Honoring students' identities and learning journeys means trusting their instincts on what they want to learn, but fostering individualized learning can be difficult when instructors are required to preplan the outcomes of their lessons and units. What if you could give students the freedom to research topics of their choice, support their research effectively, and meet district goals? In this course, Elizabeth Rush shared insights on how to structure individualized programs for the library or classroom that combine the teaching of research skills with the opportunity to cultivate student agency in their research questions and learning.
Transcript
Guess what? You need to use excellent resources, that's all there is to it. OK. So you know, they're going to have the internet and you can't rely on that. But you do need to teach them evaluation of resources. And when you provide excellent resources to them, you know, they'll be able to see what's not so good. And you can use these resources to help you either place their topic in history or understand what's happening in our world today. Lots of kids are into health and wellness, you know, like athletes. They're wanting to train for a Spartan race or something like that. Right so you want these really great resources to help them. You can almost look at any of these databases right now and a kid might be attracted to any of those topics. And just by entering into them, you could back into a topic. OK, so I'm not going to do that because I'm going to have trouble with it. OK, but that's how you can use your databases to help a student pick topics or to explore or to place it in places like deep in the heart of curriculum. That's all there is to that. Don't be afraid. You've got to try this, ok? The person who never tries, we'll never know. Right? Go with the flow, roll with it. All those other cliches and you know, so what it might be a little chaotic. I don't know. You can get a handle on it, but you'll be glad and your students will be glad that you did. So there you go. It's good stuff, I hope you do it. I hope you try.
Elizabeth Barrera Rush is a library specialist for a school district in Texas. She received her BBA from St. Mary's University in San Antonio and her MSIS from the University of Texas, Austin. Elizabeth has spent over 20 years serving elementary and middle school students in private, charter, and public school libraries as well as the San Antonio Public Library. She is author of Bringing Genius Hour to Your Library: Implementing a Schoolwide Passion Project Program (Libraries Unlimited, 2018) and The Efficient Library: Ten Simple Changes that Save You Time and Improve Library Service (Libraries Unlimited, 2020). She has written articles for Teacher Librarian and School Library Connection. She has been an advocate for libraries speaking in a congressional panel in Washington, D.C., and a consultant for the National Assessment for Educational Progress in writing, and presented webinars and workshops for AASL, INFOhio, and ABC-CLIO. She is a member of TLA, and an active member of ALA's Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures Division as well as co-vice chair of the Cataloging Norms Interest Group and Member of the ALA/AIA Building Award Committee, and a proud ALA Spectrum Champion for the Office of Diversity, Literacy & Outreach.
Select Citation Style:
MLA Citation
Rush, Elizabeth Barrera. "Student-Selected Research Projects. Closing [1:42]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, August 2021, schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/2267002?learningModuleId=2267489&topicCenterId=2247903.
Chicago Citation
Rush, Elizabeth Barrera. "Student-Selected Research Projects. Closing [1:42]." School Library Connection video. August 2021. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/2267002?learningModuleId=2267489&topicCenterId=2247903.
APA Citation
Rush, E. B. (2021, August). Student-selected research projects. Closing [1:42] [Video]. School Library Connection. https://schoollibraryconnection.com/content/course/2267002?learningModuleId=2267489&topicCenterId=2247903
