It's Monday, It's ELA Common Core Day!  Today's Tip: Team Up With Your Librarian.

I met an amazing School Librarian last week, during my Common Core seminar in Oklahoma City. We had a great discussion about her role in the Common Core at numerous times during the day.  She’s the type of librarian that we all want to know.  Since she used to be a teacher for eight years, she has a broad vision of literacy in the library, coupled with her love of teaching and her love of reading. Every time I looked over at her during the all-day workshop, she was smiling, enthusiastic, validated, taking notes, sharing with her colleague, saying, “yes!”

Here are some of her ideas (which are absolutely wonderful, by the way!) specifically for teachers:

• Get together with your librarian.  They have books and stories and ideas to share with you. Collaborate together.
• She has lesson plan ideas and would love to share them with you.
• She would love to use her lesson plans with your students during her library time, especially if you have communicated with each other, and if she knows the direction you are headed.
• She would love to co-teach a lesson with you.  She will come into your classroom and teach a lesson with you.  Together.  Co-teaching.
• The standards you work on are some of the same standards she works on. She would love to piggy-back on what you’re teaching.  She can reinforce that learning if she knows your focus.
• She is passionate about books and learning, and wants to work together to give her students/your students a love of reading.
• She wants to search, find, and gather up books and resources for you, to support you in this Common Core journey.

I hope you know a librarian who has some of these same attributes.  Think of what a team you two would make.

Does your librarian have similar characteristics?  He/she may, and you might not even know it!

What can you do to bridge that relationship between teacher and librarian?

Until next time, share a literacy strategy!
Dr. Denise Gudwin