Howdy! This is the third in a series of posts to answer questions posed by participants at Saturday’s Hawaii Association of School Librarians conference. You guys are asking tough questions, so it’s taking me a bit longer than I would have liked to get to all the answers. So many are yet to come, so let’s get started!
If Common Core is the “what”, would you say inquiry is the “how”?
Sure! Some would say inquiry is both.
Wondering whether the SBAC will require the students to find/locate/access their own info. If the test provides the multiple sources, they’re really just testing the students’ ability to read and synthesize. Of course as a librarian, I would still teach them how to locate info because I believe it’s a skill they need. But for the teacher who is pressed for time…
Definitely, the existing performance task samples for Smarter Balanced focus on precisely this. But according to their own inventory, we haven’t seen the research tasks yet, so that’s a bit up in the air. Your pragmatic approach seems very realistic to me. A couple of thoughts …
1) I’m idealistic enough to believe that the intent of the standards was to improve teaching independent of testing. (I know. I just put myself in an ivory tower with a sentence like that.) And while past testing has gotten kids into college, it’s pretty clear they struggle to do good research once they get there. That’s why the highest number of job openings in librarianship are for academic library instruction at the college/university level. And I was always a rebellious teacher who felt like if she aimed high, kids would do better on the test than if she aimed to meet the standards.
2) CCSS comes right out and says doesn’t cover everything everybody needs to know – check out the intro to the English Language Standards (ELA) for language about that. So we’re doing students a disservice if we limit their learning to those areas.
3) I’m not sure location is our students’ biggest struggle, but I know they struggle with task selection, resource evaluation, and synthesis (see, for example, the research by Kuhlthau as well as the Project Information Literacy findings). If we aim for synthesis in our research projects, we kill two birds with one stone: we support teachers in meeting that expectation/test task, and we give students the real-world practice they need.
4) If you are a secondary teacher, be sure to look for words like “credibility” in the CSA ELA Standards … because that can’t happen unless we are doing real research with real sources.
But yeah, we’re in a world where pragmatism wins the day … I get it. I just don’t like it. 🙂
What websites or other resources can I go to to view sample lessons for grade 1 inquiry?
One of the difficulties about inquiry is that its very open-endedness makes it tough to write replicable lesson plans. But here are some books that have helped me establish a culture of student-centered learning. Not all are library-centric!
Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in Primary Grades
Debbie Miller
The chapter on conventions of non-fiction was always a hit with my first graders and, although not inquiry, gave them the skills to find nonfiction more engaging. Inquiry doesn’t mean abandoning basic skills … just going beyond them. And that means building up that prior knowledge first!
Teaching with Intention: Defining Beliefs, Aligning Practice, Taking Action, K-5
Debbie Miller
At first glance, this looks like a book about setting up a classroom that mirrors your instructional style, needs, and beliefs. But keep reading and check out the technique using folders!
Ladybugs, Tornadoes, and Swirling Galaxies
Brad Buhrow & Anne Garcia Upczak
Technically written about ESL classrooms, this book has great tips for making thinking visible, including thinking about informational text.
A Place of Wonder: Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades
Georgia Heard & Jennifer McDonough
A lovely, read-in-one-sitting book about children and informational text. It will help you reframe your teaching to be more aware of students’ ideas.
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Using Science Notebooks in Elementary Classrooms
Michael Klentschy
Such a great resource for linking inquiry and writing to science investigations. Not all inquiry involves library research, and this book will help students generate, document, and reflect on their own research paths. This is inquiry with hands-on learning.
In addition, here are some books I’ve worked on that can help:
Navigating the Information Tsunami: Engaging Research Projects that Meet the Common Core State Standards, K-5
ed. Kristin Fontichiaro
CCSS-compatible lessons that break down inquiry and other research projects into meaningful, manageable chunks.
21st-Century Learning in School Libraries
ed. Kristin Fontichiaro
Lots of articles and K-12 lesson plans pulled from past issues of School Library Monthly (formerly School Library Media Activities Monthly).
Story Starters and Science Notebooking: Developing Student Thinking Through Literacy and Inquiry
Sandy Buczynski and Kristin Fontichiaro
Builds on the work of Klentschy (above), using stories to set the stage for student inquiry. Student-designed experiments lead to new understandings that complete the story.
Why were you inspired to give each of us an “aha” memento?
For readers who weren’t at Saturday’s workshop, we set up a table with enough pins (shown below) for every attendee. When attendees had their aha moment (which I hope people will have, as professional learning is something I take pretty seriously), they could take a pin. Seeing others’ pins would give us a way of breaking the ice and initiating conversation. (As much as people think I’m extroverted, I am awkward making small talk, so this would help me as much as them.)
Photo of some of the pins given out at HASL
But that’s not how the project started. It was actually one of those classic spiraling-out-of-control moments. At first, I just wanted to try out the Anne Taintor kind of collage work technique; one of the downsides of organizing twice-a-week maker activities is that I spend more time organizing than making, and my fingers were getting twitchy! I found some public domain or Creative Commons images, some inspiring quotes about learning or libraries, added some snarky ones of my own … and as time went on, I started thinking about different sizes, techniques, sweet and snarky sayings, and the pile grew. Then I realized I had wayyy more than I needed for hostess gifts.
I thought back to a workshop I had attended years ago with the Memphis Arts Council. We had been given, in our conference bags, a button that literally said “aha!” and we were to put it on when we had our first lightbulb moment. By week’s end, everybody was wearing theirs, and it was a great icebreaker. Maybe I could use the pins for that … I’d only need a few more.
Then someone who couldn’t be there said, “Oh, I want to know what gave them the aha!” So we asked participants to scribble their thinking on a sticky note and leave it on the table when they took the pin. (We shared those in the middle of this blog post.)
It was a snowballing effort that got more fun as it went. And because I made so many, I had some trial-and-error, some that turned out better than others, some that were messier than others, and so I really got to figure out how to make them better. Kinda like inquiry, y’know?
Plus, thanks to Elizabeth’s idea, we had a record of what people were thinking of, which helped me know if I was creating a valuable experience for folks.
Nalani also collected end-of-workshop ahas, and those often concurred with the in-the-moment pins, but they didn’t always. (We shared those at the end of this blog post.)
Is your biography on your website?
It’s on my University of Michigan page, along with my CV.
Here’s a school profile of my work.
Our makerspace projects are discussed here.
That’s it for this round … more to come! Please share your ideas in the comments below.