Collaborative Units that Work: Teams Award Winners

Learn from collaboration masters! Read all about award-winning, standards-based collaboration projects that you can reproduce in your school setting. Collaborative Units that Work: TEAMS Award Winners is a compilation of some of the best collaborative lessons taught by elementary, middle, and high school media specialists and teachers. In this idea-rich volume, the TEAMS winners share their award-winning projects with you—in a format that makes it easy to adapt to your own students and programs. Collaborative Units that Work: TEAMS Award Winners offers detailed unit plans for projects at the elementary school, middle school, and high school levels—projects singled out for their clearly demonstrated collaborative nature, positive impact on student learning and achievement, support from school leadership, and the ability for others to replicate the project. Projects come with their creators' expert advice, examples, and strategies that will help you get staff and students excited and involved in true all-school learning. Innovative, classroom-proven, and imminently workable, these are the projects that show just how effective and captivating creative collaboration can be.

Table of Contents:
Figures Acknowledgments Introduction National Standards and the Collaborative Units SECTION I: ELEMENTARY COLLABORATION UNITS CHAPTER 1: Authors' Night Betsey Kennedy and Barbara Powell-Schager Big Shanty Elementary School, Georgia Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 2: The Global Schoolhouse Project Cally Flickinger and Jennifer Opel Chamberlin School, Vermont Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 3: Take-Home DVD: Improving Emergent Literacy Skills T. K. Cassidy and Betsy Thornton Dug Gap Elementary School, Georgia Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 4: Thinking Like a Scientist Mary Karlovec and Anne Michael Windsor Elementary School, Ohio Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project SECTION II: MIDDLE SCHOOL COLLABORATION UNITS CHAPTER 5: Where in the World Are Our Middle School Students Now? Barbara Adair, Rick Norman, John Scrivano, and Dana Thompson New Smyrna Beach Middle School, Florida Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 6: Mathematical Nightmares Nelle Cox, Shari Galgano, and JoAnn Reynolds Dover Air Base Middle School, Delaware Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 7: One Book, One School Chris Altobello, David Guest, Kendra Hamby, John McCollum, Debbie Pace, Sharon Scott, Brooks Spencer, LaDonna Walker, and Susan Wilson Osceola Middle School, Florida Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project SECTION III: HIGH SCHOOL COLLABORATION UNITS CHAPTER 8: Teen Expressions Lorraine Grochowski and Corrine Richardson Booker T. Washington Senior High School, Florida Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 9: Comic Relief: Using Graphic Novels with ESL Students Leila "Bee" Manship and Chasity Markle Concord High School, North Carolina Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 10: Internet Safety Billie Esser and Mary Anne Knowles Jefferson West High School, Kansas Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 11: Advanced Academic Literacies Michaelyn Hein, Martha Hickson, Mary Loder, Caitlin Ryan, and Lauren Sheldon North Hunterdon High School, New Jersey Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project CHAPTER 12: Culinary Reading Program Wilhelmina DeNunzio and Carol Faas Eastside High School, Florida Project Overview Timeline Roles Defined Measuring Success Funding Your Project Materials and Resources Sustaining This Project Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Kate Vande Brake is a former journalist with several years' experience working in K-12 public education as a communications specialist.

Review :
For school media specialists looking for innovative ideas on how to collaborate with teachers to create a buzz around learning and literacy, this book is a must have. The collaborative lesson plans and units compiled here have been classroom-tested by elementary through secondary media specialists and teachers who are winners of the Gale Library Media Connection TEAMS Award. Projects are presented in a consistent format, with a project overview, timeline, notes on the roles of the teacher and the media specialist, and advice on measuring success, funding the project, materials and resources, and sustaining the project. Projects range from an author's night for elementary grades, through high school units on using graphic novels with ESL students and advanced academic literacies. Numerous examples of surveys, parent letters, rubrics, student self-assessments, and other materials are provided. This is a useful selection, especially for someone wanting to try a new collaboration, but coming up a little short on ideas. Recommended.