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.
How it Aligns
The unit plan aligns because it requires an interview and collaboration with a classroom teacher. The lesson takes into account diverse learners and is differentiated based on their learning needs. It is also an inquiry-based experience, includes a makerspace activity, includes formative assessments and allows for student reflection and self-assessment.
This lesson plan aligns because it requires collaborative planning and execution of a lesson based in inquiry. The unit and lesson plan included assessments and multiple instructional strategies that allowed students to engage in their learning as well as using technology and research information ethically to access new knowledge.
What I learned
This unit was the first I had written in close to 15 years. I underestimated how far away from actual lesson planning I had gotten in my role as a classroom teacher. This was a great experience that made me realize how important taking time to plan truly is.
The lesson plan was one that had to be revised and reformed which helped me to focus on what the important parts of planning a lesson truly are. The inquiry lesson is something that I had never fully researched and understood. I enjoyed taking this lesson, one I may have used as is in the past, and making it more thought provoking and allowing the students to be more active as learners in the plan. Beginning at the end, with what I wanted the students to learn was an important component in both the unit and lesson plan that I now understand is a crucial piece when designing a lesson.
Student Impact
"There is strong evidence to show that inquiry based, collaborative approaches to learning benefit both individual and collective knowledge growth. Students engaged in inquiry-based learning develop content knowledge and learn increasingly important twenty-first century skills, such as the ability to work in teams, solve complex problems, and to apply knowledge gained through the lesson to other circumstances." (Barron pg. 12) By using the inquiry approach in the media center, in collaboration with teachers, we will better be able to guide students in not only learning the standards, but also help them in becoming better at reflecting and expanding on their knowledge. By working together, the library is no longer an isolated entity and the librarian becomes part of the student's educational journey and not just the person who guards the books.
Another impact in switching the narrative to backwards design, which is oft employed in Inquiry Based lessons, is starting at the end instead of the beginning. What does this mean? Well, traditionally teachers start with the materials, texts and activities that they will use, instead of beginning with the standards and goals they are trying to teach. Wiggins and McTighe suppose that one should "start with the end- the desired results" and then build from there. (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) We should ask questions about how we will master the standards, what lessons or activities will get the students to where we need them be. After we know what we want the students to learn, then we think about how we will assess them, what evidence will we need to show that the student has achieved the desired results. From there we can begin to plan the instruction and the essential questions that are important for the student to be able to answer as the unit or lesson progresses.
References
Arnone, M. P., Small, R. V., Stripling, B. K., & Berger, P. (2011). Teaching for Inquiry: Engaging the Learner Within. Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Barron, B., Darling-Hammond, L., & George Lucas Educational Foundation. (2008). Teaching for Meaningful Learning. ERIC Clearinghouse.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding By Design (2nd Expanded ed.). Assn. for Supervision & Curriculum Development.