Raising the curtain: From curiosity to search strategies

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Raising the curtainFrom curiosity to search
strategies

• Heather Ruetschlin Schugar
• University of Maryland, College Park
• READING, WRITING, AND CONTENT
• Supporting Comprehension and Engaging Children
  With Research Projects that Motivate Them to
  Learn
• Symposium IRA Atlanta 2008

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Example from Childrens Literature

• The Hero of Ticonderoga
• A fictional story of Tessy LeClerc, a student who
  gets stuck writing the report on Ethan Allen for
  her class Vermont History reports. What she
  encounters
• - Lack of Motivation
• (Who cares about an old dead guy?)
• Lack of direction
• (There is a whole lot of information on
• Ethan Allen and it is hard for her to tell
• what is important.)
• -Books are too challenging
• (The only text on Ethan Allen written at an
• appropriate reading level was checked out
• by another student).
• -Not enough visual support for report
• (The people doing maple syrup and the
• University of Vermont have tons of photos
• to use!)

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Branching out from Animal Reports

• Common for classroom teachers to choose a topic
  (e.g., animals, states, countries) and assign
  students a topic to research.
• Not particularly motivating for children who get
  topics they are not interested in
• Not really taught how to do the report and
  appropriate texts are not always available

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Why is this a problem?

• Some teachers might not have specific purposes in
  mind for why they are having students do the
  report
• Little time might be spent researching and
  writing, lots of time may be spent publishing and
  illustrating
• If teacher is not actively participating in the
  process (e.g., strategy lessons, conferring,
  prompting), students may lose out on valuable
  instructional time/opportunities

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Why is this a problem?

• On the 2005 NAEP reading assessment
• Poor kids who reported that they frequently
  engaged in book reports, presentations, and
  projects performed significantly below their
  wealthier peers who did the same activities.
• These activities are not necessarily the problem
  it is that we as teachers are not executing
  them in ways that extend students thinking!

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What research tells us about getting students to
ask their own questions

• Question-generating is motivating
• Question-generating helps students connect
  information to their own cultural knowledge
• Question-generating can get students to think
  critically about information.
• Question-generating is important for gaining
  critical literacy skills

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How can you get students to create their own
questions?

• Provide an interesting phenomena
• Examples a photograph, excerpt of text, science
  experiment, field trip, video, etc.
• Model for students how you might generate
  questions
• Give students think time to generate questions
• Provide a classroom culture where it is OK to
  question things and take risks

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Types of Questions

• Vincent Ciardiello (2007) cites three different
  types of questions students can generate
• Puzzlement (awareness)
• Puzzlement (explanation)
• Wonderment (awareness)

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Derricks Questions(When given a photo of a
hockey player carrying an octopus)

• why were the octopus on the ice?
• who thurght it on the ice?

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Other Possible Questions

• Why is the hockey player using an octopus as a
  puck?
• Why is there a tradition to throw octopuses onto
  hockey rinks?
• Do other sports have traditions like this one?

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The students have their questions now what?

• We need to model for and guide students in
• How to find answers to their questions
• Where to search for answers to their questions
• How to discriminate between credible information
  and inaccurate sources

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What did Derrick do?

• Searched the Internet with key words octopus
  and hockey.
• Skimmed articles for the answer to his questions.
• Developed new questions.
• Shared his new information with his siblings and
  parents!

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What research tells us about students abilities
to search for information in a text

• Many students can explain the use of features,
  but they dont use them consistently.
• Students have difficulty using text features
  unless reminded to, and even then they do not
  always use them accurately.

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How can we help students in effectively searching
texts for information?

• Provide them with appropriate materials for
  searching for information
• Choose texts that are well-organized, have
  clearly defined features, etc.
• Materials should be at students independent
  reading level
• Explicitly teach students search strategies in
  context so that they can transfer these skills to
  new tasks.

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But what about Internet searching? Surely that
requires different search strategies!

• The vast amount of information available on the
  Internet may make critical readinq skills and the
  ability to question the author more important.
• However, the skills arent all so different
• Index key words for search
• Table of Contents/Headings side bar/ heading
  bar
• Glossary click on word, link to definition/more
  information