Library+Lessons

Library Lesson Plan Resources: [|S.O.S. for Information Literacy] Available through Syracuse University, this database offers lessons for teaching Information Literacy Skills for grades K-12.

Teacherlinx Lesson plans for all subjects to which individuals can upload their work. For every 50 lesson plans you upload, you get a $10 Starbucks card :)

Teach Library Wiki from the Library Curriculum head Samuel Jackendoff in the Pittsburgh School District, offering a space for librarians to collaborate

As you know, our instructional lessons at the elementary level, for the most part, alternate between "literature appreciation" and "research skills." While some of us may be doing different things after "reading a story," those of you looking to apply differentiated instruction to those "reading lessons" may be interested in the following. I believe I've come up with an idea as to how we can provide differentiated instruction in a way that is manageable within the limited time and structure of the library schedule and across the grade levels. DI includes pre-assessment to thouroughly understand your students in relation to ability, readiness levels and learning styles, a daunting task for itinerants who work with 300 to 500 students per week with 4 to 6 days or more between classes. A manageable way to "determine where your students are" in relation to reading comprehension, etc. is to view their guided reading levels (//classroom teachers update this information every few months//) and break them into high, middle and low for each library class. This can serve as your pre-assessment and a general starting point for flexible grouping when responding to stories. Obviously, as you provide them with reading responses and assess that work, you can move them between the high, middle and low as needed. After reading and discussing a story with the class as a whole, they are broken into 3 groups and provided an appropriate reading response based on Blooms Taxonomy. For example, the low group will focus on knowledge and comprehension and be given a beginning, middle, end response or a story map to complete. The middle group will focus on application and analysis and be given character traits, personal connection or a venn diagram to compare and contrast. The high group will focus on synthesis and evaluation and create a new book cover that will help others predict the story better & explain why or write down what it would be like if they were a character in the story. You can have color coded folders with a variety of activities like these and assign kids a color to select from after each reading according to their grouping or just hand out the specific leveled response sheets you wish to focus on for each level. - Jim Nagle
 * __Differentiated Instruction__**