I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about how to connect my current summer work with my classroom come August, and to be honest it’s a little tricky.

The program I am working on with the Science Festival has me developing curriculum for libraries across the state. This is all well and good, but the largest part of how I’m spending my time is working on something that I won’t necessarily be directly implementing in my classroom.

A few weeks ago, we met with some librarians from Durham County Libraries (DURHAM REPRESENT!), and we had a very productive, informative meeting. Something that struck me as surprising was how adamant the librarians were that they were NOT teachers, and they do NOT want to see lesson plans of any kind in a program, because libraries are NOT school.

Needless to say, this completely changed my perspective on my project at hand.

I had worked on developing some lessons to teach students about the four basic principles of flight — lift, weight, thrust, and drag. Initially, this was the plan, but I’ve come to find out that plans change very quickly. Upon hearing this, a new direction had to be set with our programming. I still have all the lessons I wrote initially, and I will probably use them in some capacity in my class.

The most relevant thing I think about this project is a vetted book list I’m creating with books for all grade levels, K-5, about flight. I’m working with a children’s literature specialist from UNC on vetting the list, and I’m getting input from other librarians and teachers in my network. I do a lot of read alouds in my reading class, and reading about flight will definitely help kids make explicit connections for their project time.

When I started this project, I was under the impression we’d be looking at not only plane flight, but space flight as well. Right before school was out for the summer, I came up with an incredibly integrated culminating task for my unit on solar system, physics, and economy, and I was hoping that would play nicely into the work I’d do at the Science Festival. Needless to say, the jury is still kind of out on that one.

I’m really enjoying my time with the NC Science Festival, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to create a program for libraries across the state to use to further science education, specifically about flight. I’m also curious to get a clearer picture of how I can use what I’m doing now to shape what I do in my classroom with my third graders.