UbD - Putting it All Together

I completed my online class Design for Understanding Meets the 21st Century Librarian, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It has been both exciting and humbling to learn so much at this point in my career, but I must say it has transformed my teaching.  I am now seeing the kind of learning I have always aspired to inspire.  

The fourth (and final) step was to look at the Big Ideas I had identified at the beginning, the evidence that will prove the Big Ideas were learned (step 3), and then - finally - after identifying the skills and knowledge students will need to complete the performance task, design the lessons. I had to evaluate what my students already know how to do and think, decide what they still need to learn, and determine how they will learn it.  This was a fun step, yet also more challenging than I anticipated. I brainstormed a list and pared it down into the number of lessons time allowed.

Here is my final product:

There were a couple of things I hated to cut, but they fell more under the "fun" activity category. My time with students is so limited that I feel a lot of pressure to be effective and efficient - no time to waste!  Yet, I recognized that I do occasionally do things just for fun.... because I want students to know that reading and learning are enjoyable activities.  However, for this unit, I chose to plan through a lens of efficiency.  It sounds terribly sterile, but it was actually delightful.

The big fun came at the end through the performance task. Students pretended they were designing a library.  They had the power.  They made the decisions.  They explained their rationale.... with no wrong answers.

This whole unit was something I had never covered before, and I now see it as essential.  Ironically, I had all the books and resources I needed to support it.  I had just never figured out how to make them relevant or appealing.

Now the world has three classes of students running around with the Big Idea that libraries are a need and the resources in the library are reflective of their needs.  

What could be more rewarding?

UbD - How Do You Know?

It's week three of Design for Understanding Meets the 21st Century School Librarian and time to complete Step Two.

Step One was to identify the Big Ideas that I wanted students to take away from the unit I am planning.  I chose to write a unit for Grade 2 based on the big idea "Libraries are organized based on the needs and wants of its patrons".

Next I needed to identify HOW I would assess that they understand this big ideas.  Not just know the big idea.  Not repeat it back to me.  But understand it.

What does it means to understand?  When student understands a concept, they are able to transfer their skills or knowledge, they know when and how to apply it in a new situation.

I realized this week that I teach this way to a great degree already.  I may not always formally plan it, but I am always looking for the transfer of learning.  I don't want students to memorize Dewey Decimal numbers, I want them to understand there is a system in place, that similar items are grouped together, that this system is found in many libraries and they can transfer their knowledge when visiting a different library.

I realized this week that this is also why I am so frustrated when a teacher proposes I teach a 15 minute lesson on in-text citations to a class that is not currently working on an essay or term paper.  Teaching out of context almost guarantees there will be no transfer!

How can one assess learning of information literacies?  Formative assessments can be in the form of exit tickets, checklists, or responses to writing prompts. These are great, quick ways of checking progress, but I admit I am guilty of not always assessing what students are learning in the library. I do a lot of informal assessments, such as watching to see if they apply what I just taught about using the OPAC or checking to see if students have logged into databases rather than reverting to Google, but I know I can do more.

For the unit for this course, I came up to with two possible performance tasks that would serve as summative assessments.  In the first one, students redesign our existing library (on paper), rearranging resources and explaining what they moved and why.  In the second, students serve as various members of a "library board" and decide how to spend a ficticious grant we just received.  Both are engaging.  Both require students to understand the resources and services a library can offer as well as the wants and needs of the users.  They both require higher level thinking, and - that most precious commodity - time.

After writing up these tasks, I decided they were not all that different from some of the work I did for my graduate classes.  And again I am struck by what an opportunity this is to teach children what I wish more administrators understood.  It gives me hope for the future of libraries.

UbD - What is a Library?

I'm well into the second week of my AASL online course, and I now have to begin planning a unit using what I have learned thus far.  Fortunately, I was given a relevant, exciting idea by the grade 2 teachers who recently requested I tie library instruction into their current unit of inquiry "Communities are organised based on the needs and wants of people".  I am supposed to guide students in examining the roles libraries play in communities, perhaps looking at different libraries around the world.

Immediately my thoughts jumped to making lists of wants and needs, watching the Biblioburro, learning about library arrangement, reading My Librarian is a Camel.... Yes, I was full of all kinds of activities.  I have to STOP this habit and think ... what is the big idea that I want students to carry with them?  

I've identified the Enduring Understanding (or big idea) as "Libraries are organized based on the needs and wants of their patrons" and our guiding questions are What does a library need? and What is the role of a library within a community?

I'm sure these will undergo some revision, but I have to start somewhere.

Unfortunately, I am just getting started writing the unit, and I am supposed to already start teaching... so I am already ignoring what I am learning about designing the end first and I jumped into the pre-assessment.   I figure it will make for some good reflection fodder.

This week I asked each grade 2 class to answer the question "What is a library?"

I tried this in small groups on sticky notes.  

I tried it with larger groups and half sheets of beautifully colored paper. 

And then I tried creating a mind map with a whole class on a flip chart.  

Each time I saw the same results.  

Hands-down, without fail, each class answered the question the same:

  A library is a place to check out books.  

A few students added, without prompting, it could be a quiet place to read.  

That was it.  

I really had to work to get anyone to look deeper, to think about other resources, to see other uses for the space.  I couldn't believe these children, who visit this fabulous, well-resourced facility, had such a limited definition.  But we have only just begun...

I've worked for administrators who operated under the same limited definition that a library was just a place to check out books.  No matter what I said or did, their views did not broaden.

But this time I'm armed with BIG IDEAS.  And I'm working with children who are used to thinking deeply.  They expect to have their understandings expand.

The idea of educating a new generation of thinkers on the full potential of a library is exhilarating.   Let's get started! 

UbD - What's the Big Idea?

Week one of my AASL online class "Design for Understanding Meets the 21st Century School Librarian" focused on understanding big ideas and involved a little reflection upon my own teaching styles.

The first discussion opened with a question asking students to share if we tended to fall into the coverage trap or the activity trap.  Do we plan lessons to hit a number of objectives or standards, or do we do things that are fun or entertaining or seem worthwhile regardless of objectives?  Several of us stated that we start with the end in the mind, planning activities based on objectives, but I'm beginning to see that this is just the beginning.  Teaching by design is not just about establishing objectives and knowing what you want students to learn.  No.  It's bigger than that.  We have to go deeper.   We have to ask............

What's the BIG IDEA?

What are students going to take from this lesson (or unit) that they can use in 20 years?

My take on big ideas is that I can address them year after year with new resources and deeper thinking and never exhaust them.  If you haven't read the article I cited in my last post by Jean Donham, I urge you to do so...

By framing teaching and learning around big ideas, such as "Information can be organized in many ways", I can address sections of the library, shelf order, parts of a book, OPAC, databases, note-taking and more, always referring to our big idea so that students begin to make connections themselves, begin to think about how they organize their own information, begin to look for order in an unfamiliar system.  I'm looking forward to posting my big ideas where students can see them as they enter this space.

Another powerful - and challenging - aspect of thinking ahead 20 years is technology.  What can I teach today that will outlast the changes in technology that are occurring faster and faster?  What will students learn that will outlast desktop computers or a particular app?  This is where ethical use, strategic evaluation, and responsible sharing all come in to play.

All of this learning is going into a unit planner.  But first, it's time to understand more about understanding....

AASL eAcademy Invite

My school recently hosted Bill and Ochan Powell for a professional development day.  

Photo from concordian.ac.th

In preparation of this event, multiple copies of their book, Making the Difference: Differentiation in International Schools, were purchased for staff to read. 

Photo from Amazon.com

I highly recommend their work, whether you are at an international school or not.  Many of their strategies are applicable for ELL students anywhere. And every classroom is populated with students whose needs vary. 

But I am especially pleased with the chapter on the role of the library.  It was written by a librarian and clearly outlines the role of the modern library.  And I have to admit, I am rather proud of the fact that one of our teachers, after completing that particular chapter, came up to the library to share what he had read and tell us that it described what was happening in our library.  (Yes!)

In Making the Difference, reference is made to some of the teaching books that I have checked out to teachers in recent years... including some I have carried home with the intention of reading in my "spare time".  One section that really jumped out to me referred to the text Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe.  

Way back when, I was taught to write lesson plans using backwards design, and I still begin with the end in mind.  But I was struggling to update my thinking to using Enduring Understandings to guide my lessons.  I watched classroom teachers do this, for example, guiding students to understand WHY people explore rather than just memorize the dates and locations that are associated with James Cook or Lewis & Clark.  But I just couldn't seem to make a satisfactory connection with that process and information skills students learn in the library.

I know part of the problem is time.  Finding Making time to write out complete lesson plans and then reflect later can be difficult if you are unable to find a quiet place to work.  My door is always open and interruptions are frequent, so this task often gets pushed to "later" on my to-do list.  

But I really wanted to document the curriculum framework I use, not just carry it around in my head.  I hadn't been able to get it onto paper until I finally understood how Enduring Understanding applied to the library.
  
One key to Enduring Understandings is that one should be able to answer the question "How will this matter to the learner in 20 years?"  Rather than making students memorize Dewey Decimal numbers, we can help them learn that "Information can be organized in different ways".  This allows for their contributions to the concept as well provides a basis for understanding how the parts of books are organized, how alphabetical order can help us organize books on the shelves, the Dewey Decimal system, etc.  I was so excited to see how I could take what I had been teaching and create a usable structure for it.  

In doing a little searching, I found an article on Enduring Understandings for the Library by Jean Donham. Donham wrote 9 Essential Questions based on AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner Beliefs. I used her suggestions to draft my big picture, and then I began to craft Guiding Questions that would drive the learning at each grade level.  

So there I was, brainstorming and writing.

And that's when the invitation from AASL arrived in my inbox.  

The AASL eAcademy is offering a course, Design for Understanding Meets the 21st Century School Librarian, starting March 21.  

I have registered, and I am super-excited to proceed with a network of librarians.   And looking over the syllabus, I see that I will finally read some of those books I have on my nightstand. 

Anyone out there want to join me in the course?