A fellow librarian has a tag line on her email that says " teaching library skills in isolation is like having a kid waving his arms and legs sprawled over a table, then saying, 'Remember to do this when you get into a pool' ". (Betty Buckingham) Despite continuous efforts to collaborate and build lessons with the teachers at my school, we have always been only marginally successful. However, with the implementation of the College and Career Readiness Standards and the adoption of the Wonders Reading Program, new life has been given to the library program. On practically a daily basis I am talking with the teachers at my school about research whether its ideas, scheduling the lab, developing a lesson plan, or actually engaged in research. Following is an outline of how we have implemented this.
Around Thursday or Friday, I start working on the next week's lesson plans. First, I send an email to the faculty to ask if there is any topic in particular they would like me to cover for the following week.
From the responses I get, I either do what they've asked, or if they don't respond I log onto the Wonders website and look at the research selections for the following week.
The website is http://connected.mcgraw-hill.com/connected/login.do and you may need to talk with your classroom teachers or reading coach about getting logged in.
Once logged in click on Resources in Quick Links, the research and inquiry in the navigation list on the left. Plug in what week the class you are working with is studying, then choose one of the guides. It's important to know, also what unit and week the class is on. I tried to set my Wonders home page up to correspond with each teacher, but it didn't work.
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| Life Cycle Wheel |
After I've reviewed and decided what the required research is for the next week, I begin gathering resources and often modifying the research. Because of time limits or skill levels I may need to make changes and adjustments to the research guides. I put research guides and resources on our school-wide wiki. Then I work with classes during library and lab time as well as additional time with classroom teachers.
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Learning to Use an Outline
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Here is a link to our wiki .
https://wjeslibrary.wikispaces.com/
It's great that the new reading series in Elementary schools lends itself to really NEEDING us! :-) Even better is that you see this "in" for us and are taking advantage of it. Your students really are benefitting and learning to "swim in the water" when they need to keep from drowning! Great job! Great way to work with your teachers!
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