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Hello and welcome.
If I am not mistaken, S1 – S3 equates to Year 7 – Year 9 in England (and Grade 6 – Grade 8 in America).
The existing structure of 6 lessons lends itself well to framing induction through FOSIL, although 50 minutes would be preferable to 20 minutes for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the skills / skill sets that are currently taught, while important, are logically part of a larger learning process (see Figure 1 below), and broadening out induction to meaningfully include representative and developmentally-appropriate skills / skill sets from all the stages in this learning process in 20-minute lessons will be difficult, though not impossible.
Figure 1: FOSIL Inquiry Cycle Skill Sets (click on image to enlarge and download as high resolution PNG image from here)
Secondly, engaging students in an inquiry is an effective way to both induct them into the inquiry learning process, and for you to teach and for them to learn / practise the skills that enable the process, which include media and information literacy skills.
Thirdly, by embedding these skills within an inquiry learning process, which is necessary for independent learning, you create an opportunity to collaborate with classroom colleagues on identifying how best to make the induction / inquiry relevant to subject area learning. Three examples serve to illustrate our efforts to meaningfully relate induction to subject area learning:
- Our Year 9 FOSIL Inquiry Skills Project (S3 / Grade 8) is very effective and has served to inform our work both higher up and lower down the school (see also the associated LibGuide: F3 Inquiry Skills – this particular LibGuide is for a highly-condensed version of the Project necessitated by COVID-19 restrictions, so 1 x 50-minute lesson rather than the normal 5 x 50-minute lessons, which we are intending to return to in September)
- Our Year 7 English Inquiry – Science Fictional Writing (S1 / Grade 6) is a 5/6-lesson inquiry that is part of a 12-week unit in English, and could be extracted and adapted for another context (see also the associated LibGuide: F1 English – Futuristic Writing)
- Our Year 12 FOSIL Investigation (S6 / Grade 11) was designed under severe time constraints, but has been so successful that it is being redesigned for 5 x 90-minute lessons (see also the associated LibGuide: F6 FOSIL investigation)
Hopefully this gives you something useful to work with.
Darryl
Thank you so much for sharing this, Ruth, and hoping for the desired outcome.
I include the OECD Learning Compass for reference below:
Regarding your question about Anticipation and Connect, I would say that Anticipation encompasses Connect and Wonder, which is clear from the FOSIL Inquiry Cycle Skill Sets (see below):
Also, bearing in mind that inquiry is only one of the standards in the Empire State Information Fluency Continuum (see below), the complementarity becomes quite striking (download as PDF):
Following our presentation – Thoughtful REACTionS to The Day: Framing Inquiry-based Learning, which may be downloaded from here – at Real-World Learning Live!, we have two further opportunities for thoughtful reactions to The Day.
Firstly, Richard Addis, Founder and Editor of The Day, has asked us the following questions for a LinkedIn article:
- What is inquiry-based learning?
- Why is it so important?
- What is the FOSIL Group’s theory on how we develop young people’s thinking skills?
- What is your view on how we teach young people to think more critically about world issues?
- How can teachers apply inquiry-based learning when using The Day in the classroom?
Barbara has drafted our answers and will post them in due course.
Secondly, I have drafted the following questions to put to Richard for a FOSIL Group Forum post:
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Question 1
Our working definition of inquiry is a stance of wonder and puzzlement that gives rise to a dynamic process of coming to know and understand the world and ourselves in it as the basis for responsible participation in community.
This dynamic process of making sense of the world from information about the world is a learning process.
The IFLA School Library Guidelines frame learning through inquiry and advocate for the effective development of media and information literacy (MIL) skills within a chosen model of the inquiry learning process.
Question: How would you define news in relation media?
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Question 2
The Day is both “news to open minds” and explanation of the news.
More broadly, this creates an apparent tension between factuality of reporting and commentary, in that commentary heightens awareness of editorial point of view, bias, propaganda, etc. An interesting example of this is CNN’s Brianna Keilar claiming that Fox is not news no matter what it calls itself, which, according to Media Bias/Fact Check (which itself is by no means infallible), might be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
CNN according to Media Bias/Fact Check and Fox News according to Media Bias/Fact Check
Question: How does The Day manage this apparent tension?
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Question 3
More specifically, there is an apparent tension between telling children what to think and provoking/ encouraging/ developing independent thought. This likely accounts for recent instructional design decisions relating to the format of The Day that make the inquiry learning process visually explicit, and so encourage an inquiry-based pedagogical approach.
Question: What was the motivation for these instructional design changes, and what are the desired outcomes, which may be subtly different?
The workshop also touches on the inquiry learning skill sets that undergird the inquiry process, which I include here for convenience (click to enlarge or download as high-resolution PNG):
The skills that make up these skill sets may be downloaded from here.
For the purposes of the workshop, I adapted the lesson and extended unit outlines above (click to enlarge or download as high-resolution PNG):
The lesson and extended unit outlines need to be approached through curriculum lenses, which for the selected article are (click to enlarge or download as high-resolution PNG):
We are very pleased to be previewing the new format of The Day, and discuss some of the instructional design features (click to enlarge or download as high-resolution PNG):
Finally, a discussion of possible application of the REACTS Taxonomy to an inquiry-based lesson or series of lessons (click to enlarge or download as high-resolution PNG):
A ‘final’ consideration is the link between school libraries/ librarians and student achievement. A helpful article is Why school librarians matter: What years of research tell us, by Keith Curry Lance and Debra E. Kachel (March 26, 2018) in Phi Delta Kappan.
However, references to this article are often misleading.
The positive correlation demonstrated since 1992 by the library impact studies is between “high-quality library programs and student achievement”. While Lance and Kachel state that “the mere presence of a librarian is associated with better student outcomes,” which extend beyond student achievement, this is still in the context of the school library program (i.e., what the school librarian does).
The context of the school library impact studies is specifically American, although they are instructive. As Lance (2019, p. 50) writes in “Last Lecture” Remarks about the Current Status and Future of School Librarianship and School Library Research (in Symposium of the Greats: Wisdom from the Past & A Glimpse into the Future of School Libraries, edited by David V. Loertscher and Blanche Woolls):
Ironically, while most of us understand the profound limits of standards–based testing—not to mention the devastating toll it has taken on U.S. public education—it is a simple fact that a quarter–century of impact studies would not, and could not, have happened had it not been for the ubiquity of such testing and the high stakes put on their results. Except for their ubiquity, the data necessary for the research would not have existed. Except for the high stakes, nobody would have cared enough to bother funding research like ours.
This, in my opinion, is the real value of the IFLA Guidelines, which is that they apply the lessons of the school library impact studies to an international research context stretching back over 60 years.
The key point, then, is that the distinguishing features of a school library as outlined in the IFLA Guidelines – professional and paraprofessional staffing levels appropriate for the size of the school and its unique needs, delivering a high-quality pedagogical program based around the core instructional activities, supported by targeted high-quality diverse collections, and subject to an explicit policy and plan for ongoing growth and development – are the optimal conditions for the school library to produce said positive correlations with student achievement, and related desirable outcomes.
It is fine if we – individually and/ or collectively – do not yet have all of this, but it is vital to our success that we be clear about what we need to be striving for.
