Our school library provides many opportunities for students to develop a love for reading and find many resources to engage their interests. Additionally, St. Vrain Valley Schools offers one of the largest digital libraries of any public school district in the U.S. with thousands of books available for checkout.

Technology in our Classrooms

Our district libraries have always been leaders of instruction, providing informal and formal spaces for students to learn, grow and reflect.  To prepare our students for the world they will enter, one that requires initiative and self-direction, St. Vrain has been reexamining the role of teaching and learning.  A natural part of this shift is to examine how our libraries will evolve to remain leaders in instruction. With this in mind we created a guiding question for the project: In what ways can our blended libraries lead and support the instructional shifts necessary to prepare students for 21st Century learning? 

From the guiding question each school crafted a research question that would meet the unique needs and focus of their school. The process we took to write these questions was messy. We started with hunches and wonderings, taking time to observe current library activity and poll users. Conversations and surveys revealed that students had very clear ideas on what they wanted to be able to do in their libraries and uncovered areas for growth. From these observations the librarians began to pose questions about learning habits, learning spaces and patron needs. Questions were drafted and redrafted until they met the essence of what was important to each school. Although the below questions will guide the formal research projects we anticipate that they will morph as we learn more about blended libraries.

Lyons Elementary: In what ways can the library lead and support instructional changes in order to support a shift towards a project based learning environment at Lyons Elementary?