Well,  the school year is that ten-month trip and often times we teachers think we have to make the trip from September to mid-June as the lone tour guide, troubleshooter, and resource.  No partner, all plans dependant upon us.  Now it's more important than ever to enlist help.  So......

Collaborative Planning Taxonomy:

To assure that students will acquire the needed information literacy skills to be life-long users of information, teachers must plan units of study, in collaboration with the library media specialist, that incorporate the learning, application, and repeated practice of information skills. Involvement of the library media/information specialist as a partner in preplanning is a key element. Library media/information specialists can assist in identification of the information skills to be covered and resources needed and become an active teaching partner in the process.

Below is a taxonomy that illustrates the various levels of collaborative planning. The extent to which you should and will involve the library media specialist and the library media center resources will depend upon the real needs of the unit to be delivered. But, if you always find yourself at a 1-4 level, you need to examine how much students are learning about accessing information resources and becoming independent users of information. Whenever you want students to acquire and use information skills as part of the unit, you should be operating at levels 5-7. See how you rate on a 1-7 scale:

Based on taxonomies developed by David Loertscher

1. Self-Contained Teaching: The Library Media Center is bypassed entirely. Teachers plan and carry out units independently, not using library media resources or making connections with the library media specialist.

2. Teaching with a Borrowed Collection: Teachers plan units and then check out all resources from the library media center, contacting the library media specialist only as a resource provider, to pull materials and check them out.

3. Using the Library Media Specialist as Enrichment: Teachers plan units and then come to the library media specialist to tell a story or do a book talk or allow time for the class to come into the center to get resources but no preplanning takes place and no integration of information skills is built into the unit as an integral part.

4. Utilizing the Library Media Specialist Out of Context: Instruction and learning are isolated and disconnected, not integral to other learning that is classroom-based. Teachers plan an objective (good behavior or drug prevention) and then ask the library media specialist to play an active role in delivery of instruction. The information that the library media specialist is asked to cover is not related to students becoming better information users as part of a classroom assignment and there is no collaborative planning.

5. Using Library Media Resources as Part of a Unit: Teachers plan units that rely on the use of library media center resources and require that students use these resources to fulfill the unit objectives. The library media specialist is not involved in preplanning and is placed in a reactive role.

6. Collaborative Planning for Instruction: Teachers and the library media specialist meet to preplan units of study. They identify information skills and other objectives that will be covered during the unit as well as resources that will be needed and used. Together they determine the responsibilities of the classroom teacher, the library media specialist, and the students. They jointly plan the activities to be carried out and determine how the unit will be evaluated.

7. Collaborative Planning for Curriculum Development: Teachers and the library media specialist work together to determine implementation of curriculum changes and team together to make decisions for acquiring needed resources to meet the new demands for the library media center. They work as a team to plan strategies, activities, and acquire resources that will facilitate implementation.