I have few areas of interests, but I am also trying to think
of exploring a topic that would best
support the goals of my staff, school and students.
Possible topics for myself would be:
-
Inquiry Based Learning
-
Aboriginal literature and curriculum support
-
Early and later reading intervention strategies
(guided reading)
-
Literature Circles
These are the topics that are
most relevant to my current teaching practices in library. However I am also
interested in how to better use the smart board in my library, perhaps for a
literacy center, or to work with students when doing reading intervention. (I
mainly use it as a projector, so maybe it could be utilized better). I would also like to explore the use of
online resources or ethical online behaviour, but hesitant, as I wonder if I
would have the time to teach about “ ethical online behaviour” to my
intermediate students, as I get them for a 15 min book exchange once a week? Or
maybe to try and find time to teach this next year when I re do my schedule?
Aboriginal literature and
teaching principals has also been a major goal of our school this year. The
librarian before me started aboriginal kits, that rotate to the classrooms each
month, so each teacher gets a new “kit” with a theme and lesson plan each
month. As the new librarian this year, I
have taken over the project, and began to create kits of Year B, and C, for primary
and intermediate students. However, this topic is newer for me and I feel I
still have a lot to learn in gathering appropriate resources, and literature
that work with the classrooms and their curriculum. I recently have been given
grant money to further develop our aboriginal resources, so that is also
motivation to explore this topic further.
I spend a good amount of time
each week doing literature circle as well, so I am very interested in how to
improve my teaching in this area as well. I have read “Grand conversations” by
Faye Brownlie which has helped guide my practice, yet this is my first time
doing them so there has been a learning curve the last few weeks.
Reading intervention, is another
area I am newer at and would like to learn more about. Which literature and approaches
are best for my students? Especially the intermediate students whom I pull out
for 1 on 1 support… how is my time with them best spent? What does research
show for most effective practices?
These are my current interests
and areas I have been trying to learn more about this year. I suppose, I feel a
bit spread thin this year, trying to learn more about these topics that are
focused on at my school. I think this
process of narrowing down a topic and focusing on one thing, will be helpful
for my practice and professional growth.
A good first blog post that outlines some very important and challenging topics for exploration that will be very useful for your practice. I also am working on expanding my Aboriginal resources for my school and struggle to find appropriate stuff that is useful, age-appropriate and about local indigenous cultures. You've identified many good potential topics and ideas and only need to limit yourself to what you can achieve.
ReplyDeleteHi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThe topics you've outlined are all quality areas for exploration in my opinion. I think that I would be interested in exploring all of them as well! We have some overlap in our topics too, as I'm going to be exploring Inquiry Based Learning, as it will probably be of most benefit to me in my classroom right now.
However, something that I can certainly see staff turning to their librarian for help with is reading intervention. I wish I had a specialist at my school as this is an ongoing challenge for me. For example, right now I have a grade eight boy who is reading at a grade four level and I have no idea how to deal with this and no time. Furthermore, I only see the problem of struggling readers increasing (for a number of reasons) and so to have an expert in the school to turn to, particularly if that expert is a natural book lover, would be such an advantage.
Having said that, I also have a passion for literature circles in my classroom and have used them extensively over the past few years, so if you need information I can certainly help with that.
Good luck choosing your topic. I look forward to seeing what you come up with :)
I could see any of these topics providing a great research opportunity! It must be wonderful to step into a library that has such a great program running like the Aboriginal lesson kits. I have been trying to focus on finding more Aboriginal resources for our collection and have found lists from the public library very helpful.
ReplyDeleteAlthough part of my role as TL is to help connect readers with great books, I don't often know their reading level. I usually go on their interests and books they have previously enjoyed when helping them search. I am also trying to find more audio and hi-low books for intermediates that want to be reading what their peers are, but are being held back by their decoding/vocabulary skills. I would be interested in other ways a TL can provide support for reading interventions.
Good luck!
This comment is in regards to M Cordeiro's question about supporting readers. Have you heard of the program Kerzweil? We use this at our school to support all levels of readers and it works really well. http://www.kurzweiledu.com We have quite a library of books available to our students.
ReplyDeleteCheers,