Instructional Activities

Now that we’ve “warmed up” to the semester a bit more, I’ve noticed that more teachers are taking advantage of the library for instructional lessons.  A couple days ago, my supervisor taught a lesson to a Home Economics class about child development.  I had the opportunity to observe Mrs. W pulling children’s books from her personal collection and arranging them in a way that corresponds to different developmental stages.  The books ranged from boardbooks to short chapter books such as Charlotte’s Web.

Mrs. W set up a display so the students would be able to see the different children’s materials. The class, which had background information on childhood development, listened to ways the books were designed specifically for different levels of development.  For example, Mrs. W talked about how boardbooks with bright colors and different materials could help young readers with motor skills, and thick pages were easy for young children to grip and turn.  She started with the simplest books and worked her way to the more difficult books, talking about how they were helpful to readers at each stage of development.

By the end of the lesson, the students were assigned an activity.  They were supposed to choose a book, examine it, and present to the rest of the class what age of reader would benefit from it the most.  While the students seemed hesitant at first, their discussions made it clear that they followed the lesson and grasped the major concepts Mrs. W presented.

For this upcoming week, my supervisor will be teaching classes about online tools such as SMORE.  The students will use this tool to create projects they will later present to the class.  Seeing the process Mrs. W goes through to create these instructional lessons has helped prepare me to create my own lesson, and she has helped me work through a solid lesson plan along the way.  It is nice to see my supervisor model these activities, for it gives me a better idea of what I would like to implement in my own lessons.