All activities in this unit are centered around the inquiry research project. The language arts and information literacy lessons are integrated in a way that serves the purpose of effectively conducting the inquiry and communicating the results. In this way, students are not simply learning to take better notes or write a persuasive letter because they must, but because it serves a purpose in finding information about a real world problem and sharing it with a real audience.
This unit is typical of inquiry learning in that it is question driven. Working as a class, the students determine essential questions to be researched, and each team member develops subsidiary questions to drive the investigation of their particular role. The unit is also very process oriented, with the process being evaluated as much as the product. Peer interaction and team learning are important parts of the curriculum and the end product reaches an audience beyond the classroom. [1]
This level of inquiry would best be described as "guided inquiry." The students work in small groups on a topic that is the same for the entire class. One of the final products is assigned by the teacher. [2] However, the group product is open to choice, allowing the groups to decide for themselves which method of communicating is best for them. The assigned persuasive letter to a high authority serves as an example of how the audience can determine the appropriate method of communication, as well as tone and style. [3]
Information Fluency
Daniel Callison's definition of information fluency incorporates information literacy, computer literacy, and critical thinking to go beyond the scope of any one of these things alone. [4] Callison proposes that one characteristic of information fluency is the "ability to move among several models for the information search and use processes." [5] In that way, this unit does not reach the level of information fluency, as it is confined to only one model, the Big6. However, I believe that because it does ask students to access, use, and think critically about information to construct new understandings and apply them creatively, this unit moves learners in the direction of information fluency.
Individual Differences
The unit includes a variety of source materials and incorporates activities that support the diverse learning styles [6] of students.
- Verbal/Linguistic learners will enjoy the class discussions, reading for information, and presenting information in both written and oral formats.
- Logical/Mathematical learners may appreciate the KWHL and keyword charts as a way to collect and represent data. They may prefer to research "What can we do to help" aspect of the project to take a problem-solving approach. Adding more interdisciplinary aspects to this unit would be a bonus for this group, since activities such as measuring temperature and humidity in a terrarium and recording it on a graph would play to their strengths.
- Visual/Spatial learners will appreciate the use of concept webs during class discussions and the use of video clips and graphics heavy websites. They will enjoy working on the visual components of the final group product.
- Bodily/Kinesthetic learners will enjoy the hands-on use of computer keyboard and mouse during exploration of Internet sources and in preparation for the final products. A good choice of end product for a student of this learning style would be a video production or other active format. Many of the additional activities that would make this a more interdisciplinary unit, such as building a terrarium, experimenting with water levels, and performing a skit would enhance the experience for these students.
- Musical/Rhythmic learners will find their niche in an end product like a PowerPoint or multimedia presentation where music can play a part. It would be interesting to have a student compose an original song to accompany a video presentation, for example.
- Students who prefer intrapersonal work will probably enjoy exploring the Internet resources by themselves and doing the independent research before coming back to their group. The persuasive letter product is another place where the intrapersonal student can work independently and reflect on his or her own perspective to the global warming issue. These students would probably prefer a final product such as a written report.
- Interpersonal learners will appreciate the group work and class discussions that take place throughout this unit.
Collaboration
This unit of lessons has been designed with the intention of a collaborative teaching partnership between the classroom teacher and the library media specialist. Outside of this course, this unit would most likely have been developed within that partnership, not by the media specialist alone. This assumes that several of the possible impediments to collaboration, such as the traditional role of the librarian and teacher reluctance toward collaboration or inquiry teaching styles, have already been overcome.
If I were collaboratively implementing this unit with a classroom teacher, it would be important that we both have a clear understanding of how the teaching responsibilities would be distributed. Ideally, our styles of teaching and communication would complement one another. My goal would be to demonstrate how beneficial collaboration can be for the classroom teacher and, most importantly, for the students.
The classroom teacher and media specialist share, almost equally, the teaching responsibilities for this unit, including the assessment of learning success. In some cases, each teacher assesses the units that were taught independently, and in others, both teachers cooperatively complete rubrics and observation.