Inquiry about a SLASL Unit
by Joanna Schimizzi 7 years, 9 months agoWhat components of a unit provide scaffolds for successful literacy-based inquiry?
BEFORE you can answer this question, please brainstorm three questions that you feel are related to this over-arching question.
How is "success" measured in an inquiry unit?
Might a unit with a teacher-generated essential question inhibit students' personal inquiry?
What do I need to know about my students in order to create scaffolds?
How do I make this experience authentic?
How can I make text accessable to all students?
How can I incorporate more writing and reflection about learning in my class?
Where can I find resources for literacy-based inquiry?
1. Students will use a variety of texts as well as videos
2.
3. The teacher and library media specialist will work together to find texts and other resources.
Hi, Alaura!
Regarding your Question/Response #1, Nathan, Charles and I found that infographics and short videos in our text set really helped reinforce content from the anchor text. Also, we read our anchor text aloud in class (in sections) to make sure we could check for understanding, and we provided a tier-two vocabularly list that clarified words with multiple meanings. You will learn more about his in the upcoming webinars. Please let me know if you have questions, and I will try to help!
Lisa
What level of inquiry is the task?
How much scaffolding is needed?/What are the students showing up with?
What resources do you have?
I feel that our unit had a high level of inquiry and had the students designing a solution for an open-ended project.
Students were able to decode text well but needed more work with decoding inforgraphics and graphs.
We had a lot of good resources including the resources of our cohort.
What does "successful literacy-based inquiry" look like?
What are the key parts that make up "successful literacy-based inquiry"?
How many activities are required for the student to gain the skills needed to move on to the next step towards "successful literacy-based inquiry"
What experience do students already have creating their own questions?
By incorporating guided discussion of the text, the unit allows students to both see questioning in action and to begin to develop their own ability to question.
Where to start -finding the literacry piece or the overall goal of the unit
How to get students to break out of comfortzone of worksheets/packets and start asking meaningful questions and connect English Class, the library and science
How do you measure their questions(how do you grade it?)
1.Unit Essential Question. Goals for Using Inquiry
2.Suggested Lesson Breakdown/Pacing. Attachment of Student Work Examples. Teacher and Librarian Reflection on the Implementation of the Lesson
3.Student Learning Objectives. Summative Assessment Description and Rubric
What are the skill levels of my students? Reading levels? Writing abilities? Computer skills?
What are basic vocabulary/ prior knowledge needed for the unit?
How best to present this unit to reach all different learning styles?
Section on basic vocabulary/prior knowledge needed.
Accomodations section included in format.. Yay!
What is student prior knowledge?
For the Power Gride Unit see:
Part VIII: Prior Knowledge Needed
(This description includes both science content and literacy skills.)
This is one of those places where having someone on your team that is not an expert in that subject area can be a real asset. They can help the subject matter experts see the prior knowledge needed, easier than the expert. Lisa (our librarian) was very helpful with this. I find I can often over look an important piece of prior knowledge because of how comfortable I am with the topic. Great question.
How do I know if the inquiry is “on topic”?
How do I prevent students from getting lost in the research?
How much building up to level 4 inquiry is needed?
What do I do when students still don’t “get” the idea of developing their own inquiry or researching an inquiry that I’ve posed?
Is there a particular topic that literacy-based inquiry works best for?
What are the skills that I will need to make this work?
What are the skills that students will need to make this work?
I, unfortunately, did not find any answers to my questions... :(
These are great questions. I'm realizing that the lesson does not provide answers so here are a couple:
I think the amount of build up to level 4 inquiry depends on the student population and how much is inquiry a part of the school. We did a lot of work through-out the unit to try and get them there. For example, in the power grid they had discovery labs where they didn't know the answer, they had the resources infographic where they practiced their researching and reporting out skills, they had many assigments that were forcused on reading scientific text and graphs.
A few groups did get lost in the research of the final project and needed help focusing there work. This was done on a group to group basis. Lisa (The librarian of the group) also helped give the students tips of note taking and organization.
I don't think there is a particular topic that inquiry works best for but I think that a good essential questions that is open-ended and authentic really helps to drive the inquiry.
I really like the last two questions and the concrete scientist in me wants to provide a convienent list of facts. This will keep me thinking.
True level 4 inquiry is hard for teachers and students!
Hi, Jen!
I think a strength of the unit we developed was that it was so relevant and authentic. Students in New Hampshire listen to their parents talk about high energy rates, so we asked the students to bring in copies of their families' electric bill. The kids thought this was really interesting, because it directly impacted their families. I think this naturally leads to student inquiry being "on-topic."
: )
As far as helping students not get lost in the research, one strategy that Nathan and Charles used was to start every day with a "Question of the Day" to focus kids. They also did informal research checks to make sure students were working at an appropriate pace. Additionally, I (Library Media Specialist) would come back to the research process by offering very brief "mini-lessons" on locating sources, notetaking, etc., and made myself available to answer students' questions. The LMS is there to help with this.
Lisa
Hi, again!
I keep thinking about your first question: "How do I know if the inquiry is 'on topic'?" I love that the Unit Template includes scaffolds that help with this, i.e., IV: Standards Addressed, VI: Goals for Using Inquiry, VII: Summative Assessment Description & Rubric, IX: Student Learning Objectives. I kept coming back to these sections of the template to make sure that our own Essential Question would lead kids to personal inquiry that was authentic and relevant.
Lisa
What STEM literacy learning standards might we aim to address?
Do I have the reading materials that students will be able to access for this unit?
What am I expecting students to learn?
Have I taught the students the lab skills they need for this?
Is the anchor text accessible by all students?
Great question, Lisa really helped the students go through the anchor text. We also went back to the text multiple times during the lesson which helped struggling students understand the key points and get more out of the text.
If I could elaborate on Nathan's comment about my helping students "go through the anchor text", we were very deliberate in that we engaged in a short pre-reading activity with the kids wherein we pointed out all of the features of an informational text that help them better gain understanding of the information: headings & sub-headings, bold words, glossary, images/graphics (with captions), illustrations, date of publication, etc. We did all of this before we started reading the text. Then we read the text aloud with students (a page or so at a time) in order to check for understanding. Some students found that reading aloud wasn't really necessary, but it was evident that it help many of them better grasp content in the anchor text.
Hi, Jessica!
Regarding your question, "What am I expecting students to learn?", look at the section in the unit template labelled "IX: Student Learning Objectives". Nathan, Charlies and I didn't have much experience, at all, identifying and writing SLOs, but Joanna and Meghan will help you with this in an upcoming webinar. Good SLOs will help you be very clear about what you want students to learn. Identifying standards will help, too. If you look at our unit, you will see that we identified a lot of standards. Even though our unit is very involved, I think we went overbaord with standards. I like what I heard Joanna say yesterday -- that you will identify one content standard and one literacy standard. I encourage you to focus in this area.
: )
Lisa
How has the teacher modeled reading the text? Or how have I modeled reading the text?
What text am I using? What skills are needed to read this text? How do I answer questions about the text?
What is the desired outcome? What are the unit's essential questions?
How have my students developed skills this year? What has the pacing been? How can we further students skills?
Hi, Karen!
Regarding your first question: Even though our students were 11-12th graders in a Physics class, we were very deliberate in guiding the students through the anchor text. We did a pre-reading activity where we pointed out all of the features of an informational text that can help us better gain understanding of the information: headings & sub-headings, bold words, glossary, images/graphics (with captions), illustrations, date of publication, etc. We did all of this before we started reading the text. Then we read the text aloud with students (a page or so at a time) in order to check for understanding. Some students found that reading aloud wasn't really necessary, but it was evident that it help many of them better grasp content in the anchor text.
As far as your second question -- skills needed to read text -- I think working with the text complexity rubrics will help you determine this. Keeping your task in mind as you determine text complexity will help, too!
Lisa
Will the students have opportunities to create inquiries first or will their paths be predetermined? Think of a maze. Is there only one way from start to finish?
How can we build students up to level 4 inquiry? Should we start by creating the question and letting them come up with the procedure and solution? Or they create the question and procedure and we help them to find the solution?
I love the thoughts about what parts of inquiry to give them and what to let them use inquiry to develop. For me there is no one answer. I always look at what I want to teach and think where increasing the level of inquiry would enrich the assignment and experience for students. Sometimes the answer is to stick with level 1. Sometimes it makes sense to push the level to 3.
What skills do students need to practice and develop to allow for literacy based inquiry?
How do students know when they have met competency in completing the task?
How does a teacher introduce or connect to a students prior knowledge so that the inquiry based units are successful.?
Hi Beverly, some thoughts on your questions.
For your third question, my team has tried to create situations that allow for a wide variety of choice while staying on the topic of chioce. Some students will quickly know what they want to do with a topic, other students will require a converstation to help them make a connection between thier interests and the task assigned.
For your second question, the rubric can go a long way with this, my group has had success by brining up the rubric early and making references to it throughout the project, this seems to help them have a clear understanding of the goal as well as where they stand relative to the goal.
For you first question, I do not have a good answer, for my group we try and break down all the peices that are needed to be successful with the project, and build in opportunities for the students to work on those peices prior to the task.
What components of a unit provide scaffolds for successful literacy-based inquiry?
1. What will instructional strategies be used to accommodate multiple learning styles to ensure all learners have the adequate prior knowledge and/or skills?
2. What scaffolding tool(s) will help guide and shape the student's thinking so that they can apply it?
3. How can science and literacy lessons be integrated?
1.Tap into prior knowledge. Launch the learning in the classroom from the prior knowledge of students, and use this as a framework for future lessons. Ask students to share their own experiences, hunches, and ideas about the content or concept of the study and have them relate and connect it to their own lives.
2. Graphic organizers, pictures, and charts can all serve as scaffolding tools. Graphic organizers are very specific in that they help kids visually represent their ideas, organize information, and grasp concepts such as sequencing and cause and effect.
3. Reinforcing literacy-based skills in science by describing, explaining, inquiring, analyzing, debating, and engaging in dialogue about science concepts through reading, writing, and journaling activities. Hands-on science experiments.
Hi Ethel
Your responses are great.
Your question 3, we have found that literacy can be an excellent way to make the science relavent for the students. My group has found that the articles we have used has made the physics real, it has help give physics meaning and relavence to our students lives. Which really helps with engagement. After creating lessons with literacy integrated, I don't know why I haven't been doing this all along.