Hi all,
I am an LMS in an elementary school with scheduled classes. While I am with the class the teacher has planning/release time. Leadership of our central office constantly tells us of the power of co-teaching, collaboration and teaching the children to effectively research. The concepts work wonderfully in the secondary libraries. Many great resources exist in our district BUT no talk of the elephant in the room for elementary - TIME. Ideas and philosophy are good - lots of PD with research to support all the instructional strategies - but in reality - can't be done. This year we have been given a curriculum which is heavy on research and very light on literature -- because the Common Core will require more reading of non-fiction content. Curriculum lessons allow little to no time to select and scan books. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Anyone else with this dilemma?
Replies
It is hard to truly collaborate when you are on a fixed schedule. When I was on a schedule like that I tried asking the teachers what projects/skills they were already working on in class. I would then develop my lessons around what they told me. May of the intermediate teachers were glad the students were getting some time to work on, say a biography PowerPoint. I was able to help the students locate resources and even let them work on the PowerPoint itself (I have a computer lab in my library). It made my lesson mean more if it was piggybacking what they were doing in class.
It didn't always works that way and with primary many times I just did storytime. But even with that I feel sometimes students don't get to just hear a story and enjoy it. They have to discuss, breakdown amd study what they read. A simple read aloud for pure enjoyment can be a wonderful thing.
While I want my students to learn to be effective at finding and using information I really want them to LOVE reading! If they love to read and keep that love the rest of the skills will come.
Good luck this year and let us know how it goes.
So happy to hear you say this about the power of just reading and listening for pleasure! Have you seen the research on the 30 million word gap? It is SO important to provide students with rich listening literature experiences. Thanks for writing!
I'm with you... no collaboration as of yet due to scheduled classes... also no budget to purchase new books to support the Common Core standards...will be interesting to see how it all works out as we really get into the year and trying to work through everything.