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wise curriculum (revised 1 31 11) (2).pdf

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wise curriculum (revised 1 31 11) (2).pdf

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Home Design Ethical Considerations Old Style vs. New Style Resources SCASL Presentation

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Resource sheets for schools | Information Literacy

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Resource sheets for schools | Information Literacy

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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I love nonfiction. I love learning about new things and broadening my horizons. But when I was a sixth grader, I was singing a different tune. I all but ignored the nonfiction books in our school and small-town library, and I couldn't have cared less about social studies and science.

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Information Search Process | Publish with Glogster!

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Information Search Process | Publish with Glogster!

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1. Initiation

4. Formulation

THOUGHTS: Comprehending task, relate it to previous experience

FEELINGS: Uncertainty

TASK: Recognize the need for information

ACTIONS:Discuss need for information; strategize about how to resolve it

2. Selection

TASK: Identify resolution avenue with greatest chance of sucess

THOUGHTS: Weighing options for topic selection against assignment

ACTIONS:Confer with others, select a topic based on a preliminary search of information

FEELINGS: Optimism

3. Exploration

THOUGHTS: Becoming sufficiently informed about topic to focus further search

TASK: Investigate topic

ACTIONS:Seek relevent information, read to become informed, relate finds to what is already known

THOUGHTS: Narrowing and clarifying perspective for research

TASK: Formulate a focus

Carol Kulthau'sInformationSearchProcess

Transition from this stage represents a turning point in the feelings about research, from discomfort to confidence.

FEELINGS: Uncertainty, apprehension

ACTIONS: Choose a central idea or focus for research from information found

5. Collection

ACTIONS: Interact with information systems to gather information about a focused topic

FEELINGS: Confidence, decreasing fear

THOUGHTS: Defining and extending focused topic

TASK: Gather information

6. Presentation

FEELINGS: Confusion, Frustration, Doubt

TASK: Complete research, plant to present it

THOUGHTS: Creating a personalized culmination of research

FEELINGS: Relief, satisfaction or disappointment

Collier Kuhlthau, C. (n.d.). Information search process. Carol Kuhlthau. Retrieved from http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/information_search_process.htmKuhlthau, C. C. (1991). Inside the Search Process: Information Seeking from the User's Perspective. Journal Of The American Society For Information Science, 42(5), 361-371. Lamb, A. (2013, February 25). Information search process (ISP). Information Age Inquiry. Retrieved from http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/ips.htm

References

ACTIONS: Prepare to present research

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Information Search Process | Publish with Glogster!

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1. Initiation 4. Formulation THOUGHTS: Comprehending task, relate it to previous experience FEELINGS: Uncertainty TASK: Recognize the need for information ACTIONS:Discuss need for information; strategize about how to resolve it 2. Selection TASK: Identify resolution avenue with greatest chance of sucess THOUGHTS: Weighing options for topic selection against assignment ACTIONS:Confer with others, select a topic based on a preliminary search of information FEELINGS: Optimism 3.

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A MiddleWeb Blog
"Do you always do this research project?" she asked, as class was ending. All around her, classmates were putting away laptop computers. She had spent the past 30 minutes writing with intensity and passion. She had not wanted to stop writing even when I asked her multiple times. She was constantly showing classmates what she was discovering, teaching them. "I really like it," she added. "Some years, we do political essays," I responded. "Particularly when it is a presidential election year, like this year." She gave me a look like she was sucking on a lemon and shook her head at me, as if to say, that is soooo boring. Then, as a typical sixth grader, she said it anyway. "That sounds soooo boring. This is way better. I got to pick my own topic, learn more about it, and write about it," she said, and as she walked away to her next class, she added: "You should do this every year, Mr. H."
I wish every conversation with my sixth grade students about classroom research projects were this positive. Just as it is not easy to find the perfect ways as a teacher to engage young writers in the intricacies of research-based essay writing, it's not so easy for them as writers to crack the code of this genre of composition, never mind be excited about it.

A memory that gives me shivers

I still remember a monumental, and nearly insurmountable, research project that I was assigned in elementary school on an African country. It caused no end of frustration at the time and the memory of it still gives me shivers.

I don't even remember the country I researched nor do I recall what I discovered in my inquiry. I just remember not enjoying it, not at all, and I loved writing even then. I know now that I don't want to be that teacher. I know that I don't want my students to be that kind of researcher.

In the past few years, as the Common Core has pushed us all much deeper into research and expository/informational writing, I've been trying to keep reminding myself of some of the lessons I learned, and continue to re-learn through re-reading, from Christopher Lehman's great resource on classroom projects: Energize Research Reading & Writing.

Lehman reminds us that small scale research endeavors are more effective than huge research projects that overwhelm students. He suggests a simplified note-taking system, and he urges teachers to allow students to have choice in the matter of topics, within a larger frame.

I've taken this advice to heart.

Creating more opportunities for student choice

This year, I found great success with my students' ability to generate a topic of interest:

► I tapped into a new tool in Google Docs for gathering information;

► shortened the writing expectations to focus on structural development of essay;

► reinforced paraphrasing and quoting while arguing against the plagiarism of copy/paste; and

► added in "extension activities" that allow students to move beyond the essay itself to show understanding with media projects.

The result was a satisfying few weeks of research-based writing, and even my struggling writers made significant progress in writing longer pieces, not to mention learned how to effectively use the Internet for research (done in conjunction with lessons coordinated with our school librarian). The various extension activities have also provided my top-tier writers with an means to push themselves at every step of the way, meeting their needs, too.

After talking through what a research project is, and what it has been for them in the past, I explained how we would be using an environmental theme connection for the writing, but beyond that, the choice of a topic would be up to them.

I did provide a list of possible topics for those students who struggle with this part of the writing. In the end, the topics ranged from Hybrid Cars to Nuclear Power to Genetically Modified Foods to Air/Water Pollution to Endangered Animals.

As teacher, I also was writing my own essay a day or two in front of them (my topic was Loggerhead Turtles, which connected to the novel, , that two classes were in the midst of reading, so my essay had two functions: make visible my writing process and give them information about Loggerhead Turtles).

I annotated my draft files, printed them out to share with students, found and corrected mistakes, and talked through what I was doing, both my struggles and my success. I hoped that by sharing my thinking, it would make more visible the writing process, and for many students, it was helpful to watch their teacher writing research with them.

Many students kept my annotated essay files in front of them as they worked (although more than a few copied my writing style in the opening paragraph.)

Walking through one student's research

One particular student, whose work I want to share here as an example of our process, was interested in the elephant generally, and then they narrowed down the focus to the African Forest Elephant. This important "narrowing" came after our consultations and the realization that "elephant" as a topic was too broad to cover in a small essay.

In Google Docs, this student tapped into a relatively new built-in tool called Research. This allows writers to do searches and citations right in a Google Doc. I had all students set up a Research Document where they would take notes and grab information, while also keeping track of websites and citations. This is a separate document from the essay itself. By doing this, I was able to have a handle on how students were faring and who needed the most one-on-one assistance from me during class.

After gathering information, I did an extensive lesson around plagiarism, quoting and paraphrasing. I acknowledged the ease of which we can now copy and paste text from one source into another with technology, but I emphasized the need for a writer's own understanding, words and voice to come through, and that if you use information from research, you need to point to it with citations.

We used a very simple citation method, connecting the bibliography resources with a number in the text itself. The essay had to be at least 300 words long, cite two sources and develop from an introduction into a body of research and end with a closing.

All students had to create a "media companion" piece to their essay, as well, using Google Slides to bring images, maps, graphs and other items into their understanding of the topic that they chose to research.

At this point in the year, they are adept at Slides, so this is mostly independent work. This companion piece allows them to "tell the story" in a different way than an essay, and we talk about how media can inform a reader on a topic.

Finally, for students who finished the essay and the media piece and wanted to do more, the extension challenge was to create a video game project in Gamestar Mechanic, using the topic of their research for the basis of their game. This provided another connection to the research, and tapped into their skills developed earlier this year around video game design.

A few thoughts

The various threads of this unit - research, formal essay writing, media piece, game design - come together to provide students with a larger understanding of not just the writing process, but also a deeper connection to and understanding of the topic they chose to research.

If the unit was successful, they will remember not just what they did, but what they uncovered. And hopefully, those writing and research skills will translate into deeper analysis and writing in other subject areas this year and beyond.

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A MiddleWeb Blog "Do you always do this research project?" she asked, as class was ending. All around her, classmates were putting away laptop computers. She had spent the past 30 minutes writing with intensity and passion. She had not wanted to stop writing even when I asked her multiple times.

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Conducting Effective Internet Research | TWO WRITING TEACHERS

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Conducting Effective Internet Research | TWO WRITING TEACHERS

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article

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Then, I think of myself as a teacher, and I'm trying to remember -- I bet I could count on my hand the number of times that I did a "research project" with my students across the years because I think many times, many of us feel that it's so horrible.

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Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know | MindShift | KQED News

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Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know | MindShift | KQED News

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His article is responding to a larger, ongoing conversation about whether the ubiquity of Web search is good or bad for serious research. The false dichotomy short-circuits the real question: "What do students really need to know about online search to do it well?" As long as we're not talking about this question, we're essentially ignoring the subtleties of Web search rather than teaching students how to do it expertly. So it's not surprising that they don't know how to come up with quality results. Regardless of the vehicle--fee databases or free search engines--we owe it to our students to teach them to search well.

So what are the hallmarks of a good online search education?

SKILL-BUILDING CURRICULUM. Search competency is a form of literacy, like learning a language or subject. Like any literacy, it requires having discrete skills as well as accumulating experience in how and when to use them. But this kind of intuition can't be taught in a day or even in a unit - it has to be built up through exercise and with the guidance of instructors while students take on researching challenges. For example, during one search session, teachers can ask students to reflect on why they chose to click on one link over another. Another time, when using the Web together as a class, teachers can demonstrate how to look for a definition of an unfamiliar word. Thinking aloud when you search helps, as well.

A THOROUGH, MULTI-STEP APPROACH. Research is not a one-step process. It has distinct phases, each with its own requirements. The first stage is inquiry, the free exploration of a broad topic to discover an interesting avenue for further research, based on the student's curiosity. Web search, with its rich cross-linking and the simplicity of renewing a search with a single click, is ideally suited to this first open-ended stage. When students move on to a literature review, they seek the key points of authority on their topic, and pursue and identify the range of theories and perspectives on their subject. Bibliographies, blog posts, and various traditional and new sources help here. Finally, with evidence-gathering, students look for both primary- and secondary-source materials that build the evidence for new conclusions. The Web actually makes access to many --

but not all -- types of primary sources substantially easier than it's been in the past, and knowing which are available online and which must be sought in other collections is critical to students' success. For example, a high school student studying Mohandas Gandhi may do background reading in Wikipedia and discover that Gandhi's worldview was influenced by Leo Tolstoy; use scholarly secondary sources to identify key analyses of their acquaintance; and then delve into online or print books to read their actual correspondence to draw an independent conclusion. At each step of the way, what the Web has to offer changes subtly.

TOOLS FOR UNDERSTANDING SOURCES. Some educators take on this difficult topic, but it's often framed as a simple black-and-white approach: "These types of sources are good. These types of sources are bad." Such lessons often reject newer formats, such as blogs and wikis, and privilege older formats, such as books and newspaper articles. In truth, there are good and bad specimens of each, and each has its appropriate uses. What students need to be competent at is identifying the kind of source they're finding, decoding what types of evidence it can appropriately provide, and making an educated choice about whether it matches their task.

DEVELOPING THE SKILLS TO PREDICT, ASSESS, PROBLEM-SOLVE, AND ITERATE. It's important for students to ask themselves early on in their search, "When I type in these words, what do I expect to see in my results?" and then evaluate whether the results that appear match those expectations. Identifying problems or patterns in results is one of the most important skills educators can help students develop, along with evaluating credibility. When students understand that doing research requires more than a single search and a single result, they learn to leverage the information they find to construct tighter or deeper searches. Say a student learns that workers coming from other countries may send some of their earnings back to family members. An empowered searcher may look for information on [ immigrants send money home], and notice that the term remittances appears in many results. An unskilled searcher would skip over words he doesn't recognize know, but the educated student can confirm the definition of remittance, then do another search, [ remittances immigrants], which brings back more scholarly results.

TECHNICAL SKILLS FOR ADVANCED SEARCH. Knowing what tools and filters are available and how they work allows students to find what they seek, such as searching by color, domain, filetype, or date. Innovations in technology also provide opportunities to visualize data in new ways. But most fundamentally, good researchers remember that it takes a variety of sources to carry out scholarly research. They have the technical skills to access Web pages, but also books, journal articles, and people as they move through their research process.

Centuries ago, the teacher Socrates famously argued against the idea that the written word could be used to transmit knowledge. This has been disproved over the years, as authors have developed conventions for communicating through the written word and educators have effectively taught students to extract that knowledge and make it their own. To prepare our students for the future, it's time for another such transition in the way we educate. When we don't teach students how to manage their online research effectively, we create a self-perpetuating cycle of poor-quality results. To break that cycle, educators can engage students in an ongoing conversation about how to carry out excellent research online. In the long term, students with stronger critical thinking skills will be more effective at school, and in their lives.

What do you think it is most important for students to know about online research? Please share in the comments section below.
Have a question for The Savvy Searcher? Contact Tasha and check out the Search Education Team's resources. Read more from The Savvy Searcher.

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Building Good Search Skills: What Students Need to Know

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His article is responding to a larger, ongoing conversation about whether the ubiquity of Web search is good or bad for serious research. The false dichotomy short-circuits the real question: "What do students really need to know about online search to do it well?"

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ANTHILL nmemonic for research process.pdf

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ANTHILL nmemonic for research process.pdf

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Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies | Edutopia

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Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies | Edutopia

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Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.7: "Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos or maps) with other information in print and digital texts."

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.7: "Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words."

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.6: "Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text."

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.SL.1: "Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively."

National Council of Teachers of English Standards (NCTE)

Standard 1: Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts.

The Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning Corporation (McRel)

Standard 9: Uses viewing skills and strategies to interpret visual media.

On their own -- without explicit, intentional and systematic instruction -- students will not develop VL skills because the language for talking about images is so foreign. Ever heard kids debate the object salience and shot angles of a Ryan Gosling meme? To add to the instructional complexity, visuals come in an assortment of formats:

How to Teach Visual Literacy: Visual Thinking Routines

The VL strategies described in the sections that follow are simple to execute, but powerfully effective in helping students interpret images.

The think-aloud strategy -- typically used to model how adept readers make meaning from a text (demonstrated in the following short video) -- can be adapted for "reading" a visual artifact. After you model how to do it, have learners try this approach with a partner. Encourage elaborate responses. If you need a crash course in visual grammar before implementing this strategy in class, build your background knowledge with Discovering How Images Communicate.

Model Think-Aloud strategy from Derek Fernandez on Vimeo.
Visual Thinking Strategies
Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a specific approach to whole-class viewing and talking about art that primarily uses these questions:

What's going on in this picture?

What do you see that makes you say that?

What more can we find?

VTS encourages students to think beyond the literal by discussing multiple meanings, metaphors and symbols. Used with all ages -- elementary students (see video below) up to Harvard medical students -- implementation is simple. The New York Times' weekly VTS lessons are a good place to start.
Asking the 4WS
Inspired by Debbie Abilock's Noodletools exercises, I developed the 4WS activity to help students make observations, connections and inferences about an artist's agenda, and develop ideas about a work's significance:

In Five Card Flickr, you are dealt five random photos. To promote VL, have students follow these steps:

1. Jot down one word that they associate with each image.

2. Identify a song that comes to mind for one or more of the images.

3. Describe what all the images have in common.

4. Compare answers with classmates.

During a subsequent discussion, ask students to show what elements of the photo prompted their responses.
Image Analysis Worksheets
To promote analysis of key features specific to different formats, pick an appropriate tool from The National Archives:

Step-by-Step: Working with Images That Matter

The following lesson is partially based on Ann Watts Pailliotet's notion of deep viewing, a process that occurs in three phases:

Literal observation

Interpretation

Evaluation/application

Remember the 1957 photo of Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan? Eckford was one of the first African-American students to attend the newly desegregated Little Rock High School. In the photo, you see her entering the school grounds while a throng of white students jeer, most prominently Hazel Bryan, teeth barred, enraged. The photo was disseminated worldwide within a couple of days, uncorking new support for civil rights.

Here are the lesson procedures:
Literal Observation Phase
Give students a hard copy of the Eckford and Bryan photo. To help them internalize the image, tell the learners to study it for one minute before turning it over and doodling a version of it from memory. Next have students write what they literally observe (What is pictured? What type of language is used? How is space used?) into a shared Google Doc.
Interpretation Phase
Copy all the student-generated descriptions from the Google Doc, paste them into Tagxedo, and then project the resulting collaborative word cloud for the class to view. Invite students to interpret the word cloud while periodically re-examining the photo. ( What are the most important words? Which words do you have questions about? Describe your feelings about the photo. What other images are you reminded of, past or present? What messages are implicit and explicit? How did you analyze the photo? What do you understand now that you didn't before?) Then have students help you summarize the conversation.
Evaluation and Application Phase
Direct students to legibly write about the image's relevance on notecards. ( Does the implied purpose of the photo convey ideas that are important? How? Is the image biased? How so?) Take the postcards and pin them around the Eckford and Bryan photo to create an instant bulletin board.

To extend the lesson, show the following six-minute video that narrates how Hazel Bryan, as a twenty-year-old, apologized in person to Elizabeth Eckford. The video features a contemporary photo of both women, mature now, arm in arm, smiling in front of the once infamous Little Rock High School. ( Does the video alter your reactions to the original image? How? Will you approach other socially charged photos differently? Why?)

Final Frame

When reading was taught the traditional way, with printed texts, students accepted the authority of the author and received his or her message as a window on reality. In the 21st century, students need to respectfully question the author's authority, articulate what is represented and how, and infer what has been excluded and why.

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Common Core in Action: 10 Visual Literacy Strategies | Edutopia

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Do you wish your students could better understand and critique the images that saturate their waking life? That's the purpose of visual literacy (VL), to explicitly teach a collection of competencies that will help students think through, think about and think with pictures. Standards Support Visual Literacy Instruction

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Many educators view information inquiry as the foundation of all "traditional content areas." Rather than focusing on individual skills, many educators prefer to use a problem-solving or inquiry-based approach to the process of working with information and creating communication. Others focus on a subset of skills and call these study or research skills.

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Research Process Livebinder USC-SLIS 742 - LiveBinder

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Research Process Livebinder USC-SLIS 742 - LiveBinder

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Research Process Livebinder USC-SLIS 742

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The Simple Four is a problem-solving research model developed for South Carolina and works with the research and inquiry standard (Standard 6) in the 2007 ELA Academic Standards.

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Many educators view information inquiry as the foundation of all "traditional content areas." Rather than focusing on individual skills, many educators prefer to use a problem-solving or inquiry-based approach to the process of working with information and creating communication. Others focus on a subset of skills and call these study or research skills.