Teacher Librarian Feature Article

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Volume 31, Number 2, December 2003

Get Organized! Get Thinking! Get Going!

Cheryl Dinnin offers advice for teacher-librarians to help students be better organized, and improve their own organizational skills as well.

During cooperatively planned lessons of a research project, students can learn to demonstrate what teacher-librarians recognize as vital in a world of information – that when one doesn’t know the answer, one knows where and how to find it. But this knowledge of the research process isn’t innate. It takes time to teach the students the steps and the skills involved in an inquiry and research process.

The inquiry and research process

The inquiry and research process involves four stages:

• preparing for research;
• accessing resources;
• processing information; and
• transferring learning.

Each of these stages involves four basic steps, which can be broken down further into specific, grade-appropriate skills. All stages should involve the teaching of meta-skills such as reasoning, organizing, communicating and applying knowledge (Ontario School Library Association, 1999, p. 9).

Just as one would explicitly teach students how to use a piece of software, step by step, it is important to explicitly teach the discrete skills of the four stages of the inquiry and research process. In addition, students need and deserve to learn and review these skills throughout any research project to develop competency at the skills and to internalize the process as a whole.

Cooperative planning for student success

There are many inquiry and research models from which to choose, such as Information studies, Information power, and the Big 6. Whichever model you choose, be sure to follow all the stages of the model. When planning collaboratively with teachers, follow the model in planning the research project. Identify each stage of the process and record the teacher-directed lessons and student tasks that will form that stage. Once classroom or subject teachers become familiar with the research model taught and used by the teacher-librarian, they will become more efficient in their planning and more comfortable using the language of the research process. This smooth planning helps all partners become better organized.

Some classroom or subject teachers will want the bulk of a curriculum unit covered through a major research project and its presentation. This requires much planning, prior to the start of the project, during the project as a means of checking and verifying that things are going the way we intended them to go, and after the project is completed. The plan needs to be reviewed to make any changes for future implementation or suggestions for improvement.

It is important to book enough time for the planned partnership in order to take the students thoroughly through the skills and to do justice to the project. If there is insufficient time to cover the necessary lessons as planned, it may be difficult to find more time later in the schedule.
Sometimes, teachers may want to plan a quick research project that is only one small part of a larger curriculum unit. Whether a full-length research project or a short one, there must be time for the teacher-librarian and the classroom or subject teacher to teach and model the skills the students are expected to learn in the library.

Planning cooperatively

You will need to book a planning session with the classroom or subject teacher(s) and may want to include others such as special education or learning support teachers for special-needs students.

• Look at the subject curriculum unit to pull out overall and specific expectations that lend themselves to an inquiry and research process. For example, expectations such as “Identify ways in which the natural environment shaped the cultures of various early civilizations” or “Determine the advantages and disadvantages of using wind and moving water as energy sources” lend themselves easily to research.
• Identify the general and specific expectations from the research process model you use. These will be the skills that the students will have to know and use in order to complete the research and to demonstrate learning and understanding. These may be specific expectations such as “use a table of contents or index to select information appropriate to the task,” “articulate questions” or “make conclusions based on completed research.”
• Tailor the expectations to each partnership and the students involved. What might work well for one class doesn’t guarantee success with a different set of students.
• Define a culminating task – one that will incorporate the skills and findings in a way that demonstrates student understanding. Try to design a task that requires the use of higher order thinking, instead of simple regurgitation of facts found. This may take the form of role-playing, a debate, a comparison chart or a pamphlet – some form of presentation that shows how the student has applied his research findings in a meaningful way.
• Determine how the students will present their research. This often involves the use of technology and the district’s information and communications technologies documents may guide the planning at this point.
• Break the whole project into smaller sub-tasks that the students will complete on their way to the culminating task. Define each one specifically for the benefit of the teachers and for the students.
• Establish criteria and a method of evaluation for each of these sub-tasks. This ensures that students know at the beginning what will be evaluated and how it will be done. The rubric for evaluation should be designed with input from the classroom or subject teacher and from the students. The students should know which skills are being evaluated and by which teacher and according to which criteria. The students, after some years of practice at using and interpreting rubrics, are even able to design their own. Always ensure that both the process and product are evaluated, as well as behaviors shown throughout the project.
• Plan activities that engage the students in the learning throughout the research project. This will likely be a combination of explicit instruction in a particular skill or technology, hands-on learning time, independent and group work and time for self-evaluation.

Locally developed resources may also be available to assist in this planning process. In my district, teacher-librarians are fortunate to have a class set of excellent student resources called On your own (written in secondary and elementary versions by our own teacher-librarians) that teach the skills needed for independent research, all following the four-stage format of the Ontario School Library Association curriculum document.

When all this planning is complete, it’s time to take the students through the steps to “Get Organized! Get Thinking! Get Going!”

Get organized! – Stage 1: Preparing for research

Stage 1: Preparing for Research is absolutely critical as the foundation for the project. If the students are not well prepared and very clear about the expectations of the project, their final product will be less than satisfactory. The four steps for this first stage are:

• define information needs using a variety of strategies;
• explore information using a variety of group activities;
• identify varied ways of organizing information; and
• relate prior knowledge to information tasks.

The teacher-librarian may not be involved in every aspect of every stage of the process, so the cooperative help from the classroom teacher is essential for student success. During research projects, the classroom or subject teacher is instrumental in this stage, particularly if the teacher-librarian is part-time in the school library. The step called explore information using a variety of group activities brings students to a level playing field before they begin independent or group research. We have all had students with a vast background of information on the topic at hand because of vacation trips to science museums or historic sites while others in the class have little background knowledge. The exploring activities that teachers offer can help bring the students to a common level.

Before research begins in the library, the classroom teacher may take the students on a field trip to gather data, show videos with pre-and post-viewing activities, offer the students hands-on experiments and develop several charts about their results. All this helps to prepare the students for research by giving them opportunities to “explore information using a variety of group activities” before they come to the library for the other activities that are part of Stage 1.

Next, we begin a chart-paper outline of the project by listing all the things they have done as part of Stage 1: Preparing for Research. These include all activities that happened in their classroom. All students should be able to contribute to this list because they have all been involved in the research to date.

At this point, the classroom teacher and the teacher-librarian should define the culminating task, giving out an information sheet with the requirements, if appropriate, or printing them on chart paper for everyone’s reference. This is a time for introducing new key vocabulary, defining all terms, answering questions for clarification, as well as showing examples of finished products, if suitable.

Usually, the task is complex enough that breaking it down into sub-tasks is necessary for the students to clearly understand the expectations. Often one of the sub-tasks requires that the students formulate questions that will drive their independent or group research. By examining the unit expectations verbatim, the teacher-librarian and classroom teacher can cooperatively help the students create questions that address those expectations. Students are frequently more successful finding relevant information if they have a specific question to answer rather than working from a curriculum expectation that is not in the form of a question. For example, in a Social Studies unit on “Early Civilizations,” most students have greater success finding the answer to questions such as “What natural materials from their environment did the Maya use to build their homes? Why?” “From what aspects of the environment did their homes protect them?”

Take time to teach the students how to formulate questions that require a higher level of thinking than straight regurgitation of the printed words on a page. The students will have defined all the unit-specific terms they need to know: environment, aspect, shelter, climate, natural, impact, etc. Examine questions that require the use of low-level thinking and higher-level thinking by looking at the words that begin the questions. Questions beginning with “what” or “who” usually require low-level thinking, while those beginning with words such as “why” or “compare” require higher-level thinking. Some activities on the design of questions would be suitable here, whether in small groups or cooperatively as a class. One Stage 1 sub-task, for example, may be to formulate five questions to drive the research. These may be evaluated by the level of thinking required, according to the rubric already created cooperatively with the students.

Another useful activity that can be part of Stage 1’s “relate prior knowledge to information tasks” is a K-W-L chart. This is a three-column chart labeled “What I Know”, “What I Want to Know” and “What I Learned” and can be done cooperatively, particularly with younger children, independently or in small groups. Once the last column is completed, it, too, could be evaluated as evidence of learning.

What cannot be finished in one period in the library may be left for a subsequent class. But be sure to begin the next class by asking the students “What stage of the research process are we working on today?” Make sure the chart is visible so they can see where they are in the research process. These chart-paper lists are not only an important visual reference for the students and the teachers throughout the project, but they are also valuable for the next year’s cooperative planning. In addition, the discussion about the stages, steps and skills promotes the use of correct and appropriate vocabulary and critical thinking as the students prepare for the day’s work.

Consider teaching students how to use graphic organizers, both as tools to organize research findings and for the presentation of the student’s new understandings and knowledge. Explicitly teach students the use of various graphic organizers and the purposes of each, so that they can make decisions about how to organize their own work later. Students need to decide, at this point, how to organize their information, whether in jot notes, on sticky notes or on chart-paper, done cooperatively, etc.

Get organized! – Stage 2: Accessing resources

This involves teaching students how to get their hands on the information they will need, whether in books, through the Internet, or from a guest speaker in the library. The four steps in this stage are:

• locate a variety of resources from a variety of sources;
• select information appropriate to needs using a variety of strategies;
• gather information from resources using internal organizers and conventions of texts; and
• collaborate with others to share findings and ideas.

In this stage, it is critical to teach students the skills and terminology need to deconstruct nonfiction texts. For instance, compare the use of an index versus the table of contents, the dictionary versus an encyclopedia, print resources versus Internet and the OPAC. Copyright dates help determine currency. Students can be taught to determine fact versus opinion and how to look for bias. All of these factors must be considered by students when doing quality research.
Additionally, it is important for students to use the correct terminology in all subject areas, including information studies, from the earliest grade. This will require teaching them the specific parts of nonfiction texts: table of contents, index, glossary, title page, verso, sidebar, illustrations, photographs, captions, etc.

By demonstrating and practicing the skills of skimming, scanning and browsing, students learn to tell the difference and to know when to use each skill.

Ask students to define the words ‘relevant,’ ‘appropriate’ and ‘suitable’ with respect to information, and continually refer them to the questions driving their particular research task. This helps students ensure that they are recording relevant information.

A subtask for older students can be to prepare a draft bibliography on their research topic. Done as a table or matrix, it helps them identify many possible resources, and helps them find the information again later in the research process. This also alerts students that a change in focus may be necessary, if too few resources are available.

Get organized! – Stage 3: Processing information

This stage can be the most time-consuming. It involves these four steps:

• analyze and evaluate information using a variety of strategies;
• test ideas to adjust research and problem-solving strategies;
• sort information using a variety of organizers and formats; and
• synthesize findings and formulate conclusions.

Require students to record their information on a jot note organizer – one designed specifically for a particular research task or a generic one with space for possible headings and bibliographic information from the source. By using a different sheet for each source, information can be quickly verified if notes are unclear. The teacher-librarian and the classroom teacher can model skimming and scanning the information source, thinking aloud about the question(s) to be answered and deciding on appropriate keywords to use as headings for the notes. Questions themselves can also be used as headings. Once students understand that information can be organized in many ways—using different headings—they are able to decide for themselves what they prefer to use.

Indenting is another way of organizing jot notes. Show students how to indent additional or explanatory jot notes below the main jot. This helps students be better organized, and allows the teacher and teacher-librarian to see at a glance that they are organizing their thinking.

An important step in Stage 3 is the student’s self-evaluation. This involves checking for “holes” in the research – questions that haven’t been answered or notes that are “fuzzy.” Teach students that this is the time to “adjust the research” to be sure that every idea is clear and relevant and research is complete.

Get organized! – Stage 4: Transferring information

At this stage, the culminating task—whether role-playing, an electronically produced brochure, a 3-D model or diorama with oral explanation—is presented with understanding. The four steps in this stage are:

• revise product appropriate to purpose, audience and format;
• present research findings in a variety of forms for a variety of audiences;
• reflect on and evaluate product and process; and
• transfer new information skills and knowledge to solve problems and make decisions.

Venn diagrams are a type of graphic organizer that can be made part of the final presentation requirement for students, especially if the cooperative timeline is short. If the main task is to compare or contrast two or three things (like wind and moving water as efficient forms of energy), why not have the students create a Venn diagram? The key points can be recorded in jot notes inside the circles of the diagram and, in some cases, can demonstrate student understanding better than written reports. For example, one primary Social Studies unit in Ontario involves comparing urban and rural communities. The students were taught how and why to use three particular graphic organizers: T-charts, Venn diagrams and PMI (Plus-Minus-Interesting) charts but as a final task, they produced a Venn diagram showing the similarities and differences in urban and rural communities. Those diagrams showed us which students had a clear understanding of the two types of communities.

Following a lesson in the library on using Boolean logic to do a search on the OPAC about “planets,” Grade 5 students surprised their classroom teacher by spontaneously relating Boolean logic to the Venn diagrams they were constructing in a mathematics lesson. Now that was a skill transfer!

Consider requiring students to present their research findings in a second way for a different audience. This is another way of getting them to apply their thinking and new knowledge and understanding.

Evaluation is an important part of Stage 4. This involves teacher evaluation, self-evaluation and peer evaluation done as a reflection on the whole project. Again, students need explicit instruction in how to critically evaluate their own work—both process and product—and that of their peers, using appropriate vocabulary. This is particularly important in evaluating group members’ contributions, as group work is a strategy they will use throughout their educational experience. Teacher evaluations follow the rubric created with the students at Stage 1.

Get thinking!

Teachers have demonstrated their ability to be flexible in many ways and cooperative planning is another time they show this. In planning sessions, teacher-librarians can make suggestions for modifying or augmenting a research assignment that the teacher has used in the past, in order to encourage the use of higher-level thinking on the part of the students. Sometimes the basic plan is satisfactory but if it can be extended to allow for an application of the research in a meaningful way with the student’s own conclusions, student learning will be improved as well.

Occasionally, a classroom teacher may want the teacher-librarian to teach specific skills relating to only one stage of the research process, to enhance work being done in the classroom. This is more often true if a cooperatively planned research project has already been done with that teacher, through the whole four-stage process, because the teacher then starts to think in terms of the four stages. A teacher may ask the teacher-librarian to teach a set of skills related to Stage 2: “Accessing Resources” before the students use the Internet for a homework assignment. In this case, the use of Boolean operators could be taught in a brief series of very directed, hands-on lessons. While the teacher-librarian would work with that class for only a small part of the research process, over the course of the school year, there should be other opportunities to teach them skills from the other stages. This way, the students come to know where the skills fit into the process as a whole.

Get going!

It is vital for a successful research experience that all participants be organized. Students will quickly respond to your level of organization so model the organization you expect from them. Give your students valuable and fundamental skills for gathering, organizing and presenting information on any topic – skills they will use through life. Now, get going on an organized, well-planned research experience for your students!

References:

Koechlin, C., & Zwaan, S. (2001). Info tasks for successful learning: Basic skills in reading, writing and research. Markham, ON: Pembroke.
---. (1997). Information power pack: Intermediate skillsbook. Markham, ON: Pembroke.
---. (1997). Information power pack: Junior skillsbook. Markham, ON: Pembroke.
---. (1997). Teaching tools for the information age. Markham, ON: Pembroke.
On your own 2000. (2000). London, ON: Thames Valley District School Board.
On your own: Guided steps. (2002). London, ON: Thames Valley District School Board.
Ontario School Library Association. (1999). Information studies Kindergarten to Grade 12. Toronto: OSLA.

Author bio: A teacher-librarian with two schools in Ontario’s Thames Valley District School District, Cheryl Dinnin is on the editorial board of the journal of the Ontario School Library Association, a former OSLA councilor and a frequent conference workshop presenter. E-mail Cheryl for more information.