Getting Started with Inquiry
Course
Inquiry as a Lone Ranger Librarian [5:44]
There are many ways to covertly collaborate with the classroom teachers and one of the first things you can do is to determine what content is actually being covered in the classroom.
I have many librarians who actually did a poll every month and they asked the classroom teachers, "What are you going to be working on this month in Science or Social Studies?" so that when she taught her skills or when she taught a lesson in the library, she would try to coordinate with the same content area and to prove her value at it.
An example of this would be sixth grade. Let's give you two examples. In sixth grade, they often do ancient Egypt, ancient civilizations, ancient Rome, ancient Greece, and one librarian asked me, "What can I do to accompany that?" So I suggested that she read the poem by Jack Prelutsky, The Mummy. And it's a really cool poem, if you don't know. It is one page long, couple of stanzas, and the essential question that we have is, "How did Jack Prelutsky demonstrate his knowledge of ancient Egypt in this poem?"
So they read this poem, The Mummy. Now, let's think about it. If you get a chance to look this up, it's got I believe 27 SAT words in it. And in order to answer your essential question, how did Jack Prelutsky demonstrate his ancient Egypt knowledge? They will have to read that poem a number of times, probably four or five times. And then they start brainstorming and connecting to class, what do we learn about ancient Egypt? And so, suddenly you have been doing a close reading activity using high vocabulary, a vocabulary even of the discipline, but high level SAT vocabulary also. Or if they really don't know the answer you can look up a little bit, they can then investigate through a database about ancient Egypt and find out what Jack Prelutsky knew that enabled him to write that poem.
So, that's like a mini inquiry. We would call these mini inquiries - things that could be done in one library time and you're teaching a skill, the students are learning and you're using the content that they're also manipulating in the classroom.
So how about this one? Also in sixth grade, they often do middle ages or medieval times. One librarian came up with this wonderful essential question and she had a little mini inquiry and it was, "How would your behavior have to change if you were living in the age of chivalry?" Now, think about that. They may know what chivalry is, they may not. What do they have to investigate? The first thing they're going to say is, "What's chivalry?" I said, "Well, let's go investigate that."
So then they go and then they compare and they contrast and they synthesize that and say, "You know what? I would have to do X, Y, Z differently." Or you could have them the next week in the library prepare a guide to behavior, chivalrous behavior. So, they've created a knowledge product. And what have you done? You have covertly collaborated with the classroom. So, we encourage you to ask your teachers what are they studying and come up with those mini inquiries and chances are you're doing this already. So, just tag to it an essential question so that they begin to do the short-term research assignments or they begin to realize that coming to the library is often to answer questions.
Here's another way I can covertly collaborate is turn read alouds [sic] into research. You probably do read alouds quite often with your scheduled or fixed classes. After you read aloud a book you ask them, "What else do you want to know on this subject?" That requires you to know that the author and the subject of the book and what the author really is saying about that subject and get them to model brainstorming questions and then you find answers and you report it out.
So that's turning read alouds into research. Or you could precede your read alouds with an essential question just to get active listeners listen to the story to see if you can answer the question, why? What is migration or why, if you're a bird, where would you want to fly south to? Where would you want to fly? Grab your essential question. If you had a superpower, what would it be? So, suddenly they're listening to the book to answer your question there more intently.
Actually, research shows it increases their attentiveness or their focus. So somehow just move beyond mere modeling fluency. The old paradigm was that librarians would read to people just to merely model. But, I want to ask myself a question, "How can I get my students to think about this book that I am reading?" What do you wonder about next? What do you want to know? I used to read a book on poaching to the students and first of all they would say, "What's poaching?" I said, "Let's try to answer that at the end of the book." Then we would brainstorm, what else do you want to know about poaching? And unbelievable, the questions that would come up and we would turn that into our mini inquiry while I actually extended more than one class time. So that's just a different way that you can embrace inquiry even if you're a lone ranger librarian.
Mini-inquiries are a way to inject inquiry-based instruction into teaching scenarios and schedules that may not permit collaborative teaching time with classroom teachers. One strategy is to conduct a close reading and discussion of subject-oriented poetry, such as Jack Prelutsky's poem, "The Mummy." Another strategy is teaching one or two lesson inquiry experiences aligned with classroom content but not necessarily as co-taught activities. Finally, turning read-alouds into research through questioning promotes inquiry-level thinking and discussion.
Two of the strategies in this lesson pertain to the application of critical thinking to shorter selections, namely poetry and read-alouds. Make a list of 3–4 familiar poems and/or read-alouds that you currently share with students. For each, develop a few Essential Questions for asking when reading these texts. See the lesson for examples.
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MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Getting Started with Inquiry: Inquiry via Readalouds & Poetry." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988320?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=0.
Entry ID: 2122840
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Jaeger, Paige. "Getting Started with Inquiry. Inquiry as a Lone Ranger Librarian [5:44]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988320?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=0.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1988320?learningModuleId=1988313&topicCenterId=0
Entry ID: 1988320