Success Experienced, Practice Evolved while Collaborating with Technology

My first few months in the Library at my new school last year helped create a vision for me to teach information and technology skills.  It became apparent to me that students and teachers needed support with teaching and learning library and research skills.  Collaboration experiences with other teachers although appreciated felt largely unsuccessful.  I began to understand that students did not understand how to make use of the catalogue, navigate the physical library or, glean information from various resources.  It was this experience that led me to design and teach Library Information Skills during grade 2,3 and 4 prep class time to help strengthen them in this area. By using these lessons, I have found collaboration experiences to be far more successful. Two case studies follow, where teachers have changed their practice based on the success they experienced collaborating together using Library Information Skills and technology.

Teacher A: 

A grade three teacher who I had collaborated with last year, approached me again to support her students with research skills for their class assignment to learn about a particular biome.  This teacher used non-fiction print resources as the primary source for conducting research.  Our last attempt was admittedly frustrating as it seemed "too much time was spent on differentiating the project by creating three different versions, with three different resource banks."(Teacher A) The teacher was stuck at the Management stage of concern in The Concerns-Based Adoption Model of Innovation, where she was spending all her time getting materials ready.  Many of the print resources we had were too dense or too difficult for the students reading level and there were blank looks as we walked them through the process of collecting information.  

The Plan:

We discussed what was challenging last year and decided to scaffold with Library information skills prior to starting the project.  I was able to take them through a number of the lessons in prep time that focused particularly on using non-fiction text features and photographs to gain comprehension.  We started the unit with a video about the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone National Park after having been absent for 70 years called How Wolves Change Rivers.  We hoped it would help encapsulate the idea of interconnectedness that we wanted the students to explore within their own biome project.  We followed with a reading and a discussion on how wolves play a huge part in the ecological processes that take place in the taiga. 

Author: Suzanne Slade wrote this and other titles including "What if there were no Bees, Lemmings and Otters" to address the interconnected role nature and animals have on our planet.

Their presence has an effect not only on the animals living there, but on the physical landscape such as rivers and forests that become the home and give life to these animals.  As a class we used the taiga example to discuss ways that nature was interconnected.  I then showed them how to use World Book Kids to find general information about it including location, weather, temperature plants and animals.   Students worked in a booklet format using non-fiction print and World Book Kids to collect their information.

The Project:

The teacher had already prepared the student project to be similar to the class modelled example of the taiga biome where students would find similar information relating to their assigned biome and record it with more independence.  We used collaborative time together to facilitate research using books, World Book Kids, Webpath Express and other websites the teacher had shown them to find the information they needed.  Students also learned how and why to record their information sources.  

I encouraged the teacher to let students create their biome projects in a format of their choice, such as a speech, diorama, story or iMovie.   She decided to let them try it next time after they had been successful in completing the first one with a similar structure.  I feel she made a good decision to help support their understanding of the project expectations before trying something on their own.  I know they will be excited to create their next project and they will have already gone through the process of collecting information as a class and hopefully will guide their future efforts.  

The Learning:

"This year, I decided to spend more time on teaching research step by step, with a little more flexibility on resources. Students accomplished what they could based on their level of competence in research skills, which cut out the “middle man” (me) in doing the differentiation for them. Doing it this way opened up more time for me to work with students one-on-one, and allow them to research and complete the project at their own pace without worrying about facilitating a variety of different projects.

 


I valued the collaboration time with the Teacher Librarian for a variety of reasons. Not only did collaboration time make the facilitation of the project much smoother, but it allowed students to learn about research both in the library and the classroom. Many of my students now recognize the wealth of information the library has, and the information from both print and digital resources is valuable and very accessible. 

I learned a lot from Carly, and appreciated the lessons she facilitated with my students. The information she presented on digital resources expanded my knowledge on what types of resources were available in the district, which in turn allowed me to lesson plan more efficiently for other projects. I highly recommend all teachers to collaborate with their Teacher Librarian, no matter the subject or content of their lessons."(Teacher A) 

The teacher has made excellent progress over the past two years and is now integrating technology into her methods of teaching information literacy.

Teacher B:

A grade four teacher requested comprehension follow-up activities that could support her class in its’ read-aloud novel study of The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. The class consists of students with varied reading levels and abilities and behaviours including a large number of ELL students.  Having just come from an LST position, used to working with smaller groups, she was finding it difficult to reach all student needs.  Previously she had used Adrienne Gear's Reading Power strategies to guide student comprehension when reading and discussing this novel as a group. The teacher gave questions throughout the novel and held class discussions to learn more about world issues that affected the events of Ivan's life. As a cumulative project she assigned an "awareness poster" where students could show their learning by highlighting these issues.  The teacher  became frustrated that a majority of students were falling behind due to language barrier and ability and realized another option would be necessary for students to understand world issues relating to Ivan's life.  The teacher was stuck at the Consequence stage of concern in The Concerns-Based Adoption Model of Innovation, wondering how her use or absence of use of innovation is affecting learners and how she can have more impact on their learning.  We discussed ways I could support the class during Library time in order to help build knowledge around animals in captivity, human impact on them, and appropriate needs for animals to live a healthy life in their natural environment.

The Plan:

I began by combining research models (Super 3 and Harvey & Daniels) to guide information gathering from the students and begin the planning stage for our research.  We created general questions we wanted to research about gorillas, answered what we could from our knowledge as well as information in the novel and zoomed in on researching unanswered questions from non-fiction print the library had on hand.  Next we watched two youtube videos that highlighted different aspects of Ivan’s life.  The first video made by his caretaker and people who associated with Ivan showed a human side of his life in captivity and the breakthroughs and challenges his caretakers experienced.  The other video presented the impact Ivan’s life had on the knowledge of scientists and anthropologists regarding gorillas and other wild animals held in captivity.  We used the videos, print resources, photographs, Webpath Express and World Book Kids to fill in missing information for their research.  I had previously taught the grade 4's to use some of our digital resources including Webpath and World Book Kids.

The Project: 

We gave students the task of creating a non fiction book or a story in Book Creator to communicate what they felt was important about gorillas’ needs to live a happy healthy life.  They were very engaged and focused on their work and as a result, their teacher allowed them to continue with the project during class time over the following weeks.  We used collaborative time to work out the technical details of the projects and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work being produced. We shared and reviewed their creations as a class on the projector and tried out all the features Book Creator offers including camera, record, draw, text and playback that reads aloud the text that the students have written.  I was unaware of this feature and was happy a student figured it out to show the whole class.  An excellent feature for a class so high in ELL.  

The Learning:

I would like to have showed an example of their work, but am unable to do so.  Unfortunately, before we decided how to bring their efforts to fruition, and share their projects with their families or an audience, unknowingly the iPads were replaced over the weekend and all their work was lost.  Making digital student work available to a larger audience will require some further investigation and understanding by myself and teachers.  I am confident the students were very interested in their projects and I will try it again with them.  I am also aware that if there is no end point in mind that students can feel proud of, their interest and commitment to finish will drastically waver.  Therefore, I will ensure this part of the process is in place before we try again.

As a result of this collaboration experience, the teacher has gone on to research Canadian Explorers with the class and has offered Book Creator as a choice for students to communicate their learning along with some other very interesting presentation formats.  

More importantly, the teacher realized incorporating technology was easier than she thought.  The benefits included different learning dynamics between teacher-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher.  We have been able to reduce her concern to the first informational stage where she is interested in continuing and would like to know more about it.

Bibliography

Monroe, C. Library Information Skills Lessons

The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM): A Model for Change in Individuals

Sustainablehuman.com, How Wolves Change Rivers narrated by Monbiot,G.

Slade, S. What If There Were No Gray Wolves: A Book about the Temperate Forest Ecosystem. 2010

Photograph. Four examples of Grade 3 Student note taking and information sources 

Harvey, S., Daniels, H. Comprehension, Collaboration: Inquiry Circles

www.argofilms.com, Ivan the gorilla lived alone in a shopping mall for over 20 years (The Urban Gorilla)

Tacoma News Tribune: Ivan the Beloved: A gorilla's journey from the heart of Africa to the hearts of Tacoma

Photograph. Kohut, J. Canadian Explorer Project Choice Board