student teaching week thirteen

Fairly short week for me this week; I left right at the end of school on wednesday for TLA and spent thursday and friday at the conference. Managed to not get sucked into a tornado, but things were a little spooky there for a while in that part of the state. :) If you've got thoughts on the extremely low participation in TLA from school librarians, I'd sure like to hear them, because that's something I'd like to help work on, provided I can continue living and working in Tennessee. The conference programming for school libraries was pretty low, I'm sure because the general participation for that crowd is so low, but I also wonder if that's exactly *why* the participation is so low. As the program was, if I was looking at having to pay conference fees out of pocket and could only afford one, I'd pick TASL over TLA every time because of the sessions offered. However, I think TLA is extremely important for school librarians because those non-k-12 sessions are where you can learn things that help move you forward, whereas most of what was offered at TASL were things that would help you get better at what you're already doing, not getting innovative. So I'd like to work on the problem of how to get more school people involved in TLA, but I don't know what the answer is currently, or even exactly what causes the problem. I don't think it's that school people just can't get away from their jobs to attend a conference, because participation in TASL is huge.

We worked on making materials for a lesson on sequencing to use as a TCAP review with third graders this week, which was fun. I helped Mary Ann make a classroom set of several copies for her library, and then I made a set of one copy for myself, which worked out great because I could learn how she does things and then try out slightly different ways of doing it on my own copy. We started the project because the teachers were coming to Mary Ann saying their students were having trouble with things that told a story (assume for example that this is a story about Tom) then gave questions that looked like this:

1. Tom walked home.
2. Tom ran to the barn.
3. Tom fell asleep.
4. Tom ate breakfast.
What is the correct order of events in the story?
a) 1324
b) 2431
c) 4213
d) 3241

The kids were having a lot of trouble using the numbers to label the events and then putting them in something other than numerical order. So we took file folders and put cover art using real books (so that it was also a literature lesson) on the front, then opened the inside and put a typed copy of the text of the story on the left side side and a sheet on the right with numbered events and questions about them, phrased as closely to the TCAP questions as we could get them. Then on the back we put envelopes. We made little strips of paper with the numbered events on them that the kids could physically move into the right order, and that way they had a tactile and visual way of putting them into sequence to help them answer the questions, and the strips were kept in the envelopes on the back. We also put answer keys on them, and that was the main change I made when my set; Mary Ann pasted them on backs of the folders, but I wanted to try a way to cover them and make cheating harder, so I made little tri-fold construction paper things with the answers inside and put them in the envelopes along with the event strips. We made three copies each of ten stories that way.

Then for the actual lessons we started with a whole group reading "Where the Wild Things Are" aloud, then did a practice set using giant-sized event strips that kids stood up and held and moved around into order, so that everybody did one together. Then we put them at tables with five folders at each table and let them practice with partners. They could work at their own pace, check themselves with the answer keys, and then just move on to another folder for as much time as we had. If they were to run out of folders on the table (nobody did in the 45 minute class period), they could move to a table with a different set of five (we split the ten stories into A and B sets to make it easier to make sure we were getting them to different sets of stories). The kids worked together really well and seemed to benefit from the practice, so we're waiting to hear back from teachers about whether they're seeing any improvement.

That's a really long discourse on those folders, but they are going to be a super useful way to make lesson materials that can be used every year (we laminated everything to last longer), and anybody's welcome to holler at me if they want to come see my set. Just wanted to share.

Other than that, I've been working on a program to use my flute to help tell some stories. We were originally hoping to market this as an afternoon thing teachers could sign up for to give their kids a mental break after TCAP testing in the mornings, but the teachers are actually signing up for real lessons during those afternoons (which seems like too little too late, because they haven't been signing up much at all in the last two weeks), so we'll see if and when anybody wants to come in for just some music and stories. Maybe it can make a post-TCAP treat for somebody.