AASL Standard 2
Planning for Instruction
Candidates in school librarian preparation programs collaborate with the learning community to strategically plan, deliver, and assess instruction. Candidates design culturally responsive learning experiences using a variety of instructional strategies and assessments that measure ALA/AASL/CAEP School Librarian Preparation Standards (2019) - 9 the impact on student learning. Candidates guide learners to reflect on their learning growth and their ethical use of information. Candidates use data and information to reflect on and revise the effectiveness of their instruction.
2.1 Planning for Instruction: Candidates collaborate with members of the learning community to design developmentally and culturally responsive resource-based learning experiences that integrate inquiry, innovation, and exploration and provide equitable, efficient, and ethical information access.
2.2 Instructional Strategies: Candidates use a variety of instructional strategies and technologies to ensure that learners have multiple opportunities to inquire, include, collaborate, curate, explore, and engage in their learning.
2.3 Ethical Use of Information: Candidates teach learners to evaluate information for accuracy, bias, validity, relevance, and cultural context. Learners demonstrate ethical use of information and technology in the creation of new knowledge.
2.4 Assessment: Candidates use multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth. Candidates, in collaboration with instructional partners, revise their instruction to address areas in which learners need to develop understanding.
EVIDENCE:
LIS 654 - Inquiry Based Unit Plan
LIS 620 - LibGuide
LIS 654 - Lesson Plan
LIS 692 - Lesson Plan
HOW IT ALIGNS:
The LIS 654 Unit Plan and LIS 692 Lesson Plan both align because they require you to collaborate with a classroom teacher to create a lesson that covers both AASL standards as well as general common core standards. The lesson plans were inquiry based and were designed to meet students where they were at and included a variety of formative and summative assessments.
The LIS 654 Lesson Plan Revision aligns by focusing on the essential questions and specific pathways to getting them answered. Essential questions force you to consider the information that you are teaching in a way that makes it relevant to the students.
The LIS 620 LibGuide was born of a hypothetical collaboration with a classroom teacher. It utilized a variety of information sources that were both visual and reading/writing learning methods. There was also a part specifically geared toward how to do research, evaluate sources, and how to cite properly.
WHAT I LEARNED:
Designing the inquiry based lesson plans, I learned how to effectively align the library-based learning goals with the teaching goals of the lead teachers. This was also the first time that I had really worked with essential questions and I was forced to put intense focus on Stripling’s Model of Inquiry to lead where the lessons went. As someone not accustomed to writing a lesson plan, the process of doing these repeatedly has helped in my understanding of the power of the essential question and the benefit of making sure that students feel like they are a part of the lesson rather than just passive listeners. While I realize that we are not likely to write detailed lesson plans like these on a regular basis, putting them together as part of my own educational process showed me the many levels that we need to consider when both planning and teaching a lesson.
As I have watched students do research and create classroom presentations, there is a definite lack of understanding when it comes to copyright and how to research. While including a portion on research was not a requirement for the LibGuide, I felt that it was a part that needed to be there when putting together resources for middle and high school students, even if they are just reminders.
IMPACT ON STUDENTS AND CONNECTION TO BEST PRACTICES:
Students today not only need to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, but they also need to be able to creatively problem solve, apply their knowledge, and figure out how to communicate that information to others (Saavedra & Opfer, 2012). Rather than memorizing facts, the goal is to have students construct their own knowledge and to learn from doing. Barbara Stripling backs this concept up by explaining that students have a sense of empowerment when they are able to construct their own path of knowledge, draw conclusions, create new knowledge, and share that knowledge with others (Stripling, 2008).
We have been taught the idea that collaboration with teachers is the gold standard. All educators bring different skill sets and areas of expertise to the job. When librarians work in isolation, their skill set is not utilized to it's fullest. If the library is an island, it is less likely to bring anything to the table for student learning (Donham & Sims, 2020).
The concept of the library being an island is especially true when it comes to research. Gone are the days when students could walk into a library and pull out an encyclopedia to start their search. Now students expect to be able to Google a question and get an answer. When they have to actually do the messy job of research, they can easily get frustrated. When research is taught through collaboration with a teacher on a project they need to work on, not a hypothetical or library assigned topic, the skills they take away are significantly more profound (McNee & Radmer, 2017) and there is less frustration.
This program has also focused on essential questions and Wiggins and McTighe's Backward Design Process. This process encourages us to consider what we want students to understand rather than how we are going to teach a specific subject. Teaching through essential questions and with a focus on allowing students to use what they are learning is the ultimate goal for 21st century learners. These essential questions become a launching point for the critical thinking skills that they are going to need in the future (Kelley-Maudie & Phillips, 2016).
References:
Donham, J., &; Sims, C. (2020). Enhancing teaching and learning: A leadership guide for school librarians (4th edition ed.). Chicago: ALA Neal-Schuman.
Kelley-Mudie, S., & Phillips, J. (2016). To build a better question. Knowledge Quest, 44(5), 14-19. https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/build-better-question/docview/1786515019/se-2?accountid=14604
McNee, D., Radmer, E. (2017). Librarians and learning: the impact of collaboration. English Leadership Quarterly 40(1), 6-9. https://www.proquest.com/docview/1929035671?accountid=14604
Saavedra, A., & Opfer, V. (2012). Learning 21st-century skills requires 21st-century teaching. The Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2), 8-13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41763587
Stripling, B. (2008). Inquiry: Inquiring Minds Want to Know. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 15(1), 50-52). https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/inquiry-inquiring-minds-want-know/docview/237139447/se-2?accountid=14604