This year I am at a new school, with a much more diverse group of learners than I've encountered at my previous schools. Our student population is more than 70% ESL and the needs of our students, particularly with regards to literacy, are quite high. As an attempt to identify a baseline for learning and meet the students where they're at, during the beginning of a research project with a Grade 7 group recently, we deliberately neglected to discuss research strategies. Mostly, their classroom teacher and I just outlined the project and let them loose on computers. To my chagrin, but not much of a shock, many simply googled their topic, clicked the first link that came up, and either started writing things down, or even worse, cutting and pasting into their "notes". After a short time, we gathered them back together and began to have a discussion about evaluating resources, research strategies and critical literacy.
After hearing and seeing many of their strategies, I realized how important digital literacy has become. Our students are now bombarded with information, resources, applications and ideas without any idea of how to sort through them, think critically about them or use them efficiently and effectively. I think this is something I would like to focus on more during LIBE 477, specifically information and critical literacy. These are skills that we often still struggle with as adults, in both our careers and personal lives, and the earlier we can teach proficiency in them, the more students can focus on acquiring more valuable knowledge.
Another personal interest I would be keen to focus on would be inquiry based learning. The staff at my school has taken this on as a school community focus and I would like to acquire more resources and experience, so I can better assist them with their teaching goals. Specifically, I'd like to learn more about how inquiry translates for primary grades. With our intermediate students, it's often easier to give them free range of topics and mediums as they've experienced more and have more developed interests. Primary students I find often require a lot of guidance and I'm not quite sure how to facilitate the fine balance of inquiry along with direction.
Both these topics are very intriguing to me and I'm looking forward to being able to investigate and put into practice some new skills and resources!
Good job on your first post! You've highlighted a key area where TLs can play a significant and important role in our school community and also where you can demonstrate some leadership and support your colleagues in your school goals. It will be very interesting to follow along with your inquiry!
ReplyDeleteHi Melissa,
ReplyDeleteI look forward to what you find out about information literacy, as I think I will be able to learn a lot from your inquiry as well. Your experience with the Grade 7 class sounds exactly like the start to my year with my Grade 7's this year! I worked with the teacher-librarian and we spent a lot of time on selecting and evaluating resources for research. I will be interested to see if my students remember these skills when we do an inquiry project later in the year!