As we draw towards the end of Term 1, 2021, I can hardly believe the speed in which the term has unfolded.
The ups and downs of the term continue to surprise me, feeling the highest of highs following those special lessons where students have engaged and enjoyed learning and working together to the absolute lows where a classroom has been trashed and keeping myself and other students safe has become the objective of the lesson.
The thing that has confused me the most has been the unpredictability of how lessons will pan out. There have been times where I’ve spent significant time planning what I believe will be an awesome lesson, only for it to turn out terribly. Other times, I’ve done lessons on the fly where they’ve worked out beautifully. Is it my expectations? Student behaviour? Sometimes a class will come in and be completely unprepared for learning – recognising this and turning it around is something I need to work on. Is it how I’m coming across myself? There are times when I’m feeling stressed and strained myself – does this impact upon the mood of the class? Sometimes, I’m tired yet the lesson goes really well. A lesson will work well with one group and not at all with another group of the same age. It seems there are many factors involved. I may start documenting it to examine the patterns.
Being the school librarian means working on your own most of the time. Taking the time to work with the teachers is one area I would like to go further with and need to develop a system of communication between myself and teachers.
The library helpers have been invaluable in ensuring the day to day tasks are completed. Harnessing their willingness to help has been an area I’m beginning to get a handle on, ensuring that I am not spending an hour to cut out display items when they can complete it in a lunchtime.
Kids love to clean! Who knew? This has been a most pleasant surprise. Love Your Library Week was really well received by students who wanted to be involved in showing the library some love.
Sharing books such as All the Ways to Be Smart by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys, Beautiful Oops! by Barney Salzberg, Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival, Cocoon by Aura Parker and Mopoke by Philip Bunting have resulted in beautiful conversations, fascination and laughter. I couldn’t ask for more than that in our lessons.
Aura Parkers’ Cocoon moths were enjoyed so much by Kindergarten.
Setting up research assignments with Stage 2 and 3 students has proven both challenging and rewarding. A lot more planning needed to go into the tasks on my end and more preparation with the kids as well. We’re all learning though and the students have engaged really well with the tasks. In the future, I’ll plan more, implement a step-by-step approach, explicitly teach research skills in more depth and assign roles within each group. All of this takes time to set up, which I have been short on this term, so will aim to improve this for next term. The kids are still learning and developing resilience in learning, so that’s always positive.
BOOKFLIX! What can I say?! So much engagement in this but so little time to develop it! Creating slides for our Bookflix display was great, however, we didn’t get a lot of time to continue with it as we started working on our research assignments. Some students have been working on them at home though, which is one thing I am really enjoying about Google Classroom.
Next term, my goal will be to have a plan for the entire term before beginning to ensure that enough planning goes into each week’s lessons. Developing the research program further is another goal.
There’s still three weeks left of Term 1. I wonder what’s in store.