Transcript What Every SLMS Should Know about Collaborating with Other Literacy Professionals Prepared by the SLMS Role in Reading Task Force July 2009

What Every SLMS Should Know
about Collaborating
with Other Literacy Professionals
Prepared by the
SLMS Role in Reading Task Force
July 2009
Rationale for Collaboration
 By explicitly teaching and coteaching reading
comprehension strategies, LMS can make a positive
impact on students' reading development
 These strategies are easily integrated into classroom-
library lesson plans and storytime learning objectives.
Source:
Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension: Maximizing
Your Impact by Judi Moreillon
Rationale for Collaboration
 We cannot teach to the new learning standards
without collaboration because the standards
target knowledge building and critical thinking
specific to school curriculum subjects.
 Classroom teachers are the subject experts
and we need their input to teach reading,
literacy, and information skills in an integrated
way.
 Collaboration with subject area specialists will
aid us in developing lessons that fulfill each
subject's unique reading, information, and
literacy needs.
Who Are Our Literacy Partners?
 Classroom Teachers at all Grade Levels and in
Every Subject Area
 Literacy Coaches and Reading Specialists
 Special Education and Title 1 Faculty and Staff
 Technology Teachers
 Every teacher at every grade level must contribute
to each student's reading development. As a LMS,
you are in the perfect position to collaborate with
ALL faculty and staff to coteach reading literacy
skills in all subjects and at all levels!
Additional Collaborative Partnerships
 Become involved in building-level and
district-wide curriculum committees. Let
others see you as a leader and valuable
teaching partner!
 Become involved in local and national
school, public, and academic library,
technology, and reading
associations. Network and learn from
others in our field!
 Collaborate for literacy initiatives. Write
grants together. Present at their
conferences; write for their journals.
How to Initiate Collaboration
 Creating new partnerships with other educators
will be your biggest challenge. You must initiate
collaboration efforts and show teachers how you
can help and make teaching content objectives
easier for them.
 Begin with new teachers, student teachers, and
others willing to work with you
 Gain support from your administrators. Make
lesson and unit plans student-centered by
showing how your collaborative efforts benefit
students with gains in reading achievement and
test scores.
How to Initiate Collaboration
 Develop "assured" experiences for each grade
level. These experiences are lessons and/or
activities that all students will complete at
certain points throughout their education. (ex.
9th grade database orientation). The LMS and
collaborating educators will know that students
have a shared background and can scaffold
future lessons and experiences using the
assured experiences as a baseline.
 Create an inquiry center with handouts of
collaboration tools both in the physical space of
your library media center and online.
Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies
to Integrate into Lessons and Units:
 Activating or building background knowledge
 Using sensory images
 Questioning
 Making predictions and inferences
 Determining importance
 Monitoring and recovering comprehension
 Synthesizing
See Reading Comprehension Strategies PowerPoint
How can you, the SLMS, integrate
each of these seven reading
comprehension strategies
into your collaborative lessons
and inquiry units?
Coteaching Strategies
 One Teaching, One Supporting
One educator is responsible for the lesson while the other
observes, monitors individual or groups of students, or
serves as an assistant during the lesson.
 Center Teaching
Students rotate through learning stations. Two or more
centers are facilitated by educators; other centers require
students to work independently of adult support.
 Alternative Teaching
While one educator works with the larger group on a lesson
that isn’t essential for the entire class, the other works with a
smaller group to prepare them for the lesson. This is useful
in pre-teaching vocabulary or other lesson components for
English language learners, students with special needs, or
those who missed the previous day’s class.
Coteaching Strategies
 Team Teaching
Educators teach together in the same room. They jointly model
strategies, alternate roles during instruction, and share responsibility
for monitoring students’ guided practice.
 All Coteaching Strategies
All strategies require that educators jointly plan the learning event.
 This information is adapted from Marilyn Friend and Lynne
Cook who first developed these strategies to support special
education inclusion models for coteaching.
Source:
Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School Professionals by Marilyn Friend
and Lynne Cook
For Further Study:
Alfassi, M. 2004. Reading to Learn: Effects of Combined Strategy Instruction
on High School Students. Journal of Educational Research 97, 171-184.
Carr, J., and I. F. Rockman. 2003. Information-literacy Collaboration: A Shared
Responsibility: Academic Librarians Must Work with Their K-12 Colleagues
in Enabling Students to Succeed in College. American Libraries 34, 52-55.
Carter, C. 1997. Why Reciprocal Teaching? Educational Leadership 54, 64-68.
Friend, M., and L. Cook. 2009. Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School
Professionals. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson.
Joyce, M. 2006. A Niche for Library Media Specialists: Teaching Students How
to Read Informational Text. Library Media Connection 24, no.7, 36-38.
Loertscher, D. 2007. What Is the School Library's Role in Reading? Core
Understandings from Reading Research and School Library Program
Elements. Teacher Librarian 34, no.3, 36.
For Further Study:
Long, D. 2007. Increasing Literacy in the High School Library: Collaboration
Makes It Happen. Teacher Librarian 35, no.1, 13-17.
Moreillon, J. 2007. Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading
Comprehension: Maximizing Your Impact. Chicago: ALA Editions.
Porter, W., C. Lamb, and C. Lopez. 2008. Three Heads Are Better than One:
The Reading Coach, the Classroom Teacher, and the Teacher-Librarian.
Teacher Librarian 36, no.1, 28-30.