How to decrease your lesson planning stress on a fixed schedule in 3 steps.

My schedule this year makes it virtually impossible for me to collaborate with classroom teachers or to push into classes so I had to think of a way to teach quality lessons without burning myself out. I do not in any way advocate for fully fixed schedules and/or how I am going to have to run my library this year, but...sometimes when you are given lemons, you make lemonade.

How to decrease your lesson planning stress on a fixed schedule in 3 steps:

1. Read only "QUALITY" books during readaloud. This sparks curiosity about the subject which leads to students their own self-motivated research. Last week I read the Librarian of Basra: A True Story of Iraq by Jeanette Winter.

2. Plan lessons where students do ALL or MOST of the work. Once you have sparked their curiosity, provide them with a variety of resources to conduct their research: reference materials, non-fiction books, articles, magazines, videos, audiobooks, etc. Have students jigsaw and then share their findings to the class.

3. Have students create something that can be shared with an audience: An ABC book on any curricular topic, a student-created audio book, a videotaped puppet show, etc.