[CALIBK12] TARGET: how can elementary LMTs help teachers understand research and collaboration

[Marilyn Robertson]

Susan:  Have you got David Loertscher's BAN THOSE BIRD UNITS and the sequel,
BEYOND BIRD UNITS?  In the amazing CSLA session I attended, he and Doug
Atcherman even went further, saying that we have to go beyond helping busy
teachers come up with a long elaborate search.  They promoted the idea that
we need to get to content, even if that means locating and making available
for the kids the best resources, online or otherwise.

The hard part for us all, students especially, is analyzing and making sense
of what has been found and synthesizing the information to form new
understandings about the content.  And then, that's only the beginning.
Then the findings must be shared with the rest of the class to do a Big
Think--look for more patterns and larger ideas based upon what has been
learned.

So you see, our role is changing.  It is to speed up the process and work
directly with teachers and kids to grapple with the information found to get
to new knowledge, and to participate in assessment. I thought this was a
real wow since we traditionally focus on helping them learn to find quality
stuff, challenging in itself.

David and Doug or others who are really doing this, if I have misunderstood
or misrepresented what you meant, please chime in.

Marilyn Robertson


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Susan Scott" <suscott at pausd.org>
To: "calibk12" <calibk12 at listproc.sjsu.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 5:36 PM
Subject: [CALIBK12] TARGET: how can elementary LMTs help teachers understand
research and collaboration


> Do you all have any good ideas for transitioning your teachers from the
> "animal report" to best current practices?
>
> I work on a fixed schedule, but allow upper grade students to come in at
> any time.  Unfortunately, we keep having little problems:
>
> -Students come to the library to research without any paper, pencils,
> guidelines.
> -I rarely hear from teachers before a passel of kids charge in to "do
> their research".
> -The assigned reports are a "mile wide and one inch deep"--frequently a
> list of questions to be answered with a single word.
> -The subjects are often things that we don't have --who has twenty books
> on different female explorers?
> -The subjects are so specific and unique that there never will be a
> whole book about it --i.e.,the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse!
> -the BIG Questions just aren't there.
>
> I am not super frustrated, but I would like to help make research a
> positive, transferable learning experience.  I would like to know if you
> have some procedure in place that helps mitigate these kinds of
> problems.  How did you get started?  What other support helped?
>
> I know what to teach the kids.  I am kinda stumped when it comes to
> approaching my staff who seem rather unwise in their "research"
> assignments.  How do I guide them?
>
> I will post a HIT.
>
> Thanks, Susan
>
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