Standard 1: Teaching for Learning
1.1 Knowledge of learners and learning
Candidates are knowledgeable of learning styles, stages of human growth and development, and cultural influences on learning. Candidates assess learner needs and design instruction that reflects educational best practice. Candidates support the learning of all students and other members of the learning community, including those with diverse learning styles, physical and intellectual abilities and needs. Candidates base twenty-first century skills instruction on student interests and learning needs and link it to the assessment of student achievement.
Unit plans are second nature for classroom teachers. With this assignment, I was sure it would be a walk in the park as I have had many years in the classroom and have created and used unit plans more times than I could count. This assignment was one that I felt would be familiar as my time in the classroom has often deemed unit plans be a part of the grade level planning.
With this unit plan, however, I was to incorporate the aide of the classroom teacher as I put myself in the position of librarian. Looking at planning from a librarian's perspective, rather than a classroom teacher's perspective, proved to be challenging at first. However, after realizing that I am also a classroom teacher of sorts as the librarian, my planning soon became an easier task.
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You can see an example of my unit plan by clicking the link above. This unit focused on a 4th grade biology unit. My experiences in biology are limited to my time as a student in the classroom, not as a teacher. So this was a little hard to get started with for nothing more than my lack of biology experience. However, this lack of experience helped me to seek the aide of the classroom teachers even more, and so looking back, I realize my weakness created a path towards my collaborative efforts.
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The assignment also helped me to see that the library can be so much more than a place to warehouse books. It is a place where learning that has taken place in the classroom can be carried over and extended to within the library walls. The focus of the unit was not on any one set of books, but rather a larger selection of resources found in the library. Working with the needs of the students as well as the input and collaborative efforts of the classroom teacher, we were able to create an environment for these 4th graders that was not so different from their own classroom. Librarians can help teachers focus on areas that might not otherwise be able to be met in the classroom. We were able to use the library as a tool for the students to show them that the library has many resources as well as show the students how to use these tools. This unit was necessary as part of a curriculum that involves research; however, the classroom teacher was able to delegate this part to the library so that the classroom teacher could focus on the biology.
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This unit plan is just another example of how important the idea and practice of collaboration between the teachers and the librarian is.
1.2 Effective and knowledgeable teacher
Candidates implement the principles of effective teaching and learning that contribute to an active, inquiry-based approach to learning. Candidates make use of a variety of instructional strategies and assessment tools to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments in partnership with classroom teachers and other educators. Candidates can document and communicate the impact of collaborative instruction on student achievement.
Using resources, such as other classroom teachers, the supplies and materials they may have, the knowledge and experience of these teachers, can and without a doubt, help the librarian both in the role as teacher and as media coordinator, get a better picture of what the lesson should be geared toward. The collaborative experience guarantees that the student's needs will be looked at, assessed, and hopefully met. The librarian by themselves will not be able to make these measures as their time with the student body is limited at best.
The library should be seen as an extension of what goes on in the classroom. Often the library is seen as a separate entity, but I have seen that the best use of the library is not to be a storage house for books and materials, but rather to act as another “classroom” for students to learn in. It gives the students a different environment in which to carry on learning, not separate them from it. Collaboration practices have given the students the idea that the library is not separate from the rest of the school, but a vital part to their school career. The students see the library now as a part of the school that is there to help them and as a place where they can take what they have learned or are learning about in the classroom and carry it over into the library. The library can and should be an extension of the classroom teacher, the classroom, and the learning environment that exists there.
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This collaborative learning experience was hard to get off the ground. Some of the teachers at the school I was at had never had the experiences of team teaching or collaboration with others before. Looking back at my time in the classroom, I would have to include myself on that list too. While opportunities often presented themselves to collaborate with others, I often found it "easier" to go it alone. After this assignment, however, I found tremendous value in collaborative teaching.
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The hardest part for getting this collaborative learning experience assignment off the ground, was finding a perfect time where all of the people involved were able to coordinate. This proved futile as there is never a perfect time. So I settled for good, did some rearranging on many of the teachers's parts, and began to get this assignment up and running.
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Since my last venture had been in a kindergarten classroom, I used a unit plan on shapes that I pieced together with the help of other kindergarten teachers that focused on areas that can sometimes be challenging to some learners. Using the space and aide of the library, I was able to take what the students were learning about shapes in their classrooms and carry the learning environment over into the library.
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This would have been a tough unit to do with just my own resources in the library, so I was more than happy to enlist the collaborated efforts of the kindergarten teachers there. They were able to help me use the materials I had in the library to create lessons that were exciting and hands on. We were also able to differentiate the learning and gear the lessons toward a variety of learning styles. This was another task I would not have been able to come up with or even been aware of the different student learning abilities had I not enlisted the help of the teachers.
1.3 Instructional partner
Candidates model, share, and promote effective principles of teaching and learning as collaborative partners with other educators. Candidates acknowledge the importance of participating in curriculum development, of engaging in school improvement processes, and of offering professional development to other educators as it relates to library and information use.
Librarians are teachers too. While not traditionally thought of in this way, we are now seeing a recognition of this very fact. Librarians can be used as a means to help extend the learning that goes on in the classroom. Where lessons that were taught in the classroom only, the "new" status of librarian to teacher has enabled these lessons to now be carried over into the library. Collaboration between librarian and classroom teacher should exist and should exist for the benefit of the students.
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If teachers and librarians work together, this will only help to further the learning goals of the students. They can work together for the good of the students. Classroom teachers can make use of their class's library time by allowing the librarian to teach a part of the lesson that might not traditionally be taught in the classroom, or may not have time to be taught in the classroom.
The assignment above shows the collaboration between teacher and librarian and the benefits of this joint venture for the student. While the lesson focuses on a shapes unit, the library was used to expand on what the students already were taught in the classroom and then apply it to what they were learning in the library. The shape hunt was a hit in the library, and much of this had to do with the fact that the student shad already learned about shapes prior to this activity. While engaged in this activity, the students used 21st Learning strategies to apply what they had learned in the classroom to solve the "problems" presented to them in the library. I was only sorry that when I saw that the Spanish teacher was also working on shapes, but I hadn’t collaborated with her, I saw this as a missed opportunity.
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The teachers see the library as more than a place to just send the kids to get books. We can work together to help our students. The library is there for everyone, and when we work together for the students, it makes learning more fun, and maybe even easier in some ways for the classroom teachers, in that they have another teaching partner in the librarian.
1.4 Integration of twenty-first century skills and learning standards
Candidates advocate for twenty-first century literacy skills to support the learning needs of the school community. Candidates demonstrate how to collaborate with other teachers to plan and implement instruction of the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner and state student curriculum standards. Candidates employ strategies to integrate multiple literacies with content curriculum. Candidates integrate the use of emerging technologies as a means for effective and creative teaching and to support P-12 students' conceptual understanding, critical thinking and creative processes.
As an example of this standard, this collaborative learning assignment has been used again. Collaboration has become such an integral part in my school life now, that I find myself reaching out to varying grade levels for ideas, students information and assessments, ways to help teachers (other than pulling books), and trying to become more involved in the lives of the classroom teachers.
While I have stated that collaboration can sometimes be hard to start or hard to begin, I have seen first hand through this learning assignment that it is readily accepted once the benefits of collaboration have been viewed first hand by the teachers. I, too, have seen the benefits of collaboration. Because of this, my lessons have become more integrated with that of the classroom teachers. This is evident in the above assignment.
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Along with the use of collaboration, we must challenge our students to become larger thinkers, and not just responders to yes or no questions. Even at a very early age, such as with kindergarten as seen in the lesson above, we must make them to be higher level thinkers, 21st Century Learners. Within the lesson above, I challenged the students to come up with different attributes of different shapes. They didn't have a word bank to choose from. They didn't have anything to copy word for word. They hadn't learned anything rottenly. They had to use what they knew about shapes and use that knowledge to fill in an anchor chart. Not only does this foster a different way of learning, but it also seems to be more rewarding for the students when they can see the results of what they know put onto paper. I was able to pull what was inside of their heads and put it out onto paper so they could visibly see the results of just how much they knew.
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In the lesson, I also frequently used technology to aide the students in their learning process with Smart Board technology, YouTube videos, and Boom Learning cards. The more we challenge our students to think outside the box, the easier it will become a way of thinking for them. They will no longer be content with just answering yes or know; they will look to engage in discussions about what they know and what they hope to know. This is one of our many jobs as librarian teachers: to challenge our students to engage in thinking that will help them solve problems that they didn't know they had the answers to or the means to find the answers to.