers
that show the Dewey Decimal number for that section. Fiction books are on tall shelves
on the left side of the media center when you enter. They do not have the same yellow
shelf markers because all the books have the same range of numbers. These books are
arranged by last name of the author. The biographies are located on one wall of the
media center and are arranged by last name of the person they are about. The reference
section is located in the center of the room beside the tables and chairs.
I searched on the computer in the media center for books on my chosen topic. I
first used the keywords weather and water cycle. This search returned only non-fiction
books. Next, I typed in tornado, hurricane, flood, drought, and several other weather
terms. This search returned non-fiction as well as very few fiction books. Almost all of
the books are very old and could definitely use some updating. The majority of the books
have a copyright date from 1986-1990. The circulation data for these books revealed that
they are rarely checked out. They are usually only checked out when needed for an
assignment so they were in fairly good condition. Along with circulation being a
problem, another issue is that there aren’t very many books in this curriculum area.
There are only 20 books with the topic of weather or the water cycle and less than 5
teacher resources, which are all videos about weather events. There were a few books
that mentioned weather, even if it wasn’t the main topic of the book. I think that the
collection could be a great resource for teachers and students to use if it could be updated
and expanded.
Since there are so few books in this curriculum area, the needs are very great. I
am pretty much starting from scratch and building an entire collection. There are few
fiction books, no multicultural literature, and a very limited number of audiovisual
resources. I am excited that I chose this topic because otherwise, I wouldn’t have known
how lacking our media center was in this area. The grand total of my order came to
$3992.23. The budget of our media center this year was zero. Any money that the media
specialist wanted to spend had to be raised by the media center. She accomplished this
by holding 2 book fairs and with late fees. Even with this money to spend, she wasn’t
able to add much to the collection. The $4000 spent in this plan would have been a great
addition.