The Charger Research Model

I completed an online class through PBS Teacherline titled 'Building Critical Thinking Skills for Online Research' last summer.  During the course, I read and learned about various research models in order to develop my own research model for my school.

Going into the project, I knew I wanted to develop a research model that was simple and easy to follow without overwhelming students with a lot of steps. I borrowed and adapted from the following research models: the Big6, New South Wales (NSW), South Carolina's The Simple Four and The Research Cycle Model (RCM).

Click here to view The Charger Research Model for Students.

My favorite model was the NSW model because, along with sharing what the students were doing at each step, it also listed what the teacher should be looking for in the student work at each step. Since I also wanted to share this model with teachers, I borrowed heavily from the NSW model.

Click here to view the The Charger Research Model for Teachers.

So far, I've shared the model with all of our teachers and our seventh grade students. Before sharing with the seventh graders, I decided to add the list of links and tools they would use at each step of the research process. We are a 1:1 computing school and I wanted to make sure to demonstrate how our library resources, technology and other tools all come together during the research process.

Sharing the model with students also helped me update the homepage of the school library website. I wanted students to be able to click on the resources they would need for reading and research when they arrived on the school library homepage, instead of hunting for them in the sidebar. I find I am always creating stuff on the library website and going back and making it simpler. I have a love/hate relationship with the library website.

Now that I've gotten my feet wet with seventh grade, I am looking forward to sharing this with our sixth graders next school year to help set the stage for research. Starting off with our seventh graders helped me refine & tweak what I originally created in the summer. Please feel free to borrow, copy and share :)

Teaching teachers

Before school started, the art teacher and I worked together to present a 45 minute professional development session on media literacy, visual literacy, copyright, and DISCUS (our state's research database) during our teacher workdays.  Our art teacher did a great job sharing what she learned about media literacy during our district's SC Midlands Summit.  At the conclusion of her presentation, she had teachers participate in an activity inspired by Ken Shelton's visual storytelling session at the summit.  (To learn more about Ken Shelton's visual storytelling session, please visit media specialist Heather Loy's blog post about it here.  She took great notes.  I did not.)

In our PD session, the art teacher showed the teacher three slides:
slide 1. one picture - teachers had to give the picture a title
slide 2. one picture- teachers had to write a caption
slide 3. three pictures- teachers had to write a story

Our teachers wrote some hilarious stories and captions.  (I work with some really fun people.  Coming to work is never dull.)  Everyone had fun and walked away with ideas on how to use images and photography to help students write.

Here is a list of digital storytelling resources from our session & from the AASL's Best Websites for Teaching and Learning :

My Storymaker

Comic Master

Myths and Legends

PicLits

StoryBird 

I followed up with information about copyright, fair use and creative commons.  My middle school librarian peeps pointed me to Ronnie Burt's blog post to help me with my presentation.  I also created a list of websites and web tools to help teachers learn more about copyright.

Over the summer, the South Carolina State Library held several training sessions to introduce the new research databases available in DISCUS.  I was eager to share this information with our teachers because the new databases are easy to use with our middle school students, include reference books, e-books, pictures and videos while including MLA citations for all of it.  With the focus on common core standards, I thought this was a great time to point out how the resources in DISCUS will help us provide students with a variety of reading & research materials.

I talked about the following research databases: Credo Reference, History Reference Center, Science Reference Center, NoveList K-8 plus, Bloom's Literary Reference Online and Newspaper Source Plus.

Discus 2012 2013 from Lorena Swetnam

As much as presenting in front of a group makes my heart drop down to my knees, it is definitely worthwhile.   Each time I've had to present about our school library, technology and research, it has opened lots of doors for new collaborations and learning relationships.

Hope your school year is off to a good start!