Learning Curation #5: The Final Frontier

For our final Learning Curation we are required to look back at where we began and reflect on our learning process. I always find this process so valuable but often find myself skipping it when on my own time; I wonder why that is?

To get started, let's look back at the initial essential question. I started my Learning Curation posts without a clear focus, but needing to very quickly figure something out. At the end of my first Learning Curation I had narrowed my essential question down to two options:

1. What does a realistic action plan look like when beginning a career as a Teacher-Librarian?
2. How do you start the process of transitioning a Library to a Learning Commons?

While pleased with myself for creating essential questions that were relevant to me in my situation (a TTOC not employed as a TL who would *hopefully* soon be facing either of these two realities), I hadn't yet hit upon a question that ignited a sense of passion in the pursuit. I contented myself with the fact that my essential question could change if needed, and perhaps something in the Modules would spark some more interest. 

Thankfully, in Module 3 a lightning bolt of inspiration struck. Module three was all about cultivating a love for reading and encouraging life-long reading habits. Eureka! This is exactly what I love about libraries and reading! And wait?! Perhaps I should make this my focus if it was so interesting to me....I re-jigged my essential question to the unoriginal yet inspiring: "How to inspire the school population to be lifelong readers/learners"? Yes! Now this was an idea I could get behind. 

Inspirational Readings 

"Be Inspired" from
ModernMuse Consulting

All the readings from Week Three were superb, but the ones that really stuck out included Krashen's lecture on "The Power of Reading", Neil Gaiman's article "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming", and Susan Kelley & Donalyn Miller's book excerpt from Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. In fact, Kelley & Miller's book resonated with me so strongly that I convinced my mentor TL to purchase it and add it to the teacher resource collection. 

Now that I was inspired and had some readings to pull from, I wasn't entirely sure where to go with my essential question. I returned to my strategy at the beginning of the course which had worked quite well so far - when I was stuck, continue with the weekly modules until something struck me. Lo and behold - it did!

"Multimodal" from
What is Multi Modal Text

The Power of Multimodality

In module four we learned about the multi-modal approach. A multimodal approach is, in short, looking at and presenting texts in different forms. From a classroom teacher perspective this may mean encouraging our students to present their work in a different form than previously, our listening to an audiobook as a class. In offering multiple approaches to a text, students have more chance of being inspired and able to connect. This may mean allowing students to choose a graphic novel for their Independent Study project, promotion of non-fiction works, and/or encouraging diversity in presenting student learning. I was recently working in a classroom where students were working on a non-fiction unit; this teacher understood the power of multimodality because instead of limiting students to a nonfiction book, they also had the option of choosing a documentary for their nonfiction work. Simply providing this choice allowed more students to be interested in their chosen topic rather than completing the task for the grade alone. Read more about my thoughts on the multimodal approach in my blog post here. 

"My Dream Library" from
Omg Tiki Reads

Putting it into Action

The culmination in my essential question - for the time being, anyway - is in my Literacy Action Plan. My choice of term project was to create a Literacy Action Plan for the school library. In this plan I outlined several ideas, events, and a silent reading proposal that would propel the school's approach to literacy. I can see now how much more I could include in the Literacy Action Plan, but the beautiful thing about a document like this is that it is a work in progress and evolves over time. Overall my goal is to have the Library Learning Commons be a go-to spot for learning, reading, and connecting with like-minded passionate learners. A couple of ideas that I would like to add to the action plan are below:

• I believe that multiple clubs should be hosted in the library at lunchtime (it is quite a large space and can easily accommodate this) 
• The makerspace should be expanded to include different types of creations (mostly Lego currently) 
• I think that the website should be updated regularly with student and staff book reviews, and some of these should be displayed in the library

My dream is for students and staff to discuss what books they're reading, and feel comfortable discussing what they're learning with others. A culture of passion for learning is well on the way to this beautiful school - but isn't quite there just yet. 

References

Gaiman, N. (2013, October 15). "Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming." The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming?CMP=twt_gu on Sep. 9, 2018.

Kelley, S., & Miller, D. (2013) Reading in the wild: The book whisper’s keys to cultivating lifelong reading habits. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. p.88-128   (Book Excerpt)

Krashen, S. (2012, April 5). "The power of reading." The COE lecture series. University of Georgia. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSW7gmvDLag on Sep. 9,2018.

Stutz, N. (2018). "Mod-Notes, Learning Curation, Essential Question - It's All Happening!" Retrieved from https://readerzjourney.blogspot.com/2018/09/mod-notes-learning-curation-essential.html

Stutz, N. (2018). "Literacy Action Plan." Retrieved from https://readerzjourney.blogspot.com/2018/10/lled-462-63-c-assignment-2-literacy.html