Maximizing Your Impact

Subtitle: Classroom-Library Co-Teaching Information Literacy & Reading Comprehension Skills -- 1:30 session, Nov. 2, Judi Moreillon.

Coming from the valuable session on the new Standards for the 21st Century, my energy for thinking about collaborative strategies, working with teachers, is high. Judi began with a description of our struggles, in libraries all over the Commonwealth. Our focus today on information literacy skills and reading comprehension strategies provides the chance to engage in a fruitful struggle. The majority of the audience are from K-5, a goodly amount from K-8, and the balance from high schools. Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension is one of Judi's books that highlights strategies.

By the end of today's session we will be able to define seven reading comprehension strategies and consider ways to integrate with info literacy skills! We have long held the assumption that reading advocacy is important work for teacher-librarians. Yes, BUT this is not the same as reading instruction! Both can be attained in a collaborative teacher-librarian situation. Traditionally we have asked teachers to understand our terminology; perhaps it is time for us to walk over to the other side and use the terms employed by teachers related to reading comprehension!

Using the metaphor of the elephant (as in Ed Young's Seven Blind Mice): individual pieces are important but putting it together is the goal. We must activate and build background knowledge to enable text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world connections... If students come without background knowledge we help build it with them through vocabulary, sensory images in visualizing, questioning and probing, making predictions and inferences, determining the main ideas, using fix-up options, and making meaning from multiple resources (synthesizing).

Judi told a wonderful story and asked up to apply the techniques she just explained to better comprehend the story. Readers who learn how and when to use reading comprehension strategies are more effective as readers. She then had us do a Standards Integration Puzzle that helped visualize the connections between standards and reading comprehension strategies.

It is clear there are many practical activities that play out the strategies that support comprehension. We practiced a few of them -- visuals such as Venn diagrams, webs, timelines, using two heads to think about things....

A bonus to the session was the teaching context Judi brought with her: Arizona and the Native culture with which she has worked. We concluded with a poem in two voices, combining the voice of a teacher and the voice of a librarian -- all aimed at creating new understanding. We are a team! Two heads are better than one.

More about Judi is available at http://www.storytrail.com

Submitted by Rusty True Browder, Lawrence School Library, Brookline