Professional Toolkit Part C

Your job is to identify a particular area of curriculum and collection need, analyze an existing collection, and make recommendations for purchase. Your project should incorporate a particular content area or grade level focus. Discuss how you would you get these people involved with your project. How would you approach the potential partners?

Discussion

For this project, I used my old elementary school library and worked with the school media specialist there to find information. I identified the need to improve the collection in the subject of United States citizenship and national heritage. I decided to base my project on Grade 3 and used Indiana Academic Standards for its basis. I analyzed what was available in the current collection and made recommendations from there.

If I were doing this project in reality, I would need to approach several people:

• the 3rd grade teachers
• the music teacher
• the principal
• PTA
• possibly parent helpers

I would let the 3rd grade teachers know that this collaboration would meet many academic standards for social studies and language arts. The music teacher would have help planning a school program that included music, media, and presentations. The principal and PTA would be consulted for budget reasons and for support with the unit. I think the principal would be glad to support something that gives the chance to let parents see a performance done by their children. Parent helpers may be needed to help organize the program and set up, and I would approach those parents who help in the 3rd grade rooms or one who are in the library. I would also put something in the school newsletter going home.

Collaboration Form

(You can either view this document in the attached file or below as part of the webpage.) I adapted my form from the traditional Collaboration Form from QVSD. Here is the Evaluation for collaborative projects from QVSD that I would use at the conclusion of this unit.

Completed collaboration form for Citizenship and National Heritage Unit

Blank collaboration form for other future units - Extra columns and rows can be added or deleted to adjust to collaboration needs.

I think this form would be effective because it helps all the people involved know exactly what is expected of them when the planning is done. It's easy to fill in all the boxes with the other teachers present. You can divide up the tasks among the teachers and writen them down. Having the Indiana Academic Standards and Information Literacy Standards for Students on the same page allows for accountability on how and when students were taught the required curriculum.

Technology Requirement

Professional Plan/Proposal

You can view this as a Word document. The design of the plan was adapted from Danny Callison's article "Excerpt from Key Instructional Word: Learning Resources" (January 2, 2003).

Excel Spreadsheet

This 2 sheet Excel document gives the proposed budget for needed materials, fees, etc, as well as an inventory of current library materials that the school library that I surveyed for the project owns.