Team Teaching
Collaboration is key to a well integrated approach to information literacy. Homeroom teachers, Curriculum Director, Instructional Technology Coach and Teacher Librarian hold frequent (in)formal meetings. Guided by the principals of Design Thinking and under the coaching guidance of Ewan Macintosh's Team at No Tosh consulting, we plan units that closely align with our school’s mission and desired Learning Outcomes. We collaborate all the way through the actual delivery of the lessons, debrief and reiterate as needed.
Part of my job on this team is to resource units we are working on. Examples of the Pathfinders for Learning I created can be found on the current ASIJ ES Learning Commons under Learning. Clean, Easy to navigate and stocked with exactly what's needed for students to start their research. You'll find a combination of vetted video material alongside ebooks, sound clips, website and database articles and print materials here.
When age appropriate materials are not available, it would be up to our team to create resources ourselves. Examples of such original work are this video on Ryan's Wells or an iPad readable eBook on the same topic which you can download by clicking on this link. |
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Crucial to this experimental approach to learning is for students to have access to experts from the field.
As the point person for coordinating access to these people, it would be up to the Teacher Librarian to identify, contact and set up live or remote meeting Skype meetings. Experts are everywhere, over the years we have invited High School students, other teachers, people for the wider school community or anywhere around the world. Sometimes the testimony needed could even be from ourselves, as was the case when our grade 4 students were researching what people's values and beliefs were and we were able to resource that very well within our school community. Another way to foster learning and understanding was for us to invite experts to come and work at school with our students. Thanks to a generous PTA and lots of proposal writing on my behalf, I have been able to invite over 50 speakers to ASIJ between 2003 and 2014. Authors and illustrators, yes, but also filmmakers, singers, dancers, storytellers, poets and travellers with something worth sharing in the context of a unit of study. |
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