Embracing an Inquiry Stance
Course
Deep Reading during Inquiry [8:28]
- Learn how deep readings skills brings students beyond comprehension
- Learn ways to incorporate deep reading skills into each phase of inquiry
- Learn about the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum
And so I've been doing reading myself about deeper level reading, and some of those skills are embedded in a continuum that I worked on and developed for New York state. It's called the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum. And it was a result of the school library system association in New York wanting to provide this is a PK-12 continuum of information fluency skills. Now, the website is in the chat, and I'm not recommending that you use this now. It is entirely too comprehensive, if you really look at the whole continuum and print it out. It's around 500 pages, but there are many slices and one of the things that you may find very interesting is Section 4: Priority Skills for every grade level. So if you're trying to figure out the inquiry skills and reading skills and technology skills that you might want to teach to your grade 2 students, that's a really good place to start. And one other feature that I think you will like are Section 5 and Section 6 are graphic organizers for all the priority skills. And that's a really good thing to combine with your teaching and if you use the format of direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, the graphic organizers are perfect for independent practice because you can see students thinking as they work through performing the skill. I wanted you to know about it because the skills that you are concerned about teaching, you're going to find them in there, in a comprehensive way.
What are the deep reading skills that we want students to use at every phase of inquiry? And you can see, for example, in Wonder, challenge the ideas and text, not just copy the information, but we're asking students to ask questions about it, like, what if? or what would someone else say? or why? And to extend the ideas in text by challenging them. Essentially during Investigate, we're asking students to read interactively. And I think you probably use the same technique that I did when I was teaching students to research and investigate and that was to use two-column notetaking, where the right hand column are the reactions, the responses, the pushbacks, the questions. Students can capture them at the same time, they captured the information.
So let's see how all these deep reading skills actually work. And I thought we just do a very simple simulation to see what it feels like. Here's a primary source that I actually drew from that ABC-CLIO American History database. It's something I didn't actually know existed before, and that was Confederate bread riots. And it's an illustration of that. The mothers, daughters, and wives of Confederate soldiers became quite desperate for food and they essentially rioted and demanded bread and food. So this primary source could be used at a number of phases of inquiry and we could teach a deep reading skill at each phase to help students. If we used, for example, this primary source at Connect, what deep reading skill might we teach? And I would personally teach students to identify their own feelings and assumptions and personal biases.
So that's a wonderful way to start a research project and let students understand—you're going to react with your own feelings when you encounter a source like that. So figure out, how are you reacting and how then does that color the rest of the information that you gather. In Wonder, I would certainly teach students if I used this during Wonder, I would teach students to challenge the ideas that they see there. Why? Why do they have to riot? What was going on? What if there weren't…what if the law enforcement…what if…there are so many questions that students could ask based on this one source. In Investigate, I certainly would ask them to respond to the text with their own reactions and questions and the impact of their own reactions on how they interpret the information. Construct, I would hope they would take multiple perspectives. And I would teach them to do that. So figure out what are the different perspectives on what was happening in the South for women on the homefront and then find other sources and compare those perspectives. Were the perspectives the same of women in the North as women in the South? And finally, Express. I would hope that they would create products that have layers of meaning that go deeper than just showing a picture, but actually dive in to the in-depth meaning.
So this is an example of how I would use a deep reading skills during inquiry with wonderful resources that we can gather. And you can see how those skills are important at every phase of the inquiry, depending on the resources you use, on the teaching that you want to do. I do want to make the point that we can get overwhelmed as librarians, for teaching skills, and we don't want to do that. Part of what you would do is decide one important skill that you will teach for this inquiry project—one, maybe two. But you're not teaching skills all throughout the phases of inquiry. You're scaffolding. You're enabling students to get the work done, supporting them, guiding them, and then teaching in-depth one or two skills. And that way, the students have a chance to really practice the skill and they don't get overwhelmed by the volume of skills, nor do your teachers get overwhelmed.
Deep reading allows students to go beyond basic comprehension and actually think about what they have read and draw their own conclusions from it.
Empire State Information Fluency Continuum, Priority Skills Brochure, https://slsa-nys.libguides.com/ifc/brochure
Reflect on Barbara's discussion of deep reading skills and how they allow children to understand beyond comprehension. Using the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (found in the Resources above), choose 2-3 deep reading skills that apply to the grade levels you teach. Using page 9 in the Course Packet, brainstorm how you can implement these skills with your teachers? How about with your students?
MLA Citation
Stripling, Barbara K. "Embracing an Inquiry Stance: Implementing Deep Reading Skills." School Library Connection, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2266989?learningModuleId=2266980&topicCenterId=0.
Entry ID: 2267500
In this lesson, Barbara Stripling showed us how deep reading skills can be incorporated at each phase of inquiry to help students with their research projects.
Using the Deep Reading Skills handout found in the Resources above, reflect on what deep reading skills you think your students would benefit from the most. How will you incorporate those into the different phases of inquiry and how will you teach those skills? What types of primary sources could you use to help teach these skills? Start to plan a skill for each phase of inquiry and see where that leads.
MLA Citation
Stripling, Barbara K. "Embracing an Inquiry Stance: Deep Reading Skills during Inquiry." School Library Connection, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2266989?learningModuleId=2266980&topicCenterId=0.
Entry ID: 2267501
Additional Resources
MLA Citation
Stripling, Barbara K. "Embracing an Inquiry Stance. Deep Reading during Inquiry [8:28]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2266989?learningModuleId=2266980&topicCenterId=0.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2266989?learningModuleId=2266980&topicCenterId=0
Entry ID: 2266989