https://players.brightcove.net/2566261579001/HyuWsfFhb_default/index.html?videoId=6265736827001

About

Embracing inquiry as a teaching and learning stance means looking beyond the mid-year research project. An inquiry stance is a frame of mind characterized by curiosity, questioning, openness to new ideas, and a willingness to engage in pursuing answers and new understandings. Inquiry-as-a-stance has the potential to motivate and empower students to take charge of their own learning, both within and outside of school. The question for teachers and librarians is: How do we foster an inquiry stance in our students through all the learning experiences we design, both for academic learning and for reading and learning on their own?

Transcript

I'll just offer a couple of final thoughts. First of all, I want to thank you for engaging with me. I can't wait to read all of your comments that you have done in the various things that we've tried. I appreciate the willingness to have an open mindedness about inquiry and to engage with me in this learning process. I'm still learning about inquiry. I'm still pushing myself to think of new things, new ways that I need to understand inquiry; new ways that I think we can do as librarians, not with the idea that we always have to do a whole inquiry unit. That's not it. It's more a stance. It's more skills that we teach maybe during story hour, when we ask kids to predict what the story is going to be about by looking at the cover, that's an inquiry skill. And we don't have to only teach those, only engage kids in inquiry through full inquiry units. I was talking with another group about the power of Wonder, and I said, just put a Wonder Wall up in your library and we all went, yeah, that's a wonderful way to encourage inquiry, is just let them roam through their own curiosities on their own and share it with others.

There was an interesting question that just came through around what's the difference between deep reading and close reading? Which I think you might have some interesting thoughts on. Yes, close reading in my interpretation of it is understanding very carefully what the text itself says. So you read and reread and you absolutely understand what is being communicated. When I talk about deep reading, I talk about going a step beyond close reading. So you absolutely understand, you understand the explicit and implicit meanings of the text. But deep reading means you're pulling yourself into it and you're asking your own questions based on what you read or your own biases, recognizing what those are and how your interpretation depends and is formed by those biases. So deep reading, actually, you have to do close reading, I think, to get the substance, the deepness of someone else's thoughts. But the deep reading is what the reader himself contributes.