Cultivating effective instructional design to co-plan, teach and assess learning

As a Teacher Librarian, I understand the importance of initiating and promoting collaboration with classroom teachers. Teacher collaboration initiates benefits to the school and to the learners. Collaboration takes on many different forms from co-teaching to curating and selecting resources to evaluating and curating websites or apps to ADST maker space activities. I consider collaboration to be one of my main roles and this relationship is successful because of mutual respect and flexibility. As the teacher-librarian I execute my expertise in integrating technology and information literacy to support teachers in creating engaging lessons that support the curriculum. A recent project with grade twos involved the app Bloxels EDU. Students were learning about the water cycle, and we wanted to enhance students learning by incorporating technology that was meaningful and engaging. The class came to the learning commons to design and create a game about the water cycle. The first lesson focused on brainstorming and sharing what a video game needed. As a class, we decided the game needed a story with a clear beginning, middle and end. The hero needed a goal and obstacles to face in order to reach the end. In pairs, students planned their game ideas and were prepared to make changes as they created their game. The final project was published to Bloxels Edu platform for sharing with the Bloxels world-wide community. To conclude students completed self-assessments. I led the lessons for instructing how to use Bloxels EDU while the classroom teacher provided support during the lessons. The classroom teacher was an active learner and participant to gain skills and knowledge while sharing her understanding of the students and curriculum. All learners were engaged and honing their 21st century skills of communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.

Mandip Bains - Teacher Librarian at Surrey Center Elementary

One of the most rewarding aspects of my role as a teacher-librarian in the Surrey School District is the time that is built into our schedules for collaboration with our colleagues. I bring a unique skill set to these interactions as a trained and experienced specialist in literacy. Together we are able to design enriching and engaging learning experiences that are cross-curricular, incorporate technology and integrate quality resources from a variety of media. I have been involved in teaching students 3-D printing, coding, robotics, animation, and green screening. This term a grade 3 class designed a video game to demonstrate their learning of landforms and ecosystems using a program called BLOXELS. I worked with a grade 6 class to participate in a MINECRAFT challenge where we had to build our school. Students were highly engaged in this work as we planned and executed the task. Students showed incredible resilience, problem solving skills and team work. The children were so proud of the finished product and everyone experienced success. I’ve also participated in makerspace initiatives this year like building a cardboard arcade that included aspects of universal design for special needs students. I worked on a storytelling unit with grade fives where they wrote and performed their own modernized fable. I’ve completed story workshop units with a variety of primary classes using loose parts. I’ve collaborated on research projects with several classes where we presented our learning in unique ways like using Book Creator and SWAY. Our skill set as teacher-librarians lends itself particularly well to inquiry. Recently, I collaborated on an inquiry project with a grade 5 colleague on social justice. We organized literature bins based around six social justice topics including eco-justice, disability social justice and Indigenous social justice. The students read and responded in a variety of ways to the literature in the bins. In this unit, they created posters, recorded PSA’s, created a social justice KAHOOT quiz for fellow students, wrote social justice poetry, and designed a square for a class social justice quilt with an artist’s statement that was inspired by our learning about The Witness Blanket. To culminate the unit, we held a Social Justice Symposium for students, parents, teachers, and District staff for the students to showcase their learning. The knowledge, passion and confidence these children possessed when speaking to these topics was truly wonderful to behold. These are just few examples of the many amazing learning opportunities I am able to create and deliver with my colleagues. Though collaboration on design, teaching and assessment we are able to enrich the learning experiences for our students.

Chantal Van Santen - Teacher Librarian at Katzie Elementary

This infographic was developed by the Surrey Chapter of the BCTLA to represent the various approaches we as Teacher Librarians take in collaboration with our teaching colleagues.

Tammy Le - Teacher Librarian at Salish Secondary

With a desire to put all the pieces together (the inquiry process, equity, inclusion, social and emotional learning, quality assessment, information and digital literacy, cross curricular learning and co-planning, teaching and assessing) I created a guide in consultation with many colleagues for Teacher Librarians and Teachers to use together. The Inquiry for Equity Planning & Process Guide (linked below) is intended to provide a structure that maximizes the impact on student learning. Professional development including virtual sessions and two full days of release were offered to support Teacher Librarians in using and implementing the guide. The considerations in this guide are reflective of our district priority practices.

Andrea LaPointe - Surrey Schools Teacher Librarian Helping Teacher

Inquiry Planning and Process - TL Collaboration Edition.pdf