Teacher inquiry - action research in our library and classroom

Our school has a program of collaborative inquiry teams for professional learning: teacher inquiry groups. Proposals are submitted by teachers who would like to lead an inquiry and teachers sign up for their preference.

TIGs are inspired by the action research model of teacher inquiry and their intention is to sharpen focus on an aspect of teaching in order to improve classroom practice.

image from the Santarosa Professional Development Centre, https://www.santarosa.k12.fl.us/pdc/inservice/followup/ar.aspx

This year, I led an action research inquiry into ebooks. Our common focus was reading, although we each took a slightly different line of inquiry, investigating the impact of one instructional intervention on student learning in our library/classroom. My line of inquiry related to ebooks and reading promotion; another investigated ebooks as learning resources; another looked at ebooks and improved reading outcomes; and another investigated a range of reading promotion activities.

The libguide for establishing this inquiry can be accessed here.

The report for our inquiry group and my inquiry into ebooks and reading promotion is available in the video below:

Literary lunchtimes

Last term Denise Tan, proprietor of Closetful of books, a local children's bookseller, contacted us with the offer of an author visit to our school. We weren't able to accommodate any more "grand visits" for whole year level groups in our curriculum, but our Primary Librarian and I thought it would be nice to have a short "meet the author" at lunchtime.
Our Central Library is very busy at lunchtimes, being a shared space catering for both Primary and Middle School, so we decided to host the event in the Senior Library.

Both the students and our visiting author Sheryl Gwyther loved the venue and informality of these visits. Our younger students were thrilled to be visiting the Senior Library.

I have held lunchtime sessions before, but not as stand alone sessions. I plan to have lots more of these next year. Denise was also thrilled with how well these went and is now keen to send all her visiting authors my way.

Librarians' Knowledge Sharing Workshop Brunei February 2014

LKSW program

Last week I was fortunate in attending the second annual Librarians’ Knowledge Sharing Workshop at JIS in Brunei with my colleague Meg Johnson from our Lower Secondary library. It was a great opportunity to network and work with Teacher Librarians from all over Asia. The smaller size of the event enabled delegates to get to know each other well and extend our Personal Learning Networks for future contact.

 In fact it was networking through Twitter that brought Lyn Hay to the event as keynote speaker. In her presentation Anatomy of an iCentre, Lyn challenged the group to consider new modes of working and new learning space designs for libraries. Inspired by the Apple store model for service and expert support , Lyn proposed the iCentre as a model for collaboration, Library, ICT and classroom teachers working together towards common goals in a shared space.

21C learning in a digital environment

Developing students as connected learners

Partnerships not buildings

            An innovative approach to programming was the use of two “slam” sessions with short 5 minute presentations on a theme followed by group discussion: Virtual library spaces and What’s hot? Technology for libraries. These proved to be highly engaging and interactive sessions. Other presentations included Library design/the physical space; Engaging readers; Library management systems. All very valuable and informative.

Lyn’s plenary session Guided inquiry- an instructional framework for inquiry learning resonated greatly with me and I made many connections with my own presentation.

                My own presentation was on our process for developing information literacy resources  for the Australian International School: Information Literacy Skills Scope and Sequence Preschool-5; Literature Skills Scope and Sequence Preschool-5 for the Elementary School in 2012; and 21C skills @ AIS – An Information  Fluency Framework for secondary students in 2013. These documents are supported by a library website and can be accessed at http://libguides.ais.com.sg/research

Session notes: http://libguides.jis.edu.bn/lkswsession8

               

          Takeaways – action plan. PD like this is always a shot-in-the-arm for me, a boost to enthusiasm, a raising of awareness of how we can work differently and strive to be better.

   

 Seeing a presentation of a graphic interface for one library’s databases website has me planning to do more with our list.

·                  Imovies on ipads – lend the ipad. We have a library itunes account working well for mp3 audiobooks lent to students on ipod shuffle. Movies are a natural extension of that – who wants to buy dvds? (our new Macbook Air don’t have a dvd player). Now for the library sets of ipads…..

·         Extend our audiobook collection to the Red Dot Books.

·         Meg and I talked about undertaking an evidence-based project for our Teacher Inquiry Group focus this year. There was an enthusiastic response from the others in our library teaching team when we shared that idea yesterday. What better way to demonstrate the impact of the libraries on student learning.

Conference organisers Karli Downey and Angela Mann of JIW, with support from Barb Reid (Alice Smith School Kuala Lumpur) are to be congratulated for a stimulating and rewarding 2 days. It was a privilege and a pleasure to participate.