Just a reminder that Thursday is the deadline for the plants research makeover for an upcoming issue of Nudging Toward Inquiry.  We’d love your input!

Here’s what we’re working on:

Sometimes, getting teachers to revolutionize their vision of research projects isn’t practical or feasible, but a small change (with a big impact!) is. What are the small tweaks that can lead to big changes in student learning and turn around what David Loertscher calls “bird units”? That’s what we seek to find out in each of the ten 2009-2010 issues of School Monthly.  This month, we turn our attention to plant research.

THE SCENARIO

A teacher in an urban environment wants to take her kids, who have limited life experience with plants or the natural world, to a community garden and eventually hopes to get a grant so that the school can build its own garden on school grounds.

To prepare for this visit, she would like to introduce her student to several vegetables and their life cycle.  She has selected vegetables that grow in different ways (e.g., corn, brussel sprouts, root vegetables like beets or carrots, climbing vegetables like tomatoes or beans, etc.)

She would like to schedule time in the media center for kids to look up these vegetables and draw them at each phase of their life cycle.

THE QUESTION

You agree with the teacher’s perception that your urban students’ view of the natural world and gardening is limited.  How can you deepen this assignment to promote more inquiry, critical thinking, or problem solving?  (For example, you could add lesson components, introduce social learning strategies, show how technology could deepen the lesson, add a scenario or framework, etc.)

You can submit your ideas using this Google Form.

PS - For secondary folks, we’re still looking for War Report tweaks.  Submit them using this form.

Our editor, Deb Levitov, emailed me from the SLJ Summit last weekend.  She affirmed something I had seen bubbling up in the Twittersphere: that Bernie Trilling’s presentation had posed some key questions to consider.

Deb’s looking for your thoughts on these questions for an upcoming issue.  Can you help? Leave a comment here, and we’ll get in touch if we can use your ideas in the magazine!

1. Consider a child entering school as a kindergartener this year. What will the world look like in 20 years, when that student is an adult? What skills will be needed?

2. When you think back to the peak learning experience in your life, what word best describes that experience?

3.  In the future what will learning look like?

4.  How will instruction change to facilitate that learning?

5.  What important roles will the school librarian play in meeting those teaching and learning changes?

 We’re looking forward to hearing from you.  If you’d rather send in your ideas via email, you can send them to slmamblog [at] gmail [dot] com and I’ll get them to Deb.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (featuring the voices of George Clooney and Meryl Streep, among others) will be released into movie theatres at Thanksgiving … now is  a good time for us to check our shelves and make sure we’ve got a copy or two of the Roald Dahl book. 

Watch the trailer here.