Wondering at work

Last Thursday some colleagues and I were treated to a day with the Apple Educators team at Ciragan Palace Hotel. The hotel is number 14 in the 15 most expensive hotels in the world. Luxury and History rolled into one. I admit - I was a little sceptical about the day - I was expecting to have Apple products promoted all day long. We were all given ipads to play with but apart from that there was little mention of Apple products. We were there to look at teaching and learning and that we did. 

My favourite part of the day was with Ewan MacIntosh. He was talking about creativity and problem solving and how we can use some of the models for creative thinking on how to help our students become great inquirers. He has been working with schools to help them develop classrooms which create inquiry. One of the things he had them doing was to generate as many questions as they could right at the start of the Inquiry. They write them on post-it notes. Then they classify them as Googleable and nonGoogleable. The Googleable questions they then go and find out about directly from the Internet. They gather as much information as they can to become experts in their particular interests. Then they try to find experts in the fields to directly ask the questions. The students become problem finders and then problem solvers. 

Ewan MacIntosh speaking about problems and problem solving on TEDx

Wondering at work - the inside of the wonder door

So each week we have a new 'wonder' on the wonder door of our library. We put the new question on the outside of the library door - it is also right beside the print/photocopier and often there are people waiting for their printing. When we see a group and we have a moment spare ourselves we grab the post it notes and markers and ask the students to add their answers.

What happens to the answers when the week is over and there is a new question? They all go to the inside of the wonder door, inside the library. We show the question from last week, the answers AND some books from our collection that would help people find the correct answer. Here displayed is the question "What makes the earth go round?' - a question one of our grade 10 students suggested. There are many answers - some very serious involving gravity, the sun and so on and others a little more light hearted - love, money and certain people. Below are a few books which would contribute to the answers. So our wonder door is current for two weeks. On the outside with the new question of the week and on the inside with all the answers contributed and some sources of information for the answers.

Loving being an Inquiry Librarian working in our Inquiry Library....

Wondering at work - language

In our library we have many columns to support the building in case of an earthquake. Here is the column beside our work area. We have started to create our "Wondering at Work" area. It is thoroughly appropriate that we use this supporting column as we are adding questions and words which support our quest at becoming an Inquiry Library.

One question we asked ourselves was what does an Inquiry Library sound like? It was inspired by this blog post 'Inquiry is an approach, not a subject' by Kath Murdoch. She asks these great questions in her post How might I re-think my language to better reflect the reality of a day in the life of an inquiry classroom? Our learning involves us inquiring as readers, as writers, as mathematicians, as scientists, as historians, as musicians – as team members and as self-managers.  How to I let my students know that they are inquirers more often than when they are simply “doing” a unit? So we decided one way we could add to the language of Inquiry in our library was to have a word of the week. We would try to use it as we speak, as we blog, as we think and we would encourage one another and our students and colleagues to adopt the word as well. 

So far we have had the words; peruse, browse and now bibliophile. Each week one of our library teams selects a new word and in our Monday morning team meeting she let's us know what the word of the week will be. This is a small step in the process of ensuring that we sound like an Inquiry library. We want to encourage questions, reflection, thoughtfulness and we are trying to ensure our language assists this process.

Wondering at work....

Last week we had our first question on our new wonder door - "What makes things glow in the dark?" This question came from wonderopolis and if you register with them they will send to your email a wonder each day. So here are some pictures of the wonder wall at work....

As the week went on not only did we get more post it notes on our door but also many people were stopping and commenting on the ideas. Our students liked it so much that one of the grade 10 boys asked if he could set this week's wonder questions which is - "What makes the world go round?" 

This is one step we have taken to be an Inquiry Library after Kath Murdoch's workshop. More will follow....

Wondering at work...

What does an Inquiry Library look like?

Make one of the glass doors dark with foreboding.....

Add a little something to the darkened door....

Slowly, slowly peel back the layers. Ask people - what do you think this is about?

Finally on Friday afternoon - leave them with this question.
What will be coming next? Is this what an Inquiry Library looks like? Well it is a start.