Librarians for everyone!

Monday's class in 504 was quite interesting. I was excited for this class for 2 reasons. 1) We were able to meet in the Brandon Center. Now, I didn't know anything about the Brandon Center except for the fact that it had an awesome sign above the door which changed colors...that was enough to make me excited (I am quite easily impressed). 2) We finally got to work on creating a lesson plan! This is now our fifth week of classes and we haven't made any lesson plans thus far, so finally dealing with creating one felt like we were taking one step closer to becoming actual teachers.

I came to class with a great idea in mind for a lesson concerning the Tsunami. I was going to approach it from an English literature teacher's point of view, as I figured that is the angle I would take on it. However, I realized that I was put in a group with a Chemistry and Math teacher. Seeing as how I am a Biology minor, I realized quickly that my plan for having the students write a first person narrative from the perspective of a Tsunami survivor was out the window. I supposed this would be a good opportunity for me to come at this lesson from a different angle, seeing as how I may choose to teach Biology.

My group decided to sit in the green booth, for reasons we do not really know, except that the booths looked nice and cozy, and we could pretend we were at a restaurant. We set to work on creating the lesson. Because there was a Chemistry major, a Physics major and a Biology minor in the group, we all decided to plan the lesson for a Physics classroom. I had to dust out some of the cobwebs in my brain, but I was able to remember some of the basic principles.

Sarah, our librarian, taught me a lot of great information and showed us some wonderful resources to use when planning lessons. One of which was the Michigan content standards, which helped us to form our lesson in order to meet criteria. It really helped to see what criteria we needed to meet in a lesson as it gave us a starting point of an end goal (working backwards in our planning). We then were able to find information that fit with meeting this goal, which helped us decide fairly quickly if an article would work or not.

Another piece of information Sarah bestowed upon us, was the computer program which allowed text to be read aloud. I didn't know that almost all new computers could do this! (once again this is proof of me being easily impressed) I was amazed. I realized that this could help a lot in the classroom as it would allow students who perhaps struggle with reading a way to stay on the same "playing field" with the other students who don't struggle so much. By playing the audio of someone reading the text the students have in front of them, it allows students to read along and hopefully develop their reading skills over time. This also helps to avoid embarrassment by those who struggle with reading and comprehension.

Sarah also introduced us to the website "Todaysmeet.com". It is a great site were groups can discuss and have a live feed. Through this site we were able to send each other links to articles we found, which is so much easier than trying to tell each other how to get to the website, just click and your there! I can see how this would be a very useful tool for group discussions when the group members are not physically in the same location. I can see myself using this in the future, perhaps to have students share information with other members of their group when working on a project.

Overall, I felt that I learned a lot from class on Monday. Working in a group was fantastic. It really helps to have other people to bounce ideas off of, and to share ideas with. I found that we were able to combine a lot of our ideas together to come up with a plan that I'm sure turned out much better than if I had made it on my own. It is really good to get other people's opinions about an idea I may have, and to hear ways in which to improve upon it.

I found the Brandon Center to be a wonderful place to work. The environment of it is cozy and very study-friendly as well as group work friendly. The bright colors of the place keep your senses alert and the available technology is fantastic. I hope to spend more time in there when it opens officially. Overall, it was a wonderful day of learning!