Chapter 8: Teaching and Assessing

This chapter in Curriculum Connections through the Library discusses assessment in the school library in a perfect world. The author of the chapter, Sharon Coatney, agrees with Richard Stiggins’ argument that library assessment should be “for” learning. There are many suggestions in the chapter as to how to do this, all of which require close collaboration with the classroom teacher. How many of us have had classroom teachers eager to come in after instruction to share the assessment? And if the teachers do this, and some are very good at sharing assessment data, how much time has passed between the library instruction and the student assessment?

The teacher librarian needs assessment “of” learning to determine what worked and what did not work. Chances are that there is another group coming in for similar instruction and there is no data to help the librarian determine if the instruction works.

I read the article “The One-Minute Paper and the One-Hour Class: Outcome Assessment for One-Shot Library Instruction” which offers a real solution to library assessment that will not overwhelm school librarians. While this is designed for secondary education and college students, it can be adapted for everyone and is straight forward. At the end of a library instruction give a half page assessment. Just have the students answer two or three specific questions relating to the library component and turn it in before leaving. Another suggestion is to have the questions as part of the overall project and part of the grade for the assignment. However, this does delay results for the librarian and requires cooperation from the classroom teacher.

Many overworked school librarians will resist this one minute assessment because it requires more work for them. Many will feel that walking the room and doing informal formative assessment on the spot is enough for them to determine what is working and what needs to be adjusted. While this is true, this type of formative assessment does not provide data. We are now in a data driven educational environment and we need assessment data. This is just another reason to consider grading papers in the library.

Bibliography
Choinski, Elizabeth and Emanuel, Michelle. "The One-Minute Paper and the One-hous Class: Outcomes Assessment for One-shot Library Instruction." Reference Services Review 34.1 (2006): 148-155.

International Society for Technology in Education

Making 21st Century High Schools: Go Mobile Go Global with Cathleen Norris, PhD and Elliot Soloway, PhD

I viewed this session of the ISTE conference thinking there would be information specific to high schools and technology. This session was more of a K-12 sales pitch for smart phones; which for me was a disappointment. That is not to say that I did’t take away a few valuable bits of information during the presentation.

Norris and Soloway spent the first part of the presentation on why technology in schools as not been a huge success. The reason for pointing this out is so that schools can avoid the same mistakes as they plan curriculum for 21st Century learning. Their points are valid and the advice should be heeded.

When a district is getting ready to purchase technology there should be goals in place and the technology should be essential to the curriculum. Examples were shared about how schools bought laptops without educational software or did not buy the laptop cart to make the computers mobile. There was no plan in place for how to use the equipment. Another reason that schools had not utilized the technology that had been purchased was that professional development, teaching teachers how to utilize the equipment, was not provided. What good is something if no one knows how to use it? Also, the expensive machines were purchased without any software applications for teachers. The machines jut had a word processor and an Internet browser. The third mistake that was mentioned was that the technology was purchased without a connection to the curriculum.

These are all valid points. Schools should have a curriculum in place and then look for the best tools to teach that curriculum. If laptops, desktops, or hand held mobile devices are selected for delivering this education than the teachers need to know how to use the equipment. Access to the technology should also be readily available.

I’m not sure that cellular devices and blue tooth will be the future of technology for schools. I see several problems with this, the main one being that the screens are too small for sustained work. The one point the presenters made that I think is the most import thing in the entire presentation is that schools should not necessarily focus on the device, but rather the focus should be on the type of connectivity and the cost of the connectivity should be weighed into the equation during the planning stages. It was suggested that a monthly cost per student to use the technology with all things taken into account is the way to have a sustainable device for students.

Technology for the sake of technology is useless. There must be a need and a reason for having this type of equipment. I agree with the presenters when they say that the technology needs to be essential to the curriculum.

Does this mean we overhaul the curriculum to teach with technology?

Curriculum Connections Through the Library Post 2

The curriculum map is a great way for the teacher librarian to know what is being taught in the classroom and a valuable tool in developing the library curriculum to enhance student learning in the building. The map is also valuable in the collaborative efforts with the classroom teacher because the librarian has an opening in the collaborative conversation. As we move forward and implement these great plans how do we know if the students are learning what needs to be learned?

As I read through the text I can’t help but notice that self-reflection is stressed time and time again. I think it is one of the most important steps in curriculum development for the library media specialist. Many of us do not have a way to take student assessment after each lesson, so how do we know if the students learn what we are teaching them? How do we self-reflect?

Charlotte C. Vlasis adds assessment as Step 4 in using the curriculum map for writing curricular units. There are five questions Vlasis feels need to be measured which can be found on page 114. These questions are also valuable to ask for self-assessment. After each unit we teach we need to ask ourselves if we gave the students enough information to answer the essential question. Did we address the chosen standards? Did we present the material at the right level for the students in front of us? Most importantly, did we provide an exercise that was interesting and relevant to our students?

How do we know the answers to these questions? One way is to ask the classroom teachers for feedback as part of our collaboration. What worked and what didn’t work? Ask for suggestions. The library component of instruction needs to work with the unit being taught in the classroom. The best way to know if we did our jobs well is to find out how the students did in their unit. Did the work done in the library improve the student’s work? If the answer is yes, add the unit to the library’s map and if the answer is no, it is back to the drawing board.

Curriculum Connections Through the Library

As I read chapter one I realized that I worked in a school library that got it right. Every instruction was based on the inquiry model. There were foundation questions and essential questions given to the students to guide them through their research. As the students progressed through the years they had to develop their own questions to base their research on.

Where instruction in the library got trickier was in collaboration.

How do we make classroom teachers realize that we enhance what it is they are teaching? Our curriculum encompasses all disciplines. Violet H. Harada gets it right in chapter 2 when she states that "...thinking permeates the disciplines, library media specialist are key team members in identifying the relationships existing between thinking skills and dispositions and the processes embedded in the disciplines and information literacy (Stripling 1995)" in Curriculum Connections Through the Library on page 44.

We teach our students to think, to reason, to solve puzzles, to ask questions, and to verify information. We lay our curriculum on top of whatever assignment the students are given. We teach a life long transferable skill.