Library News

Library hours remain M-Th 8:00 AM to 4:30 pm and Fri 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM for the week of 9/8 with possible openings 7:30-8 and 4:30-6 pm as they are confirmed on a day-to-day basis.  

The hours on the library website will be updated as soon as a complete staff schedule for the semester is confirmed. 

Please continue to express your support for stable before and after school hours to the appropriate site administrator.

On Thursday, September 4, District Librarian Emily Stambaugh, participated with other district administrators on a focus group explore high level design concepts desired for our future school libraries. 

A vision of the Libraries of the Future for CVUSD schools boosts student outcomes through reimagined facilities that are:

• The happening place that centers the academic purpose of our schools and engages students, teachers and the community as they learning to consume, use and create information together
• Supportive of hybrid print and digital information resources
• Foundational to teaching and learning services, with resources, capacity and equipment to support multi-literacies and diverse abilities
• Beyond ADA compliant, they are ADA-friendly, embracing abilities and technologies of the future, in a space and a world where everyone counts
• Flexibly designed with reservable spaces that support individual study, multiple small group study rooms, media/recording rooms, comfy reading nooks, a large technology rich instruction room (60-80 students) and an event space with kitchenette
• Infused with natural light, acoustical controls and beautiful, durable indoor and outdoor spaces that that invite, welcome and engage all students
• Bring pride to campuses by celebrating our diverse students, heritages and their achievements with cultural and art displays, student accomplishment displays, and gallery walk space for inquiry-based and design-thinking projects
• Staffed by curriculum-savvy, information-savvy, tech-savvy credentialed librarians and highly qualified library staff

We look forward to continuing the planning conversation and are hopeful the Castro Valley community will support a measure to create Libraries of the Future in our schools.

231 of CVHS' 766 First Year Students participated in the inaugural Physical and Digital Library orientations last week. Thank you to English teachers!  

First year students completed Navigator Levels 1, 2 and 3 in their English classes with a slide deck prepared by the Teacher Librarian. 

In Navigator 1-3 lessons, students learned to 

• identify their reading “avatar” and get a book recommendation from a recommender service
• identify several ways to start creating an independent reading habit and choose 1 to start this week
• identify student services available to them through the library
• access the digital library
• find access instructions to all of the school's databases for their research
• look up a book in the catalog

 Teachers then brought their students to the library for Passport to the Next Level orientations where they

• met the librarian and library staff (resources for their next 4 years at CVHS)
• learned about “My Space” - the library as a shared, collective space that is partially student-run, volunteer opportunities and civic engagement
• learned about “My Time” - things they can do independently at the library, such as check their account online, self-checkout, place holds, enjoy a cup of tea at Athena's Cafe, contribute to Athena's Cafe as a cooperative.
• signed up for the Back to School Reading Challenge in Beanstack and learned to log their reading
• completed an Information and Media Literacy skills assessment to inform future program planning

Students received stamps in their passports as they completed activities throughout the library and were excited to leave with a book challenge, a sense of their library as place, a passport and laptop sticker to remind them of their time at the library!

This year, as part of the First Year Student Orientations to the CVHS Library, students took an Information and Media Literacy Skills Assessment. Over the next few weeks, the data will be analyzed, an assessment report will be prepared, and key findings will be reported at an all staff meeting. 

Students were asked questions about Recognizing a Need for Information, Access, Use, Evaluation and Affective Perspectives on Reading and Independent Learning.

Here is a sneak peak at some of the preliminary findings and how the library uses evidence to support future academic program decisions. More analysis of all of the questions will help librarians, teachers and administrators to develop curriculum that includes information skills. 

Question 2 (Information Literacy Assessment)

Ability to take logical next steps with Artificial Intelligence responses

Understanding what the logical next step is after receiving a response from a generative artificial intelligence service is a critical thinking skill that all students need to learn in order to use AI effectively in their research. First year students were given a scenario: write a paper about the top three impacts of climate change on local wildlife in your town. With the response from an AI service, students were asked to identify logical next steps to using the information for academic purposes. 

Summary Outcome:

While first year students generally recognize that they need to gather more information after receiving a response from a generative artificial intelligence service, they tend to use only those topics mentioned by the AI for further investigation. Students will likely need additional support in recognizing gaps in the AI output (topics that are missing) to be further researched. 

Students need help understanding how AI outputs represent a source of information (or aggregation of sources) that should be acknowledged and cited. 

Note: This assessment did not address the students' ability to take the next step (find other sources of information or ask more refined questions.) The emphasis was on the first critical thinking step: recognition of a need for more information in multiple directions.

Findings: 

==> 73% of first year students tested (N=169/231) successfully recognized a need to gather more information about the four types of local wildlife impacted by climate change in Castro Valley identified in the initial AI response.

==> 50% of first year students tested (N=116/231) recognized a need to seek information about the four types of wildlife identified plus other types of wildlife not identified by the AI response (e.g. insects).

==> Only 27-37% of first year students tested recognized the need to either paraphrase or acknowledge the use of generative AI in their papers (N=62 and 70/231, respectively)

Question 3: Exit Ticket. Digital Library Orientation, Navigator Level 3

Access to the Alameda County Public Library, digital resources

Obtaining a public library card is a very basic first step for high school students to begin to develop life skills, including reading skills. Having all students on the Digital Public Library also makes it possible for teachers to rely upon and use quality subscription databases for classroom teaching in all subjects.

Our goal this year was to try to get access to the public library for 100% of Castro Valley High School First Year Students (N=766.) A subset of the First Year Students participated in the Digital Library orientations through their English Classes (N=131).

Summary outcome: 

1. Approximately 10% of First Year Students (N=80) new have access to the Digital Public Library after orientations through their English classes prepared by the Teacher Librarian, setting them on a path to lifelong skill development and enriched classroom experiences for the next 4 years. Greater participation by English classes or other formats such as mandatory orientations before the school year for all entering First Year Students or a formal partnership with the Alameda County Public Library would likely improve student access.

2. A majority of students successfully access quality digital information resources (N=80 or 61%) when introduced to them by an English teacher with curriculum developed by the Teacher Librarian.

Findings:

==> 80 of 131 First Year Students now have an Alameda County Public Library card or eCard after the Digital Library Orientation through their English classes. 

==> 19 of 131 First Year Students still need help and want to get an Alameda County Public Library eCard.

Attention all CVHS teachers and staff! Encourage your students to participate in the CVHS Back to School reading challenge! The challenge runs until September 28th. Students sign in to Beanstack, log their reading minutes, earn badges and more. 

CVHS is competing this year with Creekside Middle School, Proctor Elementary School and Stanton Elementary school. Which school will read the most? 

Beanstack is available on the library website in the I Read area, where we have all-things-reading-related. Beanstack can also be accessed on the library's Database A-Z list.  “View all databases” to find the landing page. The database landing page provides access instructions. Bypass the landing page in the future using the database pull down menu.

Visit the library calendar for future reading challenges.

Attend a library teacher training on Beanstack to gamify and monitor student reading in your classroom. 

Register for a lunchtime teacher training on Beanstack, CVHS Library's reading challenge software. Boost student reading and vocabulary development in all academic subjects through reading gamification. Students sign in, log their reading and earn badges. 

CVHS Library offers lunchtime trainings on these dates. Registration is required. Register on the Library Events calendar (Quickstart Menu on the Library home page).

• Thursday, September 4
• Friday, September 5
• Monday, September 8
• Thursday, September 11
• Friday, September 12

In this training, teachers will learn to:

• Set up a reading challenge or participate in a challenge that is already offered by the library. 
• Monitor student reading
• Best practices for reading gamification for high school students
• Districtwide goals, competition and pilot sites

Library hours remain M-Th 8:00 AM to 4:30 pm and Fri 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM this week and next until further notice. Please continue to check the library website for hours. As soon as the library receives a before and after hours staff schedule, the hours on the library website will be updated. 

This week, CVHS first year students will visit the library on August 28 or 29 with their English classes to complete their Passport to the Next Level library orientations. 

Students will visit stations set up around the library. My Time, Our Space and Extra Help stations launch first year students toward resources for self-directed learning, accessibility, reading and writing support, civic responsibility and volunteer opportunities. 

All students will take an intake assessment of their research and information literacy skills at a fourth station such that CVHS can begin to build a longitudinal analysis of student outcomes. 

The library will be closed August 28 and 29 to all other students during the school day. 

This week, all 700+ CVHS first year students will begin their orientations to the library in their English classes. The orientations consist of one 90 minute in-class orientation to the Digital Library,  Physical Library and Digital Libraries nearby, and a second 48 minute in-person class visit to the CVHS Library on August 28 or 29. Slides and exit tickets have been provided to all English teachers by the Teacher Librarian for this week's virtual orientations.  They are also available on the library website for all teachers and families. We encourage teachers in other departments to become familiar with the content of the orientations such that we begin to establish a baseline of information literacy skills all teachers can expect from first year students.

By the end of the the first 90 minute orientations (referred to as Digital Library Navigator Levels 1, 2 and 3), all entering first year students should be able to access their digital high school library in 3 different ways; they should be able to identify the format and availability of books in the print and digital library, as well as the catalog elements needed to access the books; they should be able to find research databases on the library's A-Z list and access the landing page of a database to determine the on-and- off-site access mechanisms for each database. Students will further explore their reading preferences and identify one way they will begin to create their independent reading habits over the next 4 years. 

All CHVS first year students will also get an Alameda County Public Library eCard and will test their access to a specific database in the eLibrary. Students are encouraged to save their eCard information as a contact such that they can easily access it in the future. With this foundation, and starting with this first year class (2025-2026), teachers in all departments will be able to begin to rely upon and direct students to use additional, expensive subscription databases at the public library for student projects. 

These initial orientations for the first year class will lay the foundation for students to access quality information sources throughout and beyond their high school career.

Stay tuned for announcements next week about the August 28 and 29th Passport to the Next Level orientations at the library. The library will be closed to all students on August 28 and 29th in order to bring all 700+ First Year students into the library for additional activities throughout the library. All library staff and all library student assistants will be training for and setting up the Passport to the Next Level stations this week in preparation for next week's visits.

English teachers may bring their classes to the library on special SSR days.  The following SSR days are reservable in ~20 minute increments, such that multiple classes can visit the library within a period to check out books.

Reserve in advance on the library instruction calendar! 

Please try to schedule all SSR appointments on these dates so that we can best serve your students and additional departments.

• Monday, August 18
• Thursday, August 21
• Friday, August 22
• Monday, September 15
• Thursday, October 2
• Friday, October 3
• Thursday, October 16
• Friday, October 17
• Monday, October 20
• Monday, November 17
• Monday, December 1
• Monday, December 15
• Thursday, January 8
• Friday, January 9
• Monday, January 12
• Monday, January 26
• Monday, February 2
• Monday, February 9
• Monday, February 23
• Monday, March 9
• Monday, March 23
• Monday, April 13
• Monday, May 4