Trying Something New

I am an elementary school librarian. I teach 17 classes a week to kindergarten through sixth graders. For my youngest students, I pull a selection of books for them to choose from each week. Kindergarten students choose one book from 3 tables full - fiction, non-fiction, picture books, early readers. First grade students choose from bins of fiction and non-fiction sorted by Accelerated Reader color. We do things this way to keep the library shelves in order until the students are in second grade where they are learning how to alphabetize and when I teach them to use shelf markers. I also thought the smaller number of books to choose from would help the students not be overwhelmed by shelf after shelf after shelf of books.

But week after week I would have students come up to me and say, "There's nothing on the tables I want to read." Or "I've already read all those."

This is especially painful to hear after spending a weekend getting a pile of new books ready for just this group of students.

So I've worked hard to change up the choices. When kids ask for a favorite character or topic, I have scoured the shelves for those so they were available the next week -- only to have that student decline the very book he wanted a week ago. As I would collect the books to put them away at the end of the day, I would marvel at the titles that were left behind. No one wanted to read these books?

Last week I was highlighting books that were going to be part of our upcoming book fair. Class after class of students would have to be batted away as they tried to run off with book fair titles that aren't part of our library collection yet. I wondered what would happen if I highlighted some of my kindergarten books before I sent the kids off to choose one.

It was a completely different experience. I told them what some of the books were about. I read the first page or two of some. I showed off some of the pictures. Most of my students checked out one of the books I had highlighted.

This week I tried it with my first graders, too. Again, more students chose the books I highlighted (many of which were new to the library, but had been ignored in previous weeks) than books I didn't talk about.

It made me wonder if even those smaller sets of books on tables are overwhelming for some kids. Maybe they are afraid they will pick a "dud" and be stuck with it for a week. Maybe the cover isn't enough to grab their interest.

Whatever the reason, my little book "chat" seemed to help kids connect with books more easily than leaving them on their own to discover what books are available and then to choose one for the coming week.

I will be highlighting books with these groups of students every week from now on!

Lesson Plans

Many (many) years ago, when my husband and I taught upper elementary and middle school Sunday school, I enjoyed lesson planning. I had a theme or plan for the year (Women in the Bible or Children in the Bible) and I had theme verses I wanted students to focus on. I loved plotting out the lessons, writing out my thoughts and observations on the scripture passages. I loved teaching the material and interacting with my students over it.

I am typing this post after over 2.5 hours of lesson planning for school. I am not yet experiencing the same joy I used to feel.

I teach 17 classes a week to kids in 7 grades. So I am "only" planning 7 lessons a week - far fewer than my dear colleagues who teach that many lessons in one day. And my lessons have to be short enough to fit in a 40 minute period where I need to check in returned books and check out new books for anywhere from 10 to 25 students in a group as well as teach the lesson. Right now, I am just trying to plot out all of the library orientation material I need to cover depending on the age and skill level of the group. I'm having a hard time even remembering what all I taught last year.

My main challenges are

• My preference to plan a full week at a time. My first day of teaching classes was a Thursday. I have 4 classes on Thursday and 4 on Friday, so about half of my load. But in those two days, I taught two of my fifth grade classes. I didn't see the other one until Wednesday of the following week. So, during the first full week of classes, I spent three days (nine classes) covering our orientation material and two days (eight classes) covering Week 2 material (the always thrilling discussion of shelf markers!). After two full weeks of classes, we have a Monday off for Labor Day. It will take me about a month of classes to arrange the material so that the three fourth grade classes (which meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday) are all on the same lesson in the same calendar week. This problem continues throughout the year thanks to breaks and school events and book fair, etc. I've already plotted out the dates of meetings through December so I can see where my partial weeks are and try to plan around them.
• Planning developmentally appropriate lessons. I am still learning what books and what concepts work with which ages. Two years in a row now, I have read Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten? to my kindergarten students and both times it has completely bombed. I finally got smart and started keeping a file of books I am using, what lessons I do with them, and when they work and don't work.
• Planning lessons that prepare kids for more than just finding a book in the non-fiction section of any library. Library usage skills are important to me. Not only do they minimize the cyclone-like appearance of the library when a class leaves, but I believe they are skills necessary for life-long learning. But I want my students to leave with so much more - a love of reading, an appreciation for the impact a well-written story or well-developed character can have on your heart and mind, an understanding of the world that can come from digging into a well-written non-fiction book, a new depth of understanding of Scripture that can come when you know how to read for understanding.
• The overabundance of material available to me. I almost have too many choices as far as lesson material. I have the things I did last year (some of which worked and some didn't). I have fun things I have found online from other teachers. I have a file cabinet full of material from my predecessor that I haven't even had time to open. I have shelves of library magazines full of lesson ideas. 
• The pressure of having to develop a scope and sequence by October. I knew this time last year that I had to put together a scope and sequence of lessons for each grade level by this October. I had every intention of doing it this summer, but it didn't happen. In part, that is because of the other library projects I was doing instead. But honestly, part of it is because I hate having to commit to a scope and sequence this early in my librarian/teacher journey. I have so much to learn. I have so much material (see previous bullet point). I'm afraid the minute I submit this curriculum plan I'm going to hate it and want to do something completely different (or I'm going to try to implement it and find it's a complete flop)!

What's sad is that I realize this 150 minutes I just spent was really just for formatting an outline of what I'm going to do on certain days - and I haven't even finished all of September yet - not even planning the exact lessons.

*Sigh*

I am expecting to feel a lot better about the manageability of my teaching life by October. I haven't lost the hope of someday being able to leave school at 3:15 again!