As a librarian new to my school, I've been trying to find ways to collaborate with teachers by embedding 21st Century Literacy skills into their existing curriculum. We all know teachers are insanely busy, so finding something cool that doesn't become "one more thing" is crucial for me at this stage of collaboration.

Enter Room With a View, a fabulous worldwide project started by Jennifer Wagner. Our second grade classes do an Air and Weather unit, and so this project fits seamlessly. Classes from around the world take a picture each month of the view outside their classroom window. With this picture, we do a shared writing lesson describing the picture, what we see, what is happening with the weather, and any other observations.

One of our wonderful second grade teachers, Susan Souza, agreed to team teach the project with me this year, and it's my baby step into collaborating at a new school. Since we live in the tropics, we thought at first that our picture wouldn't change much, but we were wrong. All sorts of great noticing is going on, like what happens to the leaves on the trees in the heart of the rainy season. We are now connected with two other classes and planting the seeds of global conversations: one class in California and another in Wisconsin. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VQqC5Qcpj-8/SSoXKzJGI1I/AAAAAAAAAI8/M1jPOCvz9vc/s1600-h/october+view.JPG

Check out our Bangkok View wiki. We'll update it each month of the school year.