in response to our project: How Can Teacher Librarians Support Teachers with Inquiry Projects.
The research process for this project was both interesting and time consuming. I spent approximately 10 hours reading texts:
Engaging Readers and Writers With Inquiry
The Essential Questions Handbook
The 10 Series Inquiry Club Guide and several accompanying ’10 Series’ books
and, Q Tasks.
These books gave me a deeper understanding of how and why to do Inquiry projects. I designed one Inquiry project for Social Studies: Government to use as a template for future inquiry designs, and also to ‘go through the process’ myself. The plan I cam up with is pretty general, and can be used for the grade 3 or 6 social studies curriculum. The more practice I have with reframing the PLOs into Enduring Understandings, and designing overarching Guiding Questions, the better able I will be to assist the teachers and students as they work through an Inquiry.
My group and I spent several hours discussing the parameters of our project (teacher and student needs regarding Inquiry, directions of our schools plans, technology available in our schools) and the best possible platform to host our links. A few of us decided to place our project on our existing library websites, but this is something I will do in the Fall, after conferring with my district TL team, (who I will be working with on a district Grant proposal) and after getting ‘write’ privileges to my library website.
Our project will be delivered to staff and students via links on our website under the following categories:
Overview
Background and Theory
Examples of Inquiry Projects
Kids Websites for Inquiry Research
Reading and Writing Inquiry Club
Each category has links to web-based resources as well as books we have in our libraries. It is our feeling that teachers will find this organization of information relevant and easy to access. Because this project is the basis of the Grant our district TLs have applied for, the information and organization I have laid out may change. We want our district websites to have a common feel, with common tabs for teachers and students to access. Our feeling is that teachers will be accessing these links primarily, but in the event that students or parents want to check them out, we wanted to make our transference of information transparent, and the language accessible to everyone in our community.
I am looking forward to the final stages of developing this project with my district TLs!
Conducting inquiry-based learning is time-consuming, isn’t it? All the reading, processing the information, discussing what is relevant, modifying plans or designs based on new information… The good news is that projects arising from this method have the potential of taking on a life of their own because they are based on deep or broad connections to the field. The more we incorporate information from outside our own limited worlds, the more possibilities we create for others to connect with our work.