Building Your Base

Great news today!  I am officially signed up for my C.A.S. School Media classes at Syracuse University (good ol' Cuse!).  Classes start August 29th and I am elated!  Not only will I start learning about a passion that is literally starting to take over my life and networking with other like minded professionals, but I also realized that I will have full access to the library's online databases!  I know I am a complete nerd for thinking this way, and I happily embrace my nerdy qualities and will continue to expound upon them as I see fit.  I also know that our local public library here on Schofield Barracks has access to some online databases that offer peer-reviewed journal articles, but there is nothing having access to a large university's online database. I would almost describe it as being my heaven (I know another nerdy comment).

Picture courtesy of kindercloud.com

With all that said, I want to share this week's recent wanderings into the world of research for elementary school students.  If you recall in my last post I discussed that research strategies should be taught at an earlier age than is previously being done now.  While, I applaud school librarians for beginning to push research strategies to high school freshmen I believe that strategies should be taught earlier.  In order to build a 21st Century Learner and get children thinking more along the lines of research, teachers and librarians need to develop a sense of wonder in young children.  Peter Haiman, in the article "Developing a Sense of Wonder in Young Children," stated that "children in schools and preschools are influenced by educators who often ask, rather than teachers who usually tell" (2014).  The word "ask" is the key word in this sentence.  By teachers and school librarians modeling to younger students inquirey based questioning the younger students will start to emulate the line of questioning and can begin to make connections within in the subject they are learning or with outer lying subjects.

Picture courtesy of  r3.cpapracticeadvisor.com

Last week at Daniel K. Inouye, the head librarian (Michelle Colte) and I began the task of developing a sense of wonder in our students.  At this time our library is out of commission and we have basically became a very paired down library on wheels.  Actually, it is more of a online library on wheels rather than physical books.  We are in a transitional phase at the moment while we wait for our new library to be finished. Shelves are being put in this week so fingers crossed!  Over the summer I had suggested that since a physical space for the library is out of the question, why don't we bring a virtual library to our students and begin to focus on teaching them the in's and out's of our online collection and databases.  Mrs. Colte rolled with the idea and last week we found ourselves working with different grade levels.

 Part of 4th Grade Gallery Walk

In fourth grade the students are concentrating on natural disasters.  We decided to focus our library lessons on using the online databases for research for their projects.  Before we entered the classroom the teachers had prepped them for our research by having the students participate in a gallery walk of informational posters of each natural disaster.  There were photos and text and each students was asked to write how the pictures made them feel, and to write down questions they had after looking at pictures and reading the information. Once each child was done with the gallery walk they brought their questions back to the classroom (questions were wrote on post-it notes so they could be easily moved around).  

After the gallery walk Mrs. Colte and I introduced students to the online database ScienceFlix.  We asked them which sections would be appropriate for their research needs (i.e. Extreme Nature).  Once students had identified the proper online resource we invited them to explore the sections within the Extreme Nature tab, and based on their exploration we invited them to ask supplemental questions to their existing questions.  We also encouraged students to talk with the other students in their table groups and ask questions.  A template was made to help guide students in their exploration or as we dubbed it "pre-search" process.  We had students ask, "How was your question similar to another students question?," "What question did you think of after you heard their question?,"  "What key words did you hear when heard these questions?"  

Student's Feelings Related to Images

Questions Generated by Students During Gallery Walk 

The exercise went very well and students enjoyed asking the questions and making connections between topics.  Some of my favorite questions where connections were made were, "Does an earthquake cause an tsunami?"  "Can a tornado form during a hurricane?,"  "Do robberies happen after a natural disaster?" (I especially liked this one because although looting does not take place after all natural disasters, this student was making a connection between a breakdown in the emergency system and natural disasters.)  "How does a person survive a flood?" (I also liked this one because students began to make connections between the different warning systems).  

4th Graders Using Online Resources to Question their Questions

ReflectionThe classes seemed very excited about being able to do research.  All of the students were very eager to ask questions and to be able to find their answers on their own with a little guidance.  We did find that if the lesson went too long the students lost interest, but we redirected them to get them back on track.  I would say our biggest problem was getting the students to ask more probing questions about the information they saw during the gallery walk.  Hopefully, we can get students to open up more about their questions the next go around.