I have always had a soft spot for the Caldecott-winning picture book biography Snowflake Bentley, about a farmer who spent his life trying to capture the unique structures of snowflakes, eventually taking thousands of amazingly close-up images.

I was talking with another librarian, who was about to read the book to second graders in her fixed schedule.  She has been working on how to transform her work to be more inquiry-oriented, but first, she wanted to read Snowflake Bentley and make snowflakes.

We chatted for a while before realizing that Snowflake Bentley is really a book about inquiry.  Bentley’s guiding question was, “How can I get snowflakes to last long enough to share them with others?” His life is an example of iterative design as he tinkered to find just the right combination of camera, microscopic lens, temperature, and patience.Bentley was driven by his passion for snowflakes.  And no matter how much he learned or how much he shared, there was always something new that he could add.

So, instead of “doing snow” and them moving into inquiry, we ended up using Snowflake Bentley to open the conversation about passions and our desire to learn more about our passions.  “What’s your snowflake?” we asked kids.  “What is the thing that you care about so much that you’d want to keep learning and sharing what you’ve learned?”

Now, my colleague is sifting through their passions and matching the passion up with a resource.  It will be a quick project that asks them not to report what they already know, but to build on what they know by discovering new information.  She’ll offer students a K-W-L chart or similar organizer (she’s still musing about what that will look like).

Rather than investing a lot of time making a product, oral sharing will be a time-efficient method that will allow her move her students on to the next experience.

Sometimes, we spend too much time making stuff in fixed schedule, and that time could be better spent brushing up on the cognitive skills. (Mike Schmoker calls this syndrome  “Crayola Curriculum.”)

It’s not a huge project, but it’s a stepping stone. Not all inquiry has to be a huge, multi-day project. It can be several short bursts of energy.  In fact, in his wonderful book on science inquiry, Science Notebooking in Elementary Classrooms, Michael Klentschy points out that science inquiry projects do not need to necessarily proceed through each step. Some projects can focus on a micro-step.

Which task will have more lasting value for the students? Cutting a snowflake, or having one’s passion validated and pursuing it further?

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It’s vacation time at Aunt Kristin’s, and that means more regular visits from the 2-1/2 and 4-1/2 year-old inquirers in the family.  It’s amazing to watch how they make and test predictions, try out cause and effect (vacuum cleaner and towels standing by!), and connect new ideas to old ones.  Inquiry is live and well in these preschoolers (well, one is a preschooler, and the other just thinks she is).

I want to see their curiosity, love of learning, and joy of discovery on the faces of my elementary students as well. Funnily enough, many of the things I keep at home for them to play with are the same things I keep at school: a little writing center, Tinkertoys, manipulatives, magnets, and books. 

Good thing that over at the Teacher Librarian Ning, the online book club for Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action is underway! Even if you haven’t ordered the book, you’ll find the before-we-even-started-reading conversations fascinating.  Beth synthesized the plans for the club in this post to the Ning, republished here:

Kristin and I had a long talk last week about the structure for the group, taking into account everyone’s comments. We also thought about the fact that this is an international group with varying schedules - plus this is a time of year when many people take vacations, etc.

Given all of those considerations, we decided it is best to lean heavily on asynchronous discussions for the basic structure. This is so everyone can participate as their schedules permit. Kristin set up a discussion forum for each chapter of the book. So, after you read a chapter, you can reflect on it and post your reflection in that chapter’s discussion. Of course, you can also respond to others’ posts and so on, or just lurk in the discussions of a certain chapter once in a while if you prefer.

With over 40 of us participating, I can see that this might get very active. (At least we hope so!) If the structure gets too confusing, we can adjust as the club goes on. Comments and suggestions on how we are organizing this are always welcome!

Kristin and I discussed the end of January as a possible time to plan on wrapping up. We might go later (as we still have people joining!), and people may need to finish earlier. Hopefully, there are enough of us to sustain engaging discussions with each other for that period of time.

Aside from the chapter discussions, Kristin started a wiki - there is a great connections chart there that you can add yourself to. Also, we’ve added some pages for some “Summative” activities that we hope to work on later in the club. One of the great parts of inquiry that you can see right from the beginning of the book is that it often results in some “work getting done” in the world. We would like to see this book group produce something that does work in the world. Many of us will take the learning that happens here into schools and classrooms, which is great. I am also already getting the feeling that we might be able to put together some ideas for professionals who weren’t able to participate in our group, sharing some of what we have done. Check out the wiki for more ideas.

We are going to try to do some synchronous things too - be they google waves, Elluminate sessions, tweet chats, the sky is the limit if it can help us engage and think and create together. Please pitch in your ideas. I think we will try to start synchronous elements in early January. Members have also floated out ideas for voicethreads and other creations - please go ahead and start these, and link them back here. There are enough of us that we should be able to get several people to participate in any ideas you come up with!

I am also trying to get some guests to virtually visit our group - more on this after I nail plans down.

So, what now?

First, whether you have the book yet or not, go to the “Introduce Yourselves!” discussion and tell us about yourself. You can include anything you’d like in your intro, but I really liked Steph and Smokey’s lists of things they personally inquire into at the bottom of p. xiv in the book. So, I encourage you to tell us about your personal inquiries if you’d like. (This reminds me of the http://www.geekthelibrary.org/ campaign, by the way). I’m sure we will get to know each other better along the way, but this might be interesting as a way to kick off.

Begin reading and posting when you can. I’ll be posting a reflection on chapter 1 in the next day or two, but there are many people who don’t have the book yet, so don’t worry if you are not going to be able to jump in right away. Also, Chapter one and other resources are available in pdf format at this websitehttp://www.heinemann.com/products/E01230.aspx so you can start on chapter 1 if you don’t have the book yet.

Looking forward to learning along with all of you! Let me know if there is anything I can help with.

Beth
 

Beth and I strongly agree that this is everybody’s book club.  So buy yourself a holiday gift and get a copy of the book, and leap into the discussions!

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Moodle is one of the tools that our upper elementary teachers are phasing in over the next few years.  When asked how teachers can best use Moodle to promote 21st-century learning, I suggest that they take advantage of the students’ home Internet access and use it to either awaken prior knowledge or reflect on their learning.  (Moodle also does stuff like lets you automate quizzes, but that doesn’t take the learning deeper - it just replaces paper quizzes with a screen.  NOT 21st-century!)

Those are two things that sometimes fall by the wayside during the school day to make room for standards, but we know that both are essential for learning for understanding.  And in our district, we are fortunate that (knock on wood), nearly all of the students in our elementary classrooms have home Internet connections. (Those who do not can swap out some DEAR time for computer access, as reading can be done at home!)

One of our prior knowledge strategies has been to build on the use of primary source images in the social studies curriculum.  We use the TCI social studies textbooks, and in fifth grade, each chapter begins with a primary source image and then asks some questions.  We can move those questions into Moodle and voila! Motivation and engagement rise.

The photo above isn’t what we actually used, but it helps illustrate something we learned along the way.

Let’s say the students were asked to brainstorm, like this:

What do you think the smaller child is wrapped in?

The fast answer would probably be, “A blanket.”

The “answer in complete sentences” approach would yield, “The child is wrapped in a blanket.”

Both of those answers are probably “right,” but they don’t reveal much about how the student came to that conclusion.

But what if the directions are tweaked just a bit, to:

What do you think the smaller child is wrapped in? Include because in your answer.

By adding “because,” we can, even with young kids, get them to make a hypothesis AND justify their answer (which is really tricky for elementary kids to do in their writing).  We don’t have to say, “Be sure to justify your answer with information from the past or from the photo.”  Because lets us streamline the instructions but deepen the answer.

Answers might read:

I think the child is wrapped in a wool blanket because the fabric is plaid and has fringe like the wool blanket my mom keeps in her trunk.

The child is wrapped in a blanket. I think that’s because he’s also strapped into something, and the blanket keeps those strings from digging into his skin.

I think the child is wrapped in a blanket because kids get cold easily. The girl sitting next to him doesn’t need a blanket because she’s older.

Sandy Buczynski and I talked extensively about the power of because when we worked on Story Starters and Science Notebooking: Developing Student Thinking Through Literacy and Inquiry (Teacher Ideas Press/ABC-CLIO, 2009).  That book built on the science notebooking strategies developed by Michael Klentschy, who planted the because seed in our brains.   So often in science, students are asked to predict what will happen (or to make a hypothesis), but they’re not asked to explain their thinking.  If we don’t ask them to explain why they made the prediction they did, we don’t know if they’ve tapped into their existing scientific thinking or, frankly, just guessed.

Try using because and see how it helps students justify their work (and you see their schema)!

Historical photo from the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress (PS - Can you see the hands of the mystery adult holding up the baby?)

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