AASL Shared Foundation: COLLABORATE

 

COLLABORATE: Work effectively with others to broaden perspectives and work toward common goals.

https://standards.aasl.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/180206-AASL-framework-for-learners-2.pdf

            For the Shared Foundation of Collaborate, I interviewed Blacksburg Elementary School librarian, Julie Brown.  BES is the school in which students attend after leaving the primary school in which I work.  Mrs. Brown teaches around 325 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders and is a part of the special area rotation.  She sees each student in the school once a week.  Here are the questions that guided our conversation:

a.             What are some examples of the ways in which you are implementing working effectively with others to broaden perspectives and work toward common goals in your library program?

Mrs. Brown has students work in cooperative groups for nearly every activity she implements into the library.  They mostly work in groups by their assigned tables in order for her to strategically pair children of varying ability levels together.  This allows the students to talk and share ideas with one another easily.  These types of activities allow learners to develop new understandings through engagement in a learning group as well as increasing their abilities to solve problems informed by group interaction.  Through these experiences, students are also able to establish connections with other learners to build on their own prior knowledge and create new knowledge as they solicit and respond to feedback from others.

 

b.             What are some of the resources in your library program that you are using to implement these competencies?

A plethora of resources are used as Mrs. Brown collaborates with teachers and encourages students to collaborate with each other.  She has used books on South Carolina from her library collection.  For this project, students took what they learned from their readings and drew about the topic.  Maps, symbols of South Carolina (state flower-jasmine, state flag, etc.) were drawn and then writing about each was added to the bottom.  She orders resources that will be needed for curriculum units of study such as books with figurative language, dictionaries (in which to teach students how to use them), continent books, Native Americans, World War II, etc.  She also uses DISCUS and online databases a lot throughout the year as she teaches students how to collect information, gather, and organize information. 

 

c.             Do any of the competencies that you are implementing include collaboration with classroom teachers?  If so, please provide examples.

Collaboration with classroom teachers happens very frequently at BES.  Teachers will come to Mrs. Brown with needs they know she can help students meet.  Third grade teachers have asked her to teach test-taking skills in the past.  Fourth grade teachers had her cover nonfiction text features as a part of library instruction.  She works with guidance to assist with lessons on bullying and internet safety.  Third grade also had students gather information during library from Atlases and online databases to complete a continent project.  They took the information gleaned back to class to complete the project.  Fifth grade students were asked to paint the Peachoid (which is a large water tower our county is famous for) so she paired that project with having students research it and its history and displayed the paintings and writings in the library.

 

d.             What are some of the challenges that you face when trying to implement these competencies?

Time and opportunity!  Mrs. Brown never gets to meet with teachers as their planning times are when she is teaching library classes.  Most teachers send her emails when they need something or seek her out when passing by.

 

            After our interview and taking some time to reflect on our conversation, I will definitely take some of Mrs. Brown’s ideas to my library setting.  I currently allow and encourage students to collaborate with each other during library centers which are held every other week.  I will spend time delving deeper into the content standards for the grade levels at my school and seek ways to come alongside the teachers in my building to reinforce or introduce topics to the students as they visit me each week for library.  I will also look for more ways for the students to collaborate with one another through more inquiry-based library lessons where I might give them a problem and let them work together to come up with possible solutions.  I find collaboration difficult among the young children that I serve (the youngest are 4 years old) because they are just learning how to work with others.  Often times that experience is one they have to be taught how to do as interacting with others isn’t always innate.