Of course, teacher collaboration is a huge part of being a teacher librarian. I collaborate with a wide variety of teachers to curate, co-teach, and enhance their lessons in multiple different ways. Below are just a few of the creations I have made in collaboration with our teachers.
Addiction Simulation
What is it? This is a simulation to help students grasp the idea of the cycle of addiction, cravings, building a tolerance, withdrawals, and why it's such a hard cycle to break. Thanks ChatGPT for coming up with this idea. It worked out great! Students loved the hands-on aspect of it, and the reflection provided some good insights. What class was this in collaboration with? Freshmen Health Resources: |
What's the Risk Drinking and Driving Activity
What is it? Every semester the freshmen health teachers (a semester long class) and I pair together to do a research projects for their Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs Unit. This past year, we started adding activities to mix it up a little and give student's a break from just researching and reading. This activity explores blood alcohol content levels, drinking and driving, and plans of actions that should be taken in various situations. Students use dice to roll and create a random person. They will do four rolls to create the person's age, weight, how many drinks they have had, and the number of hours they have spent drinking. After that, they calculate the approximate BAC and what impairments the person may have. The activity was a nice, quick, wrap-up activity, and the students enjoyed the dice rolling aspect. What class was this in collaboration with? Freshmen Health Resources: |
Independent Reading Collaboration
During the 2023/2024 school year an English teacher and I will be pairing up throughout the entire school year to enhance his independent reading practice in his classroom. Our goal by the end of it all is as follows: #1: For students to strengthen their independent reading muscles #2: For students to be able to better describe themselves as readers #3: For students to be able to better describes the books they enjoy as readers #4: For students who are reluctant readers to find joy in books It is A LOT to ask over the course of one year, but this pilot year will be one we will refine over the year to launch into more classes next year. To get ALLLLLLLLL the templates we will be using and watch our journey, be sure to check out my blog this year HERE. |
Digital Literacy Toolkit:
Overview, Lessons, and More What is it? Over the past few years, the Sophomore English teachers and the library have been collaborating to bring some digital literacy lessons to every single sophomore. Each Sophomore English class goes through a series of 3 lessons we call the "Digital Literacy Toolkit" where students learn about a wide variety of information, tools, and skills to be able to navigate the complicated online landscape in a smart, efficient, and mindful way. These lessons have gone through a couple of different versions, and this is the current version as of the 24/25 school year. The Digital Literacy Toolkit involves the following lessons. . . Lesson #1: Digital Information Types Lesson #2: Lateral Reading Lesson #3: Navigating the News |
Lessons #1 and #3 are taught by the teacher librarian in the library. Lessons #2 is taught by the teacher in their classrooms. All of the lessons are done in sequence, but doing them this way provides flexibility of time with my schedule. Below are links to posters I put in the library as well as posters that go up in English teacher's classrooms.
In addition to this, students receive at the beginning of the lessons a guided notes packet that helps to keep them focused during the lessons as well as helping them during the activity portions of each lesson.
Resources:
In addition to this, students receive at the beginning of the lessons a guided notes packet that helps to keep them focused during the lessons as well as helping them during the activity portions of each lesson.
Resources:
- Guided Notes for all lessons Template in Canva HERE
- All lessons are linked below
Digital Literacy Toolkit:
Lesson #1 - Digital Information Types What is it? In this lesson, students will learn about the different types of information found online. They will learn how to spot the difference between the different "Infozones." This lesson is based off of the Infozones lesson from the News Literacy Project's Checkology platform, and will require you to have a free Checkology account to access their amazing and awesome videos. As an alternative to this presentation, you can use their version of this lesson on their platform. I do not take credit for some activities in this lesson, such as the gallery walk. The idea of the "gallery walk" is from the NLP with some tweaks for my classroom. It is also based on THIS activity in Checkology. I put the posters up around the room and have students rotate around to look at the posters. However, in the presentation you can see I've built it in a way where you don't have to do that if you don't wish. I download this presentation from Canva and put it into a Google Slide presentation. Then I use PearDeck to do some interactive elements with students. However, that is not required. What class was this in collaboration with? Sophomore English Resources: |
Digital Literacy Toolkit:
Lesson #2 - Lateral Reading What is it? In this lesson, students will learn about the invaluable skill of lateral reading. Please note, there is another version of this lesson that I use with freshmen science classes below, but we like to do this kind of lesson twice to hit home how important this skill is. This lesson is focused on website verification, and the two websites they will check are Social Science/English based. Sources pulled from Civic Online Reasoning and adapted into this presentation. What class was this in collaboration with? Sophomore English Resources: |
Digital Literacy Toolkit:
Lesson #3 - Navigating the News What is it? In this lesson, students will learn how to differentiate news and opinion as well as be able to use their lateral reading skills to navigate the news using their critical thinking skills and listening to their inner skeptic. This lesson is based off of the Media Bias lesson from the News Literacy Project's Checkology platform as well as Civic Online Reasoning's lessons on news versus opinion. While this lesson touches on just the basics, it has worked well to give sophomores practical skills they may use here and now. What class was this in collaboration with? Sophomore English Resources: |
Follow-Up Digital Literacy Lesson: News or Opinion?
This lesson is designed as a follow-up lessons after students have gone through all of the digital literacy lessons. I designed it to fit in anywhere in the English curriculum as a quick warm-up or exit ticket activity. Students will look at three articles on Will Smith punching Chris Rock at the Oscars in 2022. Students must determine if the three articles are news or opinion and justify their answer. What class was this in collaboration with? Sophomore English Resources:
|
Follow-Up Digital Literacy Lesson: Truth or Misinformation?
This lesson is designed as a follow-up lessons after students have gone through all of the digital literacy lessons. I designed it to fit in anywhere in the English curriculum as a quick warm-up or exit ticket activity. Students will look at an article about McDonald's offering birthday cakes. They will use their lateral reading skills to determine if this article is true or not. (FYI: It is true!) What class was this in collaboration with? Sophomore English Resources:
|
Is It Real or Is It an AI Image Lessons
What is it? In these warm-ups, students will examine a picture have to determine if they are looking at a real image or an AI generated image through using reverse image search and their own critical observation skills. There is a short two slide mini-lesson on how to spoke AI images and how to do a reverse image search. Then a series of 8 different pictures students can examine. In our classrooms, teachers use these are warm-ups throughout the year. Resources: |
Freshmen Lateral Reading Lesson
What is it? In this lesson, students will learn the invaluable skill of lateral reading. This lesson is focused on website verification with a science-based activity at the end. Sources pulled from Civic Online Reasoning and adapted into this presentation. What class was this in collaboration with? Freshmen Earth and Space Science Resources: * Get a copy of the presentation HERE * Get a copy of the student lesson HERE |
Nature Vs. Nurture Choice Board
What is it? In this lesson, students explored the concept of nature vs. nurture through a series of specially curated YouTube videos by me on the subject. This was meant as an introduction to the topic. What class was this in collaboration with? Psychology (11th and 12th grade) Resources: * Get a copy of the presentation HERE * See the link I sent out to students HERE |
Teenage Activism Choice Board
What is it? In this lesson, students explored a variety of teenage activists and their causes. The teenage activists represent a wide variety of causes, and they were specifically chose as some with more progressive causes and others with more conservative causes. What class was this in collaboration with? Sociology (11th and 12th grade) Resources: * Get a copy of the presentation HERE * See the link I sent out to students HERE |
The Industrial Revolution of Today Exploration
What is it? In this lesson, students were introduced to a project they were doing about the Industrial Revolution of today. Students used this presentation to explore various YouTube videos specifically curated by the teacher librarian to introduce possible topics they could choose from. What class was this in collaboration with? World History Resources: * Get a copy of the presentation HERE |