Lesson Planning and School Librarians
At UM, we’re looking at the student teaching handbook for school librarians and making revisions for Fall 2010. One question that has come up is whether elaborate lesson plans should be required of school librarians. There’s been some pushback both from experienced librarians and from the students themselves.
I admit that I’m an informal planner — our collaborative lessons are often constructed during email exchanges or quick hallway conversations. Our district does not require structured or formal written lesson plans except for evaluation visits.
How important was lesson planning in your student teaching experience? What lesson planning method did you use?
February 26th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Lesson plans were required for supervisor visits when I student taught last semester. At the elementary school where I student taught, the principal required lesson plans of all the teachers including the school librarian every other week, so I had an extra dose of lesson plans in that area. The most important part of lesson planning, in my opinion, is figuring out your objectives or student learning outcomes and aligning those with state or national standards. The actual flow of things (activities, read-alouds, direct instruction, etc.) comes fairly naturally to me, so I wasn’t a fan of having to write it all out. But for new teacher librarians, I think timing can be challenging and should be worked into lesson plans.
This is the lesson plan template that was recommended for use during student teaching: http://www.lis.illinois.edu/programs/k12/handbook/pdfs/LessonPlanTemplate.pdf
As to whether lesson plans should be required, as much as I hate to admit it, I vote yes. If we’re asserting ourselves as teacher librarians, then we should be held accountable as such. In my undergraduate elementary education program, I was required to write lesson plans for every single lesson I taught, but in my graduate library program, I was only required to submit lesson plans for lessons that were observed - I definitely prefer the latter. While it’s helpful and should be encouraged to write lesson plans for all those unobserved lessons during student teaching, it’s unrealistic given all of the other responsibilities we have as librarians. But I don’t think it should be eliminated completely because teaching is one of those responsibilities.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:12 pm
I rarely have detailed lesson plans in place for my library lessons. I see students for 30 minutes in most cases and within that time, need to read a story and book checkout. That takes up most of the time.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I do not do formal lesson plans for every lesson, but every time I am evaluated I need to hand in a formal lesson plan. I think formal lesson plans are especially important if you do not have teaching experience. Doing a formal lesson plan forces you to think about things like how to motivate the students, differentiation, and possible misconceptions. It makes you a better teacher. As you have been teaching longer, these things might come naturally.