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.
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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.
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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
