In Newport News, Virginia, teaching students to learn through inquiry in the library has been part of our DNA for ten years. In 2005, a group of district elementary, middle, and high school librarians met to determine the language and structure of the research model to use across all grade levels. Since that time, library media specialists in Newport News have been incorporating an inquiry approach to research and learning through authentic and engaging inquiry lessons and projects to support classroom learning. We use the inquiry process to explicitly teach students how to learn from information sources. Our process model includes these stages: Explore, Question, Collect and Credit, Understand, Communicate, and Reflect (see Figure 1). Although there have been occasions of deeper teacher collaboration over the years at our school, the majority of the inquiry learning has been focused in the library.

How Coaching for Inquiry Began….

In March of the 2014–2015 school year, Newport News Public Schools Supervisor of Library Media Services, Mary Keeling, approached several library media and reading specialists across the district to join her in a project through the Lilead Fellows Program, supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). According to Lilead, this program is “an 18-month long intensive professional development program that is designed to empower, enable, and equip school district library supervisors to think differently about their programs and to be effective and inspirational leaders for change in their districts.”

The premise of this project was to develop a framework to help teachers and librarians implement inquiry learning practices. We formed partnerships to capitalize on the librarians’ knowledge of inquiry and the reading specialists’ experience in coaching in order to support teachers in understanding that inquiry is a frame for students to learn from information and connect new knowledge to what they already know. The goal is to transform learning by shifting the focus from a right or wrong answer to the process of learning and investigating. Tools we are utilizing for this process include the Newport News Public Schools Inquiry Process model and coaching strategies described in Jim Knight’s book, Unmistakable Impact.

“Oh the Places You’ll Go!”

When meeting with fourth grade students for a second session, the students began by conversing with their inquiry circle about what they had been thinking and exploring since the last session. The purpose of this second session was for students to explore their topic in more depth and record sources on an Inquiry Log: “The Inquiry Log is a record of the active, evolving choices of usefulness that a student makes in the Explore…phase of the inquiry process” (Kuhlthau, Maniotes, and Caspari 2012, 44). Some students in the inquiry circle chose to work together in this exploration phase of the process and some chose to work independently. We wanted to encourage this flexibility to allow students who learn in different ways to work in a way that suited them. Students used online resources such as KidRex and PebbleGo as well as nonfiction books on their topic. We asked students to consider two to three how or why questions that they would like to explore further.

At this point, it was time to pass the baton to the teachers. We met with each grade level before or after school to share what we had learned from our pilot project with the fourth graders. We provided them revised lesson plans for the Exploration phase and a lesson plan for the Collect and Credit phase of the process, which included video links for reviewing keyword searching on the Internet. Students were able to access a variety of electronic resources via the Nelson Virtual Library webpage. We also pulled nonfiction books for teachers according to students’ interests determined after completing the Interest Survey. We created a note taking graphic organizer for the third grade students with a thank you box so they could credit their sources. Fourth and fifth grade students would use the inquiry log to credit their sources. After students concluded their research, they were given choices for how they might communicate their new understandings at our “Oh the Places You’ll Go!” Inquiry Expo. Students chose from a variety of products including PowerPoint presentations, posters, skits, dioramas, oral presentations with props, and three-dimensional displays.

Then the day came for our Inquiry Expo! We worked out a schedule for each grade level that allowed at least one other grade level to view their presentations. Students were encouraged to ask questions and learn about all the interests of their peers. Parents were invited as well as special guests from area museums and the public library. Museum and library staff provided information for students and parents about how to extend their learning over the summer. We provided a 3-2-1 Reflection sheet for the students to write down three things they learned, two things they wanted to learn more about, and one place they wanted to visit over the summer. Students were genuinely excited to share their learning with other students and adults in the building (see Figure 2). One of the things we heard most often from teachers was that we needed to do more of this! They saw how engaged their students were in the learning process when given choice about what they were learning. The culmination of all the students’ and teachers’ hard work brought us much joy and pride as we had an opportunity to share with others the trials and successes of this undertaking. Newport News Public Schools television production featured a clip of students during the Expo in their weekly news show, “This Just In.” (This clip can be seen from the link cited in the references.)

Year Two

After receiving positive feedback from teachers and students as the year concluded and reflecting on our successes and challenges over the summer, we decided to embark on a year-long inquiry adventure that would support teachers in implementing inquiry in their classrooms throughout the year. This began with a teacher training with all grade levels before the new school year began. We asked all teachers to design an Inquiry Station in their classrooms, which could include computers, books, artifacts, and opportunities for a library visit (see Figures 3 and 4). Students in grades two through five would add an inquiry section to their writer’s workshop notebook to record ideas they wanted to explore, questions, resources for information, and ideas for sharing their learning. We were concerned about adding one more thing to teachers’ already overloaded schedules, so we asked them to focus on only one step in our inquiry process each quarter. During the first quarter, students would focus on ideas they were interested in exploring further. For kindergarten and first grade students, this could be accomplished at a station with resources related to the content they were studying in class. We also encouraged second and third grade teachers to start with content topics and move to individual topics as the year progressed. We felt that fourth and fifth grade students should have more freedom to pursue their own interests beyond the stress and structure of their standards-based curriculum.

As we add another step in the inquiry process each quarter, our goal is to stretch our students’ thinking and help them develop their understandings at a deeper level. We are also talking with our teachers regularly to support them and celebrate their successes. We have been intrigued to see a wide variety of implementation styles across grade levels and even within a grade level as teachers make decisions about what meets their students’ learning needs and their own needs and ways of teaching. Our plans include another celebration of learning at the end of the year in our second annual Inquiry Expo!

Works Cited:

Knight, Jim. Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction. Corwin, 2011.

Kuhlthau, Carol C., Leslie K. Maniotes, and Ann K. Caspari. Guided Inquiry Design®: A Framework for Inquiry in Your School. Libraries Unlimited, 2012.

This Just In #285: Week of August 10, 2015. NNPS-TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks2RnYzusdI&list=PLTeK1eTSoidH4vSZV2hGY8vbba1sr-CTf (accessed December 17, 2015).