Last updated: 2015
Introduction
The school library program is critical to the learning process. The necessary skills for college and career ready students include being literate in a wide range of digital, visual, textual, and technological formats. Students need to be able to access, evaluate, and process information strategically and methodically in order to make informed decisions and create products involving critical thinking skills.
Highly qualified teacher librarians, working in collaboration with content area teachers, provide research- and inquiry-based instruction in order to develop the students' ability to find and use information to support their academic learning and personal development. These Utah Standards for Library Media were created by certified teacher librarians to demonstrate the integration of information literacy skills across all curricular areas.
The standards are organized into three clusters:
1. Literacy: Reading Engagement
2. Literacy: Research and Information
3. Literacy: Media Engagement
These standards, which incorporate inquiry-based learning as well as other research model strategies, will be taught in collaboration with content area teachers, not in isolation by the teacher librarian. This collaboration will deepen student learning, foster independent reading, develop reading stamina, build task resiliency, strengthen text-dependent writing, and increase the students' information literacy knowledge. Informative handouts, tutorials, and implementation tools are available through the Utah State Board of Education website and the Utah Education Network.
http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE). Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Davina Sauthoff and see the Library Media website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer Throndsen. These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.