Re-Thinking My Library Lesson Plans

Before the end of the school year, one of the things all teachers at my school had to complete was a full evaluation of their individual classroom curriculum compared to the state curriculum standards requirements.  (West Virginia's state standards requirements can be found here.)

For regular classroom teachers, it was a huge undertaking -- covering every single subject in the broad swath of their teaching requirements for each grade, from math to reading to social studies and beyond.   In my case, I was covering just the library curriculum standards because I only teach that one area at school, but it still ended up being a humongous undertaking.  My full analysis, for K through 6th, typed up was close to 80 pages long -- yikes!

But having gone through the entirety of what the state requirements are at each grade level?  I am now faced with a wholesale revamping of my lesson plans from last year to be certain we are meeting those standards to the extent possible.

It is a daunting revision, not least of which because I just built those lesson plans last year from scratch for my first year of teaching.  And now?  I'll be re-doing the whole of them to improve on what we did last year with the state standards requirements in mind.


Although, in all honesty, I somehow managed to cover the bulk of the state standards requirements for curriculum and actually exceeded them in most grade levels in several areas.

For example, the history/research project that I had students do in grades 2 through 6 substantially exceeded state mandated standards on research, writing, and all sorts of other areas.  Yay!  That's definitely a keeper, even though it was an enormous amount of work for me.

But it can really be an eye opener to walk through the state curriculum standards one by one, grade by grade, and then evaluate your lesson plans side-by-side with them.  At the moment, that's what I am trying to do -- if the storms will hold back a bit and allow me to have power long enough to work these through.

One thing I've been trying to come up with is a sort of universal form for individual lesson plans that would allow me to type or hand-write in notes and other information as I decide how to best teach individual concepts or larger units alike.  The form that exists in Microsoft Word is pretty good, as is the one in my iMAC's Pages word processor -- but not exactly what I want.

I wish that I were better at programming and form making.  That would make this a lot easier.

If anyone knows of a good lesson plan form resource, especially if it isn't too costly, I'd love to know about it!

In any case, if I can figure out how to post them as I finish each grade level's lesson plans, I will try to do so for folks who might also find that helpful.  I know I drew a lot of inspiration from the Hanover County library lesson plans posted on their website, and still go back and browse them for more inspiration along with a number of boards that deal with library concepts and teaching on Pinterest.

For folks in WV who are struggling with this, Janet Benicosa at the Harrison County Board of Education has done amazing work putting together a whole site dedicated to navigating these standards and curriculum requirements and changes.  I wholeheartedly recommend browsing there if you are looking for some form ideas, too -- she's done some really helpful, amazing stuff!

One of the things I'm trying to figure out how to do is work in more book talks on a month to month basis while still managing to fit in teaching on all the other elements.  I am committed to making reading exciting and pulling the kids along into being enthusiastic about reading a new book.  That takes time and effort for some kids, and I want to be certain that I make sure they know it is important to me.

But that seems hard to do when you have a checklist of curriculum standards to meet as well.   I'm committed to solving this somehow, and would really welcome suggestions on how other folks have worked this out in their own classrooms!

(Photo by Christy Hardin Smith.)