Growing into INQUIRY

1. Growing into INQUIRY BIG IDEAS: • Standards and the roles of SLMS in INQUIRY based learning • Definition of INQUIRY learning • Regional Information Fluency Curricula and INQUIRY • Information to knowledge journey • Research rationale • New thinking for new outcomes

2. AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner • The Standards describe how learners use skills, resources, and tools to: • INQUIRE, think critically, and gain knowledge; • Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge; • Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society; • Pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

3. AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner • Cannot be implemented without collaboration • Outcome driven • Knowledge based • Define an information to knowledge journey • Posit communication to share knowledge • Sustain kids as thinkers • Lead to understanding • Go beyond the information construct to the knowledge construct • SLMC dynamic agent of learning • Posit creation of knowledge products in the context of an intellectual support system

4. National Education Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation • Creativity and Innovation • Communication and Collaboration • Research and Information Fluency • Critical thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making • Digital Citizenship • Technology Operations and Concepts • “Leadership in technology is best illustrated by ISTE's creation of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), first published in 1998.Now, we're defining what students need to know and be able to do with technology to learn effectively and live productively in a rapidly changing digital world.”—Don Knezek, ISTE CEO, 2007NETS for Students was unveiled at NECC 2007.

5. 21st Century Skills • Inventive thinking • Self-direction • Curiosity • Creativity • Risk Taking • Managing complexity • North Central Regional Educational Laboratory • Engaged Learning • Student responsibility • Energized, motivated • Strategic, apply, connect knowledge • Collaborative • Challenging • Performance based • Generative • Empathetic

6. DEFINING INQUIRY • Inquiry is a process of learning or a way of knowing. It is “an investigative process that engages students in answering questions, solving real world problems, confronting issues, or exploring personal interests.” Pappas and Teppe. • INQUIRY embraces an educational philosophy responding directly to national emphasis on high standards, brain research, 21st Century Skills, and productive pedagogy. Students are involved in a cycle of questioning, investigating, verifying and generating. Harada and Yoshina

7. DEFINING INQUIRY • “For students, this method of learning ends the listen-to-learn paradigm of the classroom and gives them a real and authentic goal and challenges to overcome. For the teacher, inquiry-based education ends their paradigm of talking to teach and recasts them in the role of a colleague and mentor engaged in the same quest as the younger learners.” University of Indiana – www.ncsa.uiuc.edu

8. INQUIRY PROCESS • CONNECT • FOCUS • INVESTIGATE • CREATE/CONSTRUCT • EXPRESS • REFLECT • Information Fluency Curricula • Capital Region and QUESTAR III BOCES SLS

9. Information Fluency Curricula- Information problem solving shifts to INQUIRY Inquiry implies attitude of questioning Inquiry implies reflecting with cognition Inquiry means start with a question Inquiry means open investigation Inquiry is student centered Goal is new understanding in the student Answers involve messy, recursive building of ideas Open-ended, leads to future questions, experiences

10. Information Fluency Curriculum Basics • Learner connects to prior knowledge, questions, constructs meaning from text, evaluates process and products, draws original conclusions, synthesizes, creates, expresses and shares new understanding. • “I care. I count. I can.”

11. 21st Century Skills • Partnerships for 21st • Century Skills • 21st Century Skills are incorporated for information fluency: information evaluation and management; collaboration; strategic use of information systems, databases, communication technologies; production and sharing of quality products.

12. Promise of INQUIRY dynamics • Engage with kids to build deep knowledge, • to develop questions, to communicate and share new knowledge, to sustain kids as thinking, knowledgeable, intelligent people, to apply technology and information skills for deep knowledge and understanding. • Ross Todd- February 2008

13. Inquiry based learning“Keep your eye on the ball!” • Information to knowledge journey-Ross Todd • Informational base – • Exchange information, transfer, locate, access, evaluate • Transformational base- • New knowledge, meaning constructed • Formational base- • Knowledge produced, disseminated with critical engagement

14. Ross Todd –author of We Boost Achievementstates: Transformational learning foundations include information literacy and technological literacy. Formational student achievement embraces knowledge creation, knowledge use, knowledge production, knowledge dissemination, knowledge values, and reading literacy.

15. “DO what works. Do not do what doesn’t work.” Ross Todd • Task driven, teacher directed, static research leads to low motivation, TRANSFER of facts, sometimes plagiarism, short term factual information without connections, depth, or new understanding. • INQUIRY outcomes: meaning, relevance, engagement, depth, internalization of inquiry process skills, understanding, originality, TRANSFORMATION of text, formative knowledge in the content areas.

16. Correlates to improved student performance in INQUIRY Model: • Connections to PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE, affective area, QUESTIONING, FOCUS, personal meaning and relevance. • Products that incorporate original conclusions, thinking, transformation of text vs. transfer of text, deep understanding, mastery of content knowledge, reading and writing as tools. • Collaboration of teacher and school library media specialist, social interaction with teachers and peers, substantive conversation. • Ongoing assessment for improvement, reflection, intervention at critical points for target skill development, instruction in information literacy. • The construction of meaning, synthesis of new understandings, and sharing of products that demonstrate new learning.

17. RESEARCH Rationale • Mastery of content knowledge through application of inflexible knowledge • Construction of meaning from text • Awareness and use of prior knowledge • Clarification of misconceptions • Development of responses to BIG IDEAS of compelling content, sufficient to support investigation

18. RESEARCH Rationale • Mastery of the vocabulary of the content area • Attention to building background knowledge • Moving learners beyond rote and recall • Central importance of questions framed by the learner • Shift to learner centered dynamics • Organization around essential questions, and a team effort to reinforce new learning with essential questions

19. RESEARCH Rationale • Development of assessment tools to convey expectations to learners improve performance • Foundation in brain research • Tapping into the innate curiosity of children and their positive response to hands on, relevant experiences • Building on well planned investigations using diverse and plentiful information resources

20. RESEARCH Rationale • Using reading and writing as a tool boosts literacy • Transparent thinking, reflection, and problem solving • Internalization of process skills • Enhanced affective experience of children in a learning environment with emotion as a key to motivation and success

21. Right brain check… • Daniel Pink • and the conceptual age • Design • Story • Symphony • Empathy • Play • Meaning • Wiggins and McTighe • Understanding by Design • Explanation • Interpretation • Application • Perspective • Empathy • Self-knowledge

22. Teacher, SLMS and Learners • Intellectual support system • Interventions • Critical engagement • Social engagement • Collaborations • Shared products • Creativity • Communication • Substantive conversation • Formative assessment

23. Inquiry-based curriculum and research on LEARNERS: Children learn by being actively engaged and reflecting on that experience Children learn by building on what they already know Children develop higher order thinking through guidance at critical points Children develop in a sequence of stages Children have different ways of learning Children learn through social interaction with others Children are motivated by problem solving and inquiry Mastery of content knowledge occurs when it is applied, manipulated, and original meaning is constructed

24. Think of kids as… • EXPLORERS • COGNITIVE APPRENTICES • DISCOVERERS • INNOVATORS • QUESTIONERS • PRODUCERS OF KNOWLEDGE • THINKERS

25. Redirecting-- • Student negotiation • Essential questions as unifying base • Compelling content • Backward design • Engagement • Knowledge building community • Interactive instruction • Emotion

26. Specifically… • Transform not transfer • Original not plagiarized • No scoop and spit • No pour and store • No drill and kill • Draw original conclusions. • Share new understanding. • Construct meaning • “Education is not the filling of a pail, • but the lighting of a fire.” W.B. Yeats

27. Vision drives practice… • Growing into inquiry • Growing into literacy • Growing into new roles • Growing into technology • Growing into new dispositions • Growing into our own potential

28. “BEYOND INFORMATION” Capital Region BOCES SLS and Questar III BOCES SLS Regional Information Fluency Curriculum • To move beyond information with its familiar boundaries to the NEW WORLD of inquiry in the digital age.