June 12th: Plan on Time and Plan Running Late

 


Our first day at LTISD Summer School was interesting. The staff gave both their staff and us the schedule this morning. This led many of the classes not showing up for their visit or being late for their time. We were told by several of the teachers they got the schedule past when the bookmobile was scheduled to start. Luckily, we were able to see one of the groups during the first scheduled break as we didn’t really need it. Ms. Karen B and I made notes to discuss plans to improve the schedule and flow better for the next weeks once we finished up for the day. However, while we waited for classes to hopefully come, we would work on straightening books and work on update our Summer Squires spreadsheet for checkout.

When the classes did come, we went with one of two plans: plan on time and the plan running late. If we went with plan on time that meant the class got basically the entire 20 minutes with us. So, for this plan we would have the kids sit on the floor of the bus, give them the opening speech and instructions, and read an age-appropriate book. Then we would give them ten minutes for checkout. For plan running late, we would just give the opening speech and instructions, after which we would release kids for checkout. For checkout, we assigned a library card to the teacher so books were checked out under the teacher’s name so kids could use them in the classroom during the school week. Moreover, Ms. Karen B and I would switch who led the kids in a story or instruction and who facilitated checkout to help conserve our voices for the week. 

The kids were overall pretty attentive for the 20 minutes we had them for the classes that came. It was a reminder of the need to be flexible as things will happen that are out of your control like classes not coming do the schedule being sent late.


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