Saturday,+February+14,+2009+Hard+at+work

=Our Inquiry Process=

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PLC WEST Agnese Coffman, Cowell Elementary Lynne Lopez-Crowley, Johnson Elementary Denise Mongeau, Goldrick Elementary Chris Winslow, Munroe Elementary

Our Professional Learning Community first met in September at the DPS Book Fair library meeting. We formed a group to meet the unique challenges of being a teacher librarian in a large elementary school with a "fixed" library schedule. We shared what we had in common and found we really had a need for "powerburst" lessons.We define these as lessons that can be taught in a 45 minute time frame possibly over several consecutive weeks Our other commonalities included a high percentage of English Language Learners, the need to manage book checkout and circulation without the help of an aide, low test scores, and mimimal financial resources. After our organizational meeting, we met in November, December, January, February and April. We struggled at first to define our purpose. After we received copies of //Guided Inquiry, Learning in the 21st Century// by Carol Kuhlthau, Leskie K. Maniotes, and Ann K. Caspari we began to get a focus. One of our first important realizations was that we needed to step back from our teacher librarian roles and become the learners in a guided inquiry process. We looked at page 2 of the book and found an excellent definition of guided inquiry.

//"Inquiry is an approach to learning whereby students find and use a variety of sources of information and ideas to increase their understanding of a problem, topic, or issue. It requires more of them than simply answering questions or getting a right answer. It espouses investigation, exploration, search, quest, research, pursuit and study.Inquiry does not stand alone; it engages, interests, and challenges students to connect their world with the curriculum. Although it is often thought of as an individual pursuit, it is enhanced by the involvement with a community of learners, each learning from the other in social interaction."//

Within that paragraph we found our purpose, to become a community of learners. As teacher librarians we face challenges that are different from classroom teachers all the while accepting our commitment to meaningful student learning. When we confront a problem we may not have anyone in our buildings who understand what it is like to teach all grade levels in such short time bursts, and keep up a vigorous book circulation program. Although we do our best to educate our school colleagues about the highly specialized training and experience we have with information literacy, we may be viewed as stereotypical librarians who sit behind a desk and shush people so it is always quiet in the library. Once we had a chance to vent our frustrations as librarians (what teacher group doesn't do that from time to time?) we got down to the business of determining what we could collectively create and share through a wikispace. Agnese got us going in October with the creation of our PLC West wikispace. We made the commitment to contribute "powerburst" lessons. At our November meeting we discussed an excerpt from Ellin Oliver Keene's latest book, //To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension.// : Because we are commited to our individual school improvement plans, we felt it was important to be current on reading comprehension strategies. We read about and discussed At our January meeting, we got down to the technological tricks we needed to learn to make our wiki page useful not only to us but all teacher librarians in DPS. We practiced adding text and pictures to our page. As our comfort level was collectively raised we started posting new items to the wiki in January. By February we needed an extra push to move the wiki along. We spent a Saturday conversing, critiquing, and trying out Bubbleshare, picture editing and Animoto. We also had a conference call with //Guided Inquiry// author Leslie Maniotes. By the end of the day we all discovered some new tools to use in the classroom and on our wikipage. By this point, we each knew what we needed to prepare for the wiki. We worked independently in March crafting lesson plans and useful templates for teaching standards. Slide shows from our libraries started appearing and we began to use the information we were sharing. At our final meeting in April 2 just before the share fair we cleaned up the wikipage and assigned what remained to be done. It's hard to believe that it is time for the Share Fair already.We agree it has been a productive experience, we have a central place to post our work, new technology tricks and a new comraderie. Denise Mongeau PLC Facilitator April 8, 2009
 * Monitoring meaning
 * Using relevant prior knowledge
 * Asking questions
 * Making inferences
 * Evoking images
 * Determining the importance of text
 * Synthesizing information after reading

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