Hi Kay,
What an interesting and thought provoking piece. Several things struck me as I was reading.
The first thing is that I wish my MSc had covered such useful and practical topics as these. I have long thought that the idea of Teacher Librarians as a stand alone qualification is something I’d like to pursue and something I’d really like to see developed in Library Schools here in the UK. Before I worked in schools I have previously had Librarian incarnations in the commercial, academic and public sectors and so I am very much learning as I go along.
I have been following FOSIL closely and am currently trying to get my leadership team to allow me time to develop a school wide approach to Inquiry based on FOSIL. Your article is perfectly timed, I also need to carry out a radical weed of our non-fiction curriculum resource and had been thinking about building the Inquiry program first, looking at the units of study through which the program will delivered and buying resources that support both elements. I think this is the idea you’re discussing, unless I’ve misunderstood.
I battle with the idea of curating online topic based resources for my students. We have just decided not to subscribe to a popular online encyclopaedia because we thought that it was more important to teach students to source material according to CRAAP rather than knowing the database provided reliable information and therefore failing to look beyond it. With this same thought in mind, I think I prefer to open the discussion with students about source selection and if necessary make it part of the assessment criteria rather than making choices for them. I understand that purchases of physical resources are often limited by money and therefore free online material can fill a gap but generally I remain opposed to too much guidance.
I think the opportunity to share good resources, on this forum, could be really valuable especially to those of us with less school specific training or experience.
Thanks again for making me think,
Ruth