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[Merrilibrarian Participant]

Still on the matter of questions, have you read Q Tasks by Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan (ISBN 9781551383019)?  I was introduced to it by our previous PYP librarian and PYP coordinator, Sue McCluskey, who is now in Hong Kong.

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

I have been so busy that I have only just gotten back to this post.  I have given John’s critique about the age of the students some thought.  We did the activity this way because the teachers in grade three had been working on open ended (and  not) questions with the students in class.   They asked me if I could extend the work they had done in the library lesson and thus we developed this activity.  I found it quite successful and will see if I can find the sheets the students did and share them.  I will also ask the teachers to give feedback again as we are 4 months on.  It would be interesting to see how the students did in a subsequent units when developing their questions.

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

I am doing something similar with grade 3 (year 4).  They are going to be doing research on climate change.  They started in class with the teachers working on questions.  What makes an open ended question, what isn’t open ended.  They next had a session in which the following took place:

• as a whole group they discussed what they already knew (or thought they knew) about climate change
• They then divided into groups of 5 and worked on developing their own questions.  They were encouraged to develop open ended questions but we knew that there would be some (or many) which weren’t.  They recorded their questions on a large piece of paper.  As they worked they received encouragement and some feedback from the teachers.
• After 10-15 minutes students were asked to choose one question from their group of questions to present to the class and then did so.

This activity was about 30 minutes at which point we stopped.

In the next session, students will do the following:

• Reform their groups of 5, cut out the questions they wrote and put them under one of the 4 categories:  questions that are the hardest to answer; questions that are not important or relevant to the topic; questions that are easy to answer; and finally questions most commonly asked.  I wonder about the last category and since we haven’t done the activity yet we may remove it.
• Having categorized the questions, (and receiving feedback from us) each group will decide on the best research question from their”questions hardest to answer”.
• If any group would like to proceed with a question which is from the category “easy to answer”, we will assist them in reworking it.

At the end of the session, students will have a research question to start their investigation.

Admittedly students will not necessarily have developed the questions we might have wanted them to explore.  However, they will be invested in what interests them on the topic.  This project is very fluid at the moment since I have never worked with this age group, being a secondary teacher-librarian, and the teachers have never worked on developing research skills with this age group.  For example, I can see us assisting students as they start their research to rework their questions as they learn more about the topic.

This unit will also introduce students to information literacy skills such as note taking.  Our art teacher will be developing sketchnoting with the classes and the teachers will be working on identifying key information in texts so that students are able to start to summarize rather than to write full sentences in their notes.

 

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

I’ve never been given training as a supervisor.  Instead I came to the role of a supervisor in a round about way.  I am the teacher-librarian for the secondary library at my school.  When I started in the role 10 years ago, I developed a relationship with the head of I & S, Keely Rogers, and began working with her diploma students on research skills.  Soon, I was asked by Ms. Rogers, as EE co-ordinator to assist her with the Extended Essay, which led me to taking over as the co-ordinator two years later.  Three years ago we had an excess of students who wished to do a history EE and I was asked to supervise one student.  I have to say that my academic background is in modern languages in which I received an MA in French.  Thus, not only had I never supervised before but it was also not my subject area.  I received a lot of support from Ms. Rogers relating to the writing of a history EE but as far as being a supervisor, I had to call on my library training and my understanding of the importance of the inquiry process along with what I read in IB documents and other literature.  In 2015, I stumbled across Carol Kuhlthau and guided inquiry at the American Association of School Librarians conference in Columbus, Ohio, while taking a workshop on guided inquiry and the humanities.  Though my school has been an IB World school for over 15 years, only the PYP program is truly inquiry based and though guided inquiry was somewhat of a revelation, it was more a eureka moment when I realised that this was what I had been trying to do all along.

As the EE co-ordinator till two years ago, I developed a handbook for supervisors and had several sessions with the newcomers but unfortunately we seem to have little time in our schedule for training.  I did show supervisors the videos on supervisor-student meetings when the new guide came into effect but little more has taken place.  This is a regret.

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

I would like to ask a question about what you have said relating to the inquiry process and the Extended Essay research question.  I wondered whether you were suggesting that it is a requirement of the IBO that the student start the process of the EE with a research question or whether that was something that your school had required.  I assume that it is the latter.  For me as a supervisor, it has always been so exciting to see my students start with an idea and slowly develop their question through trial, error and inspiration.

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

Has he looked at In Thinking’s History site.  Here is the link:  https://www.thinkib.net/history.  The text books of Keely Rogers and Jo Thomas may also be useful.

[Merrilibrarian Participant]

My name is Susan Merrick.  I have been the upper school teacher-librarian at ACS Egham International School, in Egham, Surrey for the last 11 years.  I was intrigued this morning to find mention of FOSIL on a Twitter post and my investigations led me here.  I look forward to learning from the other members and hopefully, also contributing.

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