Hello from Connecticut!

Last March I shared about how I got started learning about GID and the beginning steps I was taking. You can find those posts here, here and here. In July 2016, I had the pleasure of attending the CISSL Institute with two amazing colleagues, kindergarten teacher Jessica Loffredo and 1st/2nd grade teacher Carole Sibiskie. During this school year, I have worked to add as much of our learning from the institute as possible. We understand that this is a process and it has been exciting to see the progress made! This post will be focusing on learning occurring mainly in the library. Our final post will be sharing about a collaborative Guided Inquiry unit involving science, art, technology and more!

 

Attending CISSL was an experience I will never forget. We had participants from around the United States as well as Europe. We represented all different grade levels and subjects. Perhaps my biggest takeaway was an emphasis on reflection. While I had read the GID books, Dr. Maniotes brought GID to life! We did each part of the process together and throughout, every teaching strategy, every tool, every piece that was important to supporting learners, was demonstrated and reflected upon. We ended the three days with many chart papers full of best practices that we could bring back and use with our students. Just as emotions are an important consideration throughout the information search process, they were important to our learning as well. As we reflected on these practices, the CISSL team reminded us over and over about how important reflection is for the students too as they go through each step.

 

For this school year, I set 3 goals for myself. First, I wanted to focus on trying out different ways to Open. Second, I wanted to take all my students, whether I was collaborating with a teacher or not, through Open, Immerse, Explore, Identify and Gather. Third, I wanted to begin collaborating more with teachers.

 

Goal 1: My students and I had a lot of fun and learned about some really interestingresources that support the Open step. For example, the incredible photographer Nic Bishop provides many amazing images to get kids thinking. These 2 pictures from Nic Bishop were my favorites. I also used Wonders from Wonderopolis.com and other video clips.

Photos from Nic Bishop’s books.

 

Goal 2: It has taken me all year, but each of my classes has experienced at least some part of
the Guided Inquiry Design Process, even the preschoolers! The preschool class did this in a very basic way. We read a story about a spring peeper and then listened to its call. We then read a nonfiction book about spring. They had lots of questions and sometimes I think they were mixing Groundhog Day with spring. But we went back to their questions and using either print books or PebbleGo, we answered them the best that we could.

Preschool questions about spring.

Preschoolers recording what they know about spring.

 

The Kindergarten classes learn about their community and world all year long. I framed a question for them about people who changed the world and then read a book about Gertrude Ederle, a fantastic swimmer who beat many men’s records, even swimming across the English Channel. I was even able to find a video about her! They were amazed! As we explored other people, I kept bringing back the question to our focus about how they had changed the world. This is not easy for Kindergarteners. They chose a person who they were interested in and I worked with them in small groups to record one fact that they had learned. Each student drew a picture of their learning and I helped them write their fact down. They have all learned about someone new!

 

First and second graders had been studying trees throughout the school year. They had already developed a lot of background knowledge. I had a thought that perhaps they might like to explore really famous trees from around the world. For my open, I found a Wonderopolis wonder about sequoias and redwoods – one with a car driving through the tree! They were amazed and had tons of questions about these special trees. Paying attention to their voices was important, so that is the direction we went in. Using Symbaloo to curate resources about sequoias and redwoods made Explore fun. These students jotted down ideas that they noticed in the videos and we developed questions together as a class. We took two library classes to Gather information, sometimes in small groups, sometimes independently. I was also able to have these students look back on what they had learned and select the one or two most important items. We are currently working in small groups to Create poems and hopefully will add movements to help express the words as we share them.

 

Goal 3: My goal was to collaborate more with the classroom teachers and I began to do this with the third and fourth grade classes. Each classes was beginning independent project work, so while there wasn’t a group Open or Immerse, I was, for the first time, able to find times in my schedule for the classes to come down to the library and Explore possible topic ideas using both print and digital resources. The classroom teachers loved being able to work together to help find resources and talk things over with each student. I was also able to talk with the teachers about the importance of Exploring BEFORE the students developed their questions. Oftentimes I had seen the questions being written first. This was a huge success! I believe the students were able to go deeper than in the past. Throughout their independent project work, I taught information literacy skills based on observations I was making. Many students were having difficulty searching for information, so we took time to learn about good search terms. We began to use evaluation tools that helped students know whether their resources were credible or not. While these lessons were done in library class, I shared them with the classroom teachers so that we were all using the same vocabulary. We emphasized using more than one resource so that if information didn’t make sense, students had a way to double check.

Selecting key words

Next steps: I think I made progress this year in all of these areas. I am looking forward to next year and being able to work with even more teachers. I am also looking forward to having students be more reflective at various stages of the process.

Finally, all three members of our GID team are also on our district’s NGSS Elementary Leadership team. As we began to learn about NGSS, we all looked at each other because so much lines up with GID. In NGSS, Open = Phenomena. We are excited to use GID as we begin to implement new science units. Another place where I noticed a lot of similarities was in A.J. Juliani and John Spencer’s LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student. Take a look when you have time!

This journey has been such a challenging and rewarding one! I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with such amazing people!

Jenny Lussier, Teacher Librarian K-4

Regional School District 13 in Connecticut

 

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