Post-Reflection

When thinking back over the entire collaborative planning process, I am pleased with how the collaboration went. From the start it was very nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and someone who could give honest and constructive support/criticism to the unit as a whole. As the SLMS, I had many ideas and skills that I wanted to implement into the lessons. It was hard to narrow down my focus to what I wanted to actually cover and Dave was a great resource for this. As the classroom teacher, he had many time elements in mind that were easy for me to loose sight of in the planning process. I was thinking globally and trying to fit in as many benchmarks as I could; however, he was thinking day-to-day and how many benchmarks would be feasible to cover. I found it crucial, to do this collaborating together, as teachers and SLMS's may have different thoughts in mind as mentioned above. Coming together and sharing ideas, benchmarks and time frames, helped to make the project beneficial to all parties involved.

When developing the lessons, having the classroom teacher as an active participant was wonderful in order to share the teaching of the material. This unit would not even be possible if all elements were to be completed solely in the media center. It was great to have the flexibility with Dave to plan out when and what we would teach in each location. I focused more on the technology piece, whereas he focused more on the language arts portion. Having the flexibility as an SLMS to participate in the classroom instruction was also a huge asset to this project. When media specialists have the time and ability to go out into the classrooms and offer assistance to the classroom teacher, many units such as this one could be a huge success.

I really enjoyed having a partner in order to discuss the assessment portion of the unit. Discussing the benchmarks covered and how to word descriptors on the rubric were very beneficial to me. I often have a hard time thinking about how to accurately communicate student performance. While Dave and I bounced ideas back and forth in this area, the achievement level that I was looking for became much clearer to me. Dave and I both had the same ideas in mind while discussing assessment, since the grading descriptors (exceeding, meeting, approaching, and does not meet) we used are consistent with our district report card.

Overall I thought it was a great experience to collaborate with my teaching partner on this unit. Even still, there were a few road blocks we faced, but were able to work through over the course of the unit. First, it was often hard to find time to meet to discuss the project. Even though Dave is my husband and we live together, that almost gave us more reason to procrastinate and think that we would have plenty of time later to do the task at hand. We also collaborated at specific times throughout the unit and I felt that he was a step behind when we would meet together. I wish we would have discussed more informally throughout the planning process, so that Dave would have been up-to-date with the progress I made on the unit since the last time we met.

I am anxious to continue collaborating throughout my future career as an SLMS. I loved having the opportunity to see what collaboration involves and has the power to be. I can see how beneficial this type of work is to students and their overall achievement. It is great to see a SLMS at work and how valuable our jobs are!

Assessment

Our unit focuses on student research of famous people who have made a contribution to American society. The students are to research a famous person of their choice, who has contributed to America in some way. They will research this famous person and present the information they found in a Power Point or Timeline presentation. There are specific criteria for what types of information should be included in each type of presentation. In the content areas of social studies and language arts, we are hoping to see how students can gather information from a variety of sources and apply it to a final project, how students are able to choose reliable and appropriate sources and pull information from them, and how well students are able to find someone who contributed to American society and communicate their findings with the class as a whole. As for technology, we are hoping to see how well students can use and synthesize their resources as well as utilize technology (Power Point or Timeline software) in order to present information.

When thinking about how to assess this unit, we had a hard time really narrowing down the content and standards that we wanted to assess. We used the "backwards" approach to planning and chose our benchmarks for social studies, technology and language arts that we wanted to incorporate first and then developed assessment ideas and lessons after that. We finally decided on about 3 areas to assess for technology and language arts and one area for social studies. The basis of our assessment will be from the students' research as well as their final projects. We will be collecting their research (Sorting Sheets, notes, etc.) in order to see the quality and depth with which they were able to research their topics. The presentations themselves will show us how well students were able to synthesize the information they found in order to talk about their famous person, his or her accomplishments and his or her contributions to American society. We will also be able to see how proficient the students are with the software that they chose to present with.

We plan to communicate evidence of student learning for this Famous Person Project by including the grades on the third card marking section of the report card in the areas of social studies and language arts. Students will be given a grade on the project in each of these areas according to the appropriate benchmarks. Parents will receive feedback on the project from the student grading rubric that will go home once the project is complete and graded. I will use the rubric to guide my grading and also include comments on it for the students and parents to see. Parents will also be able to see the student progress from the grades that are integrated on the report card. In our district, we have specific technology benchmarks that we are required to cover. Some of these benchmarks will be covered in this unit and will be marked off on each students' Technology Benchmark List. This list is kept in each students' file in the office (CA60) which can be viewed by the teachers and principals. A copy of the Technology Benchmark List for each student is also kept by the media specialist and classroom teacher in her or her files.

We are hoping to support Ethnolinguistic Minority Students through discussion of various American's contributions to society. The unit begins with a timeline lesson comparing the lives of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln. Lessons that follow focus on diversity in Americans from the past and the present. Students will learn about Americans with diverse ethnicities and how their contributions to society have helped to shape America. Giving students a choice about who to research will allow them to choose someone who's contributions have an impact on their own lives.

Mid-Planning

Dave and I found it most helpful to meet a couple of times in order to plan out our unit and divide up the responsibilities. At our latest meeting, we mapped out the big picture of our unit and filled out the planning sheet online. In filling this out, many different tasks that needed to be accomplished came to light. We decided to divide the tasks up among us based on our backgrounds and expertise. I am taking on the responsibility of the lessons and tasks involved in the media center and that have to do with technology, whereas Dave is focused more on the classroom lessons and rubric creation. However, it's hard to truly divide up tasks since we are collaborating on the project and both welcome each other's thoughts and ideas. Dave found the academic and technology standards which related to our big topics of the lesson, while I worked on assessment ideas for those benchmarks at our last meeting. Dave will also be compiling some of the classroom lessons, while I am compiling lessons which will be completed in the media center.

We will both be involved in the process of creating a rubric to measure the standards assessed in this unit. For the assessment rubric, we plan on looking at the individual technology and language arts standards and then creating descriptors which will be listed on a rubric with four performance categories. The rubric will measure the students' performance on their final presentations as well as their researching skills throughout the lessons.

A constant struggle for all educators I think is finding enough time to do a task completely. That was probably the one struggle for Dave and I these last few weeks; finding a chunk of uninterrupted time in which to plan and work on the unit. We were both procrastinating, however, once we just sat down and did it, it was a good feeling. It's always nice to get feedback from someone on an idea and it was great to have two minds thinking together in order to develop ideas and lessons for the unit.

Early Planning

My partner and I have decided to create a fourth grade unit on biographies, incorporating language arts, social studies and technology benchmarks into the plan. We will utilize technology in the media center and the classroom in order to enhance children's knowledge of reading and writing biographies, as well as reviewing research skills and skills necessary to locate biographies in the library. While planning for our collaborative unit, my hope is to achieve Level 8 of Loertscher's Taxonomy: Implementation of the four major programmatic elements of the LMC program. (Loertscher, 2000) The four elements include collaboration, reading literacy, enhancing learning through technology and information literacy. I feel that our meetings and discussions so far are at the collaborative level. We are able to dialogue on what would be best-fit in the classroom and in the media center with our unit. As the media specialist, I will make print sources available for student use in researching and writing biographies. I will also work to find sources at multiple reading levels in order to meet the needs of all of our 4th grade students. My partner and I will also be making technology available to the students in the media center and in the classroom. We will be using various sites for research purposes as well as to explore the lives of famous people. All of our efforts together for creating the lesson to meet the benchmarks of language arts, and social studies with technology integration are examples of the information literacy provided within the unit.

After viewing the unit plan checklist. I divided up the tasks according to when my partner and I will meet and what we will cover. The basics of the unit have already been established through informal discussions with one another. The next steps of the plan that involve what objectives we will cover, the prior knowledge the students have, our big idea and the standards we will cover will be established at our meeting this week together. We do have some ideas as to the big idea of the lesson, but more discussion will be needed to establish which exact benchmarks we will be covering. In addition, at this time after viewing the benchmarks, it will be helpful to define the assessments we will be using at the end of the lesson. Using, the "backward planning" method that was mentioned previously in our text, we will be looking at the benchmarks first and then moving backwards to decide the assessments first and then the activities we will use to meet these benchmarks. At our second meeting together, within the next 2 weeks, we will begin to compile the activities we will use to teach the specific objectives of our lesson. We will find resources needed (print and web), the teaching activities we will use and how we will link each of the activities together within the unit.

This part of the process I feel is the most exciting! It is very neat to watch two minds put their ideas together and to watch the lessons come to life. I love being able to share technology knowledge with a classroom teacher and having them be able to supplement it within the classroom and vise versa. I am so glad to have this opportunity to collaborate with Dave.

Loertscher, D. (2000). Taxonomies of the school library media program. Salt Lake City: Hi Willow Research and Publishing.

Preplanning

The partner I chose for the collaboration project is actually my husband, David Cherry. Dave is a 4/5 split teacher at Sayre Elementary in South Lyon. He teaches all subjects. I also teach in South Lyon, but at Kent Lake Elementary. I picked Dave to do my project with for a number of reasons. First off, he is currently pursuing his masters degree in Educational Leadership (administration.) I thought that his background of administration and as a classroom teacher would provide our project with multiple perspectives in the planning and implementing stages. Secondly, as my husband, his input and critique will be honest and helpful. Often when I work with colleagues, it is hard to get a true feel for their thoughts and constructive criticism. With Dave, there will be no holding back. :) I look forward to this honest dialogue with hopes of developing an upper elementary unit that will be viewed positively by classroom teachers, media specialists and administrators. Also, I have a few ideas for the unit that center on reading instruction and technology. I am eager to develop a unit that will be applicable to the curriculum and useful to the student population.

I really don't have many fears about the project itself. I was a little apprehensive about creating the Wiki which I have not done before and blogging, with which I have minimal experience. I think they will both be great learning experiences which will pave the way for further use of both areas as a media specialist. I feel one strength that I bring to the project is the fact that I am a classroom teacher and am knowledgeable of the curriculum. This will be helpful in making sure that the unit I plan is realistic and useful in the elementary school setting. I anticipate designing the unit for fourth grade students. There will be extensions to challenge the high students and accommodations to assist the lower students.

Throughout the past two weeks of this class I was really amazed at the number of collaboration articles available to us as students. I have found the articles to be helpful and informative. Especially on a topic that is so new and ever changing, I think the amount of resources of SLMS collaboration is an asset to our learning as SLMS students and to this project.