Making your best better - with Research!

Overview of the following topics:

• Inquiry: Partners in learning: Librarian and Teacher ; Librarian and Teacher with Students
• Databases - Integration and quick tips
• Avoiding Plagiarism: Tools for Teachers

Student Inquiry in the Research Process:  Developing Inquiry

The inquiry approach is focused on using and learning content as a means to develop information-processing and problem solving skills. 

This process student-centered approach where the teacher is the facilitator of learning allows students to actively construct knowledge through involvement and by asking questions.  

Best described in a recent article "We don't live in a mulitiple choice world: Inqury and the Common Core, LMC. Jan-Feb, 2012.

 "Inquiry is not a clean fill in the blank search for predetermined facts a teacher has predefined. Inquiry transfers responsibility into the hands of the students. Inquiry fosters student ownership of the process and student pride in the product.  It works!   In a well defined unit, the teacher serves as a learning concierge and academic guide, ensuring that learning goals are met, content vocabulary is understood, and assessment is authentic."

Collaboration allows the content teacher and the librarian teacher to focus on building a flexible learning environment with the goal of producing successful learners skilled in multiple literacies.

A very informative presentation that presents the ways in which the library is integral to inquiry learning in the classroom. The Information Literacy standards are explored and explained.

• Connect: observe, experience, connect a subject to self and previous knowledge
• Wonder: predict, develop questions and hypotheses
• Investigate: find and evaluate information to answer questions, test hypotheses
• Construct: draw conclusions, arrive at new understandings
• Express: apply understandings to a new context, share learning with others
• Reflect: examine one’s own learning and ask new questions (Stripling 2003, 8).