Post 3

Chapter 2 focused on reflection.  This was a big part of what I did during my first year as a school librarian and I still continue to do it as I teach during my second year.   As a school librarian, I teach lessons to K-5 graders on library skills, study skills, technology skills, basically anything that will help you find the information that I am looking for.  I also do some read-a-loud for reading promotion and reading/language skills.

When I started my first year I decided I needed to keep track of what I was teaching so I could remember to do it again (or not) the following years.  I have developed a huge Google Drive spreadsheet which tracks how my lessons went.  I track each grade by the week I am teaching, with sections for the lesson and my feedback on the lesson.  Over the first year I could easily start to see that some of my lessons were keepers and some were not.  I made notes for myself to focus on certain things or present them in a certain way that was more successful.  Much of this type of reflection in my spreadsheet was reflection after the lesson.  These reflections have been very valuable to me this year and allows me to plan my lessons with more ease.

I also reflect during teaching.  Since I see four sections of each grade I do my lessons several times.  I feel bad for the ones who go first!  I know that I keep getting better at the lesson the longer I teach it.  Some things don't work and I scrap them before the next class comes in, something else works great and then I focus on it for the next class.  Poor first ones!