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Augustine by Melanie Watt
Book title: Augustine Author: Melanie Watt Bibliographic entry Watt, M. (2006). Augustine. Toronto, ON: Kids Can Press. Description Augustine, a young penguin from the South Pole, moves with her family to the North Pole. She overcomes the initial awkward feelings of loneliness through her art. Her drawings help her connect to her new school community. Reaction…
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Parameters for success in inquiry
I just finished attending the Edugains Literacy Camp this week. The focus of this week is developing discourse and curiosity in the classroom….read between the lines: we’re talking about inquiry! We tried this new discussion strategy tonight called World Cafe, that lead to some very interesting tangential diversions about implementing inquiry-based learning. We had some…
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Redefining reading and the role of the teacher-librarian
Every day as a teacher-librarian, I try to match resources to students and students to resources. In the stacks, it’s often quite easy to rely on Dewey and the alphabet for locating material, but when it comes to finding and reading online, the students get bogged down. Often I teach a whole class how to…
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Engaging your digital identity
I can’t help it….it’s not even the end of July and I’m thinking about teaching again! Next year I get a media arts class to experiment with and we are going to explore the ideas of identity and anonymity through a reflective blog all semester long. I firmly believe that people have an digital identity…
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Assessment as evidence of learning
I’m really stuck on the idea of building evidence for inquiry-based learning right now. Until I have adequate evidence that inquiry-based learning is effective in ways that other teaching methods are not, our lack of proof is a barrier to change. As a parent, I would require evidence that inquiry leads to deeper understanding. So…
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Structuring time for process
I’ve just been reading Carol Kuhlthau’s Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century. I never understood before how project-based learning (PBL) differs from inquiry-based learning (IBL) until Kuhlthau points out in this reading. She says “[PBL] falls short in two respects. First, it overemphasizes product and underemphasizes the learning process. Second, students are frequently left…
threadbare beauty 