The information process

Thought I better do a post so I have pasted my activities from the week. I must say the NSW and WA websites that support TLs are great - nice to see TLs being supported in other states! 

Activity 1a: This may or may not be relevant but in SA, Year 7s are still in Primary School. No matter the age, I nearly always get students to brainstorm prior knowledge, ideas/questions for inquiry – individually, in pairs, small groups or as a class. With older classes I often get students to think, pair, share and then record key ideas on post it notes. Then they get into groups of 4 to combine ideas and group them etc. I use post-its because I find kids are more likely to record all their ideas and not feel as worried about spelling as it isn’t in their books. Also, it allows for easy movement and regrouping as they discuss their ideas with others. I generally take a photo of their work that they can put in their books as a record.

In terms of teaching them, early in the year I do a whole class brainstorm – either with post-its or recording ideas on the interactive whiteboard using Easiteach. (I have just been given a new board and now have Notebook but haven’t really played with it yet.) Once we have a whole list of ideas or words, we then go about grouping them – connecting ideas and creating sub-groups with headings. We also end up with lines joining similar or linked concepts.

I know that there are a lot of ways you can do this on computers but with our unreliable and frustrating computer situation at the moment, it is far more time-efficient and productive to either do a class concept map on the interactive whiteboard or use the post-its.

Activity 1b: Creating the questions prior to searching gives students direction in terms of the kinds of information for which they are searching. Experience has shown me that without questions, they just start to record everything. I think the questions or headings are important as they provide the map or directions for the search. Also, I get students to identify key words and then synonyms they are scanning for. Eg. eat, food, diet may be words that you look for to find out about what something eats.

When creating questions, I always involve students, no matter the age. Even JP kids have ideas about what they would like to find out about a topic. I then use their language and ideas within the questions that are required. Sneaky but it helps students to feel they have some say and control over what they are learning.

One way I try to teach students to create good questions is through discussing and modelling fat and skinny questions. I also limit the number of questions and so they need to gather as much relevant information as possible from each question. I also focus on the question words Who, What, When, Where, Why and How and also often start with the phrase I wonder . . .  This seems to help students to create questions rather than statements. We also do a lot of sharing and one group of Year 7s this year are really beginning to give advice to and support each other.

Activity 2: I haven’t really explicitly taught students about creating a search strategy. I guess in very general terms, I try to touch-base with students/pairs regularly to check where they are at, gaps in their information etc. This is definitely something that I will be looking to incorporate more next year - starting with the upper primary classes. At the moment I tend to give students at least 3 websites to start.

Activity 3: I have used hoax sites to identify the need to critically analyse the authenticity of a website. Earlier this year I used the Explorers one. I also expect students to record information from a variety of sources and so they have to cross-check their information. I also deconstruct at least 3 websites on the same topic - discuss pros cons, etc and then have ranking lines for most useful, least useful. Students have to justify their which always sparks a fierce discussion between students. I generally just prompt or guide the discussion. Very interesting and informative to see the weight students place on the appearance, amount of text, images etc as this guides me in how to support student learning. I also regularly model and talk out loud my thought processes when assessing a websites.

Activity 4: I have found that the range of ability for students to reflect on their learning and transfer to new situations is huge. It is an area that I think sometimes gets forgotten as we tend to finish the learning and then move onto the next thing. In saying that though, I have more recently been doing more short term inquiries – 1-2 sessions – and then noting and recording key learning both after that session and then again before the next one.  Still something I need to work on though.