Research based learning
I do quite a bit of research based learning in my classroom as I feel too often students are spoonfed lots of knowledge but not taught the skills to think for themselves. They wait for either the teacher or a parent to give them the book or page number to find the information. So I was very interested in the article by Graham Wegner who tells the reader about research based learning in his school. Personally, I love teaching the research process first to the whole class, so they realise they have to set questions, find both primary and secondary resources, justify their decisions about the big question then finally present to their peers. Students then keep a journal (maybe they will be answering my blog posts this year), organize interview times with me and plan their long term goals with regard to the topic they have chosen. Setting their goals is often a problem but practice does make it easier.
Hey Sue
This sounds really interesting. I’ve just been doing some work with a project called the Young Researcher Network (http://blogs.nya.org.uk/yrn/) in England - and we’re looking at ways of equipping young people with research skills. They’ve got a question out on their blog at the moment about tips for teaching young people to be researchers (http://blogs.nya.org.uk/yrn/2008/01/how-to-teach-online-research-s.html) so if there are any tips you could share I’m sure they would be delighted.
I’ve also found in the past work around Philosophy for Children to be really interesting (http://www.sapere.net/) as a way of teaching critical thinking skills to very young people.
All the best with the ongoing blogging
Tim
G’day Tim,
Thanks for visiting my blog and giving me the sites you are working with.
A great website that I have used mainly for historical research but it works for all forms is http://www.kn.att.com/wired/21stcent/index.html which is all about literacies for the 21st century.