Things I tried when I Was a High School Media Specialist
Curriculum Brainstorm: Part Two
Classification and ExplicationKey:
Physics students work in groups to create and present mock-ups for Web pages on the science and history behind communication devices including television, communications satellites, radio, and video cameras; students are accountable for individual contributions.
Math and science teachers use a nominal-group process technique to arrive at a prioritized list of technology needs to submit to the superintendent.
Marketing students work in groups to create and present mock-ups for Web pages to promote their companies; students are accountable for individual contributions.
Mass media students work in small groups to create video public service announcements for the library, which are broadcast on the morning announcements.
Literature students work as a class to create a web-on-the-wall of potential research topics based on a novel they read.
Students formulate reference questions to try to "Stump the Librarian."
Second-grade students identify story elements by comparing fairy tales such as "Cinderella" and "The Three Little Pigs."
Science students discuss intellectual freedom as it pertains to important events in the history of science (e.g. Scope’s trial, Galileo’s excommunication).
Fine arts academic team members work together to fill in matrices of important information about the artists and musicians they are studying.
Library club members decide on new materials to purchase for the library after being given a budget of $250.
Students beginning library research web what they already know about their chosen topics to help generate useful search terms.
Learning disabled and special needs students with speech deficiencies use creative dramatics and pantomime to become more aware of how their bodies interact with speech in communicating with others.
Learning disabled and special needs students with speech deficiencies learn storytelling to help alleviate difficulties and gain confidence in oral communication.
Advanced Placement English students write critical essays comparing the way historical and cultural events are represented in short stories and poems as opposed to the way they are represented in more "objective" sources.
Curriculum Brainstorm: Part Three
ReflectionPeople, who are not school media specialists, and even some of them, are likely to look upon my list of activities as a strange hodge-podge. Yes, I did coach an academic team; I did several in-services for teachers; I did some special units with elementary school students; and yes, once, I even substituted in an ABE class. Mostly, though, the list got to look like this because often teachers would come to me and say, "My class is studying X next month. Do you have any ideas?"
Even though I have no plans to go back to my life as a media specialist, I do intend to continue working in the school media field as an educator and consultant. For those reasons, I decided to evaluate activities I tried out instead of brainstorming things I could do in the future. I took this as an opportunity to reflect on my own instructional techniques so that when I get to the place where I am helping teachers and school media specialists develop and implement effective instruction, I can be better prepared.
Part One is a list of the most memorable or successful activities I used; everything on the list is something for which I was primarily responsible for planning and implementing. I made no attempt to organize or classify activities at this point. Once I had the list together, I decided to rate each activity on three criteria: that is, how much does each activity promote creative thinking, critical thinking, and cooperative learning? I totaled these quotients and then did a composite ranking of each activity, keeping only those which scored at least 15 out of 30 points. This list is found in Part Two. Then, for each activity, I tried to identify the important skills and dispositions that I feel the activity develops. Finally, I tried to categorize these activities into specific instructional techniques that we have discussed in class.
While, of course, the quotient system I devised is subjective, I found the results rather interesting. For example, I spent a lot of time developing the physics Web-site mock-up activity, and it was perhaps the most successful unit I was able to implement in terms of teacher satisfaction as well student satisfaction and learning. The students were quite motivated to work with this project and the products they presented were almost all quite original and well done. Everyone had fun. So, I was pleased to see this top the list when I totaled the quotients. Alternately, I was surprised to see the two activities related to the storytelling unit score less well. The storytelling unit was a joint venture among the speech pathologist, the LD/MIMH/EH teacher, and me in order to give students experiencing difficulties with oral communication a novel way to build skills and confidence. The success of the unit was apparent each of the three years we presented it through the reluctance-changed-to-eagerness-and-success each of the participating students experienced. I should mention that the culminating activity in this unit was for the students to go in pairs to one of the elementary schools in town and tell the stories they had learned to the students there.