Beginning a New School Year at a New School

I am writing about how I am integrating the FOSIL Framework into my grades 6 – 8 Media Skills course. Grade six, seven, and eight students take my course for one semester each year. The course had been taught in the past as a standalone specialist class that focused on digital, information, and media literacy. It was my wish beginning this year to find ways to collaborate with other subjects and to integrate the FOSIL Framework into my units.

I began by changing the units in my courses. To do this I reviewed the standards I am required to teach which are the ISTE Standards for Students. Through reviewing them I picked out 13 that I thought were appropriate to teach in a school library course. I then grouped them around specific themes. I’ve placed in parentheses what the major topic covered in each unit is. I have also attached a slide showing which ISTE Standards I’ve aligned to each unit.

My four units are:

Knowledgeable Library User (Orientation to the School Library)

Critical Reader and Viewer (Evaluating Sources & Information)

Capable Researcher (Research Process)

Creative Thinker & Communicator (Academic Integrity)

For me I believe that these units follow a logical progression. They also allow me to collaborate with whoever is working on these skills at the time that I am covering it.

Enter FOSIL

I am now beginning to crosswalk the FOSIL Framework to the ISTE Standards for Students that I am assessing in my course.  This will be the subject of another post once I have a version of the crosswalk complete. For now, I have included a slide showing how I have included two of the FOSIL Skills in my grade eight Knowledgeable Library User unit. It is my hope to identify the most important FOSIL skills that I want to support my students to develop. If anyone out there is using the ISTE Standards for Students I would be interested in hearing how you are integrating these with the FOSIL Framework.