Teachers and Librarians Working Collaboratively

[Matt Participant]

Of all of the chats this seemed like the forum where collaboration should be discussed. I have been working with a small focus group of staff at my school to discuss teacher-librarian collaboration. Our vision is a seeing our librarian collaborate with teachers to focus on developing student’s core skills (since we are an IB school these would be AtL skills) and developing teacher’s abilities to be facilitators of library services. As I did my background research on this I looked into what makes for successful collaborations?

Some key points I came across so far are:

– Develop relationships and collaborate with these teachers

– Document the collaboration

– Clearly define what your roles are

– Collaborate often (enough) once a month is ideal

– Be the extra-miler (the organiser helps) but don’t do it too much!

– Have a shared vision

– Collect and assess formative data about the collaboration

The trial collaboration

I’ve arranged a trial collaboration with a MYP Language and Literature teacher at my school. His students are reading The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis and as their product they are being asked to produce three journal entries as if they are someone living in Afghanistan at that time. For my role in the inquiry I am going to show them some techniques for using our library resources, taking notes, and documenting their sources. I drew from four FOSIL framework skills to define what I will teach. I would like them to keep an inquiry notebook as they read to jot down ideas that they can explore using a variety of sources to learn more about life in Afghanistan under the Taliban. My thought is to develop a series of journal prompts that will also support this. The goal of this being so that when they write their three journal entries they will include some of the knowledge they gained from the story and from the sources they learned along the way.

The goal of this trial collaboration is to develop some data from a successful collaboration that we can use at my school to influence others to collaborate / use the library to support their units.

I am having my first planning meeting with my teaching colleague today. I will keep everyone posted with how this goes.

Bibliography

Kammer, Jenna, et al. “Stategies for Successful Librarian and Teacher

Collaboration.” School Library Research, vol. 24, pp. 1-24. ERIC,

eric.ed.gov/?q=strategies+for+successful+school+librarian+and+teacher+collaboration&id=EJ1292862.

 

[Elizabeth Hutchinson Participant]

Hi Matt

It will be really interesting to hear how this goes. Focus groups are something that is currently being discussed in my membership so I look forward to reading your outcomes.

Best Wishes

Elizabeth

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

Thank you, Matt and Elizabeth.

Matt, on Elizabeth’s excellent suggestion, I have created a separate topic for your post because it is important and distinctive enough to warrant it.

For reference, it came from Between the classroom and the library : a work in progress, which references Chis Foster’s topic, Teachers and Librarians Working Collaboratively: New Models of Professionalism.

I, too, will look forward to your promising update.

[Matt Participant]

It has been a while since I posted and so I am unsure which post best fits this topic. I wanted to share an update on our use of FOSIL here in Stuttgart. We began a collaboration a year ago with our instructional leadership team using the FOSIL Framework. We decided to focus on five specific skill bands in the Investigate and Express stages:

– Different Types of Sources / Organisation of Information

– Navigation and Search Strategies

– Evaluation, Selection, Curation, and Use of Multiple Sources

– Capturing Information and Thinking / Notetaking

– Academic Integrity

Our reasoning for doing this is that we felt a strong need to prioritise the most essential skills that the library was best placed to teach.

After a year-long project we could integrate five skill bands of FOSIL within the AtL scope and sequences in two of our three divisions. In our third division where I am the librarian I could complete a crosswalk of FOSIL to the AtL skills document and the subject criterion where that skill is assessed. Although in my division I was limited in my capacity to integrate it into my collaboration with teachers. This year we have a specific plan to develop the AtL skills in my division. I was happy to see that the FOSIL framework was listed in the plan as one source for developing our divisional AtL scope and sequence. After discussing the matter with my team of librarians we have decided that we will collaborate on a library-specific research scope and sequence using FOSIL as the source. We can then split it up into it’s modular pieces to fit it into the AtL scope and sequences of each of our divisions. That way the AtL skills supported by the library represent a complete continuum of skills based on the FOSIL Framework. I am very excited that we can now work on this together this year and much of the work is already done from last year. I will post more on this subject throughout this year as we develop this research scope and sequence.

[Matt Participant]

My plan for developing the FOSIL Framework within my divisional AtL Scope & Sequence

After completing my action plan for this project I would like to talk about my initial steps for supporting the development of our divisional AtL scope and sequence using the FOSIL Framework.

The goal of this project which I am contributing to is three-fold:

1. Outline specific AtL skills that are priorities for my division to teach

2. Create age-appropriate goals for these skills

3. Create a system for monitoring student progress and for supporting students who have not yet developed these skills.

Considering the FOSIL Framework I believe the first two goals are already accomplished since I know which five skill bands I am focused on and the age-appropriate skills are already articulated. So I have moved onto focus on the third goal.

On creating a system for monitoring student progress and for supporting students who have not yet developed these skills. 

This goal has changed my mindset around what I am trying to accomplish. I have thought up until now what I was attempting to do was define a set of “library oriented research units” where I would take the lead in collaborating with subject teachers to support students in developing specific skills. I have come to the realisation that perhaps this is possible in five years of collaborative efforts. At this point, however it is my goal to develop a system for tracking how students self-assess themselves at these five skill bands, compare there self-assessments to their actual performance during assessed work where these skills are assessed in the MYP criterion, and gather information about how these skills are assessed. Then I need to look for another unit where this same skill is being assessed collaborate with that subject team. In this second iteration I will have a list of students who I need to spend more time with focusing on developing this FOSIL skill. This iterative process is a change from my initial thoughts about collaboration which were based around finding the perfect unit to develop skills. Now I am happy to work with any teacher during any unit where a skill is being addressed.

I understand that my first step is to develop a sustainable system for collecting data about student’s self assessments, my comparison of this assessment to work they turn in, and information about how these skills are assessed in different classes and grade levels. I am therefore for now only focusing on collaborating with one grade level on two FOSIL skill bands as I try to develop this system. I imagine that over time I will branch out to more grades and skill bands as I feel more comfortable with my ability to collaborate in sustainable ways. I will post more about this strategy whether it is successful in accomplishing the goals of the AtL project we are working on this year.

I appreciate any and all thoughts on this subject whether you are trying the same strategy or others.

[Jenny Toerien Keymaster]

Thanks for the update Matt – there is a great deal of exciting work here to delve into and we look forward to hearing where it goes. For those just joining this thread, there are two other historical threads that may be of interest:

• Integrating FOSIL with the MYP ATLs where Darryl and I documented our original attempt to do this at Oakham School
• Using FOSIL outside a full inquiry where Matt originally mentioned his school’s large-scale project to collaborate with teachers on the AtL skills

The five skill bands you have chosen to focus on are very important, and are clearly very much the province of the library, and I think that chosing to focus on these gives you a very clearly defined scope to your project that both makes it feel more achievable and helps you to track and measure your impact more effectively. The only caution I would give (that I am sure you are fully aware of and don’t need me to tell you!) is that these focus skills don’t exist in isolation. For example, we would always look at the Investigate skill of “Capturing information and thinking/notetaking” alongside Construct skills like “Claims/opinion and point of view” and “Interpretation and synthesis of information”. You’ll see this in the Investigative Journal and Cornell notetaking sheet. What you are doing is very sophisticated, Matt, so I’m sure you are well aware of this – the fact that you are focusing on one skill doesn’t mean you are ignoring the others. I’m really just flagging this for anyone who is reading this who is new to the process.

This is one of the key differences between information literacy and inquiry teaching. Information literacy is very focussed on individual skills, whereas inquiry acknowledges that these skills only really make sense as part of a framework of skills within a process, embedded within units with authentic learning outcomes (which might be subject based or extra-curricular but are never just skills for the sake of skills). This is exactly what you are talking about above, Matt, it’s just that your library is particularly invoved with certain skill sets.

What I am really interested in is your goal of monitoring student progress with these key skills, as up to now our particular focus has been embedding inquiry units within the curriculum all the way up our school, from Primary to Sixth Form, with particular focus on Signature Work inquiries where library staff are involved throughout the design (and sometimes teaching) so that we know that all children in key yeargroups have been exposed to a full inquiry cycle and had the chance to practise age-appropriate skills that can then be used in other subjects. This is quite a ‘top down’ planning approach. I am really interested in your ‘bottom up’ approach of tracking certain skills with individual students and determining who needs intervention, and would love to hear more about how this goes. You might find the New York State Infomation Fluency Continuum Priority Skills assessments helpful for this (although I know there are particular assessment points within the MYP which will also help). FOSIL is based on the NYSIFC, and these priority skills assessments inform our graphic organisers. Part of the difference is that the FOSIL graphic organisers focus on stages of the process, and often combine several skills in one organiser, while the NYSIFC organisers are focused on one skill per organiser, which may be more what you are looking for at the moment.

I definitely agree with your approach of being happy to work with any teacher on any unit where a skill is being addressed rather than waiting for the perfect unit. This has always been our approach, and often leads to wider collaboration further down the line. The more we can get involved with individual teachers in small ways, the more we can spread and support inquiry skills throughout the curriculum. Skills need reinforcement little and often, rather than just the odd big ‘project’ (although full inquiries are really important and we can’t abandon them entirely).

We’re really excited to see where your work goes. If you are looking for tools further down the line to help you to track skills across different units and to track student self-assessment I would recommend having a look at Mondrian Wall and didbook. (This is an entirely personal recommendation – we don’t do sponsored recommendations on this site!). We spent a lot of time working with Kevin Heppell, the director of the the parent company, Sequential Systems, when we were at Oakham and he is someone who is really passionate about education and young people and creating tools to help schools and students to develop and understand their educational identity. You can see a presentation he did to the IFLA School Libraries Section 2022 Midyear meeting here, about creating a dynamic curriculum map. This is a whole school tool, and your school may not want or need something like this yet, but what you are doing is very sophisticated and has huge potential so it is worth being aware at the outset that a tool like this exists so that you can start including it in your conversations with senior management if it might be helpful.

Please do keep us all posted about your progress. Building this sort of evidence-base to demonstrate impact is such important work.

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