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The focus for my Action Plan this year came to me as I was trying, and failing, to make a class of Grade 10 students laugh at my joke about the CRAAP test.
I had been asked by the course leader for biology to teach a lesson about finding reliable internet sources for the students’ assignment on measles and illustrate how to cite them in APA style. I had one chance to engage these students, hook them with the research process, and introduce a new citation style. I had prepared a hands-on 30-minute session packed full of information, the occasional joke, a practical handout, and an attractive slide deck and I was getting… blank stares. Yawns. The questions I received at the end of the lesson showed me that students had some real misunderstandings about the material, and this was backed up by the report I received from one of the teachers as to how they “did” on the assignment.
In school library world, we are often tasked with so-called “one-shot library instruction,” like the scenario described above, and this is the problem I have chosen to tackle with this year’s Action Plan. Of course there are many ways to go about addressing it and I am taking a multi-faceted approach – things like vertically aligning our program, and working on having longer-term collaborative relationships with faculty will help in the long term. In the short term, however, I knew I needed to start doing something differently. So I settled on this how might we question: How might we use feedback most effectively in one-shot library instruction?
I need to know where students are at when I walk into their classroom, lab, or studio – in the research process, in their prior knowledge, in their skill level. I need to know what parts of my message are resonating, what parts are flying over their heads, and what they feel is helpful for the task at hand. I need to collect feedback in an intentional and structured way.
I have been experimenting with some tech to help achieve this, such as Pear Deck, with which I am familiar, and EdPuzzle, which I’m using for the first time. I’m thinking of the best ways to ask questions and gather responses. I’m looking forward to discussing more options and ideas with our inspiring community of educators at the Face 2 Face session next week. Thanks for all your help and feedback on my journey thus far!
Hi Laura,
I can completely relate! Research isn’t very sexy and so grabbing the students’ attention is often difficult especially when you’re a fly in, fly out librarian! Would love to talk with you more about this next week.
w
The blank stares!!!!! We have ALL been there! It’s easy I think for anyone in education to empathize with that certain skip in our step when we head off to a lesson that we feel checks off all the right boxes. That “I am about to do some awesome teaching” glow…. only to be left scratching our heads when it did not land the way we expected. What I love about you Laura is that this experience was immediately put to good use! You are using this to try to inspire real change in your practice and your role- that is awesome! I am really looking forward to hearing about this more and getting to do some brainstorming with you at the next F2F!
Thanks for this great post and honest reflection on your practice. I have two things you might consider:
1) Have you thought of doing a Lesson Planning Protocol with that lesson. @ckirsh has hosted one for us in the past, and I am SURE that you’d get some takers on this.
2) I wonder how this lesson might have been different if instead of taking the teacher’s request literally, you approached if from a student perspective to get to the “why this is important to you now and in the future?” question. Igniting curiousity in this situation is not easy, but it might be possible. For example, give them an APA citation and have them backward map it to find the source. It could even be a competition 🙂
Hope this helps,
Garth.
Totally inspired by the great comments and support here, @wdarby, @tfaucher and @gnichols. Thank you for your thoughts and awesome ideas. I’m going to connect with @ckirsh about that for sure and I love the idea of thinking about the lesson in terms fo what sparks curiosity, because what is the purer driver for the research process than that?! Thanks fam!
Great focus for your inquiry.
For other tech-based ideas, take a peek at Google Slides Q&A. If there are questions that reveal misconceptions, maybe they can be asked sooner than at the end.
Good one @acaplan. I have been meaning to try that out. I like the parking lot metaphor, too.
Looking forward to hearing about your action plan in more detail. Feedback is challenging in so many ways. Tech tools are great to help and there are so many to try I sometimes get overwhelmed.
Love @gnichols suggestions of the citation and game – my students would love that!