K-12 Connections

The goal of nurturing an information literate citizenry necessitates an instructional program which permeates the entire formal education sequence. As a land-grant institiution, WSU is committed to serving the community. The WSU Instruction Department has forged a strong relationship with the local and regional K-12 schools. Each year classroom instructors and librarians join forces to celebrate National History Day. The Instruction Department also provides programming for two summer camps,Cougar Kids and Cougar Quest. Please look below for pictures and a summary of the Cougar Kids and Cougar Quest activities for summer 2002. In the future, the Instruction Department aspires to provide guidance and support for academic extra curricular activities such as Speech and Debate, and Mock Trial.

The Instruction Department invites K-12 teachers to contact us. We are eager to collaborate with teachers concerning school projects and activities. We are happy to provide instructional sessions on library related topics and general WSU Libraries orientations.

Cougar Kids

Cougar Kids is a series of summer camps for children from Kindergarten to 6th Grade. Each group that comes to the Libraries first engages in discussion about the value of libraries and personal library experiences. The youngsters are then unleashed on the Terrell to complete an orientation treasure hunt. The students are asked to visit various departments and use library resources to answer questions. Finally, the librarians have short debriefing sessions with the students and they are rewarded with library bookmarks.

Cougar Quest

Cougar Quest is an academic summer camp for students in the seventh through twelveth grades. The first week of the camp is for 7th and 8th graders and the second week of the camp is for high school students. In 2007, the Instruction Department provided programming for both weeks of the camp with a session entitled: "Track Butch through Time." Campers in the session learned how to make Power Point presentations, or honed the skills they already had, including learning to create hyperlinks, adding sound and video clips to presentations, and making graphics animated. The campers also created podcasts and added these to their presentations. During the second week, the high school students were able to visit MASC to research older WSU materials and tour the vault. On the final day of each session Butch visited the students to see the works created and to add a little mayhem to the otherwise peaceful library session.