Teaching for Secondary Grades

Last week, I discussed mindfulness and some ways to use it in your libraries. For week six, our focus is on a secondary grades resource. 

Content-Area Collaborations for Secondary Grades by Liz Deskins aligns lessons from middle and high school grades with AASL’s Shared Foundations of Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage. Each lesson is set up as a collaborative effort between the teacher-librarian and classroom teacher. However, these lessons could also be modified to be conducted strictly in the library, as needed. Hint: These types of units could be great ideas to take to your teachers and work on establishing collaborative partnerships.

One example falls under the foundation of Explore:

Ghost by Jason Reynolds 

Summary: Castle Cranshaw, called Ghost by everyone, has been running from things his entire life. He wants to be the next star basketball player; track has never been on his mind. One day, Ghost is watching a track practice and challenges a sprinter to a race. When Ghost wins the race, the coach wants him on the team. Ghost has a lot to run for and a talent for running. However, he also has a lot to overcome to prevent his past from catching up to him. 

This unit contains four learning objectives, lasting about a span of ten instructional sessions to complete. Pre- and post-assessments are available, as well as graphic organizers and worksheets to help guide the unit along. This unit focuses on hands-on activities about how people can make changes for the better within their communities.  

Both Content-Area Collaborations for Secondary Grades and Ghost are available for checkout at the North Dakota State Library. 

Enjoy your winter breaks. You have certainly earned them!