It began early in the school year, when I noticed that despite past lessons, students were still unfamiliar with where to find books in the library. I decided to make a concentrated effort to explicitly teach about our library layout. This took a REALLY long time, and many, many lessons. We reinforced the concept visually and kinaesthetically, hiding in spots in the library and colouring codes on maps. I hid little paper people in the library and students had to find them using the denotations on library maps. Then they created "treasure" and hid them in the library with similar denotations on library maps for me to find.
I marked their progress and felt like the Grade 3-4 students *might* be ready for the big "chocolate challenge". Our inquiry question for the term centered around various types of effective communication. On Friday, I gave the class two maps and a few papers with the Morse Code alphabet and said "go". They had 40 minutes to find and then decipher the clues.
THEY DID IT! A few students let the thrill of the hunt overwhelm their sense of reason and they started searching randomly, thinking that the chocolates were just hidden somewhere in the library. All I had to say was "remember the maps". The students broke off into two groups (one per map) and started hunting with more deliberation. Once they started to find the clues, the excitement and energy in the room rose.When they opened the clues and saw the dashes and dots, then the roles started to differentiate more. Some took on the job of decoding the message while others continued to hunt for hidden papers. Others watched the decoders, ensuring they didn't make any mistakes. Still others pointed at the code sheet to assist the writers.
There were only a couple of students that needed some slight redirection. As they deciphered the messages, students started calling out things like "we have to jump!" Others realized that starting too quickly had its disadvantages: "Oh, the messages are in order! When did we find this one? Did we already find this one at this spot?"
Groups formed and reformed into different combinations as students saw where there was a need and tried to fill in. Some were big and some were small, but there was a lot of teamwork evident.
One of the clues indicated that they needed a phone. That's when they looked up at me, taking photos with my cell phone, and had an "aha". Not all the clues were visual! I couldn't take a photo of the moment that a small group huddled close and listened attentively and intensely to a short recording of Morse Code on my cell phone. They only had to listen to it three times before they understood the message.At one point, I suggested that they meet as a whole class to share what they had discovered so far.
If you look at that photo of the whole class, (the eighth in this sequence) you may notice a few things.
One, they couldn't care less about me. (And that's good!) The focus is all on the assembled clues.
Two, check out the focus. Where are most of the gazes? On the centre of the circle.
It was shortly after I took this photo, when they realized where they had to go and what they had to do, that I temporarily lost control of the class. The 23 students ran up the stairs gleefully screaming as they fled the library. Teachers poked their heads out of their doors to see what the uproar was all about and I had to ask the students to go back downstairs and come up quietly.
Their final destination was Mr. Roberts' Grade 7 class. He was in on the plan and was prepared for the interruption to his Grade 8 geography class. The students suddenly became a bit shy. Do we just walk in? Do we "do the thing" and "say the password" out here or in the class? Do we do this in front of the Grade 8s?
With 10 minutes to spare in the period, the students earned their chocolates and happily returned to the library to do a quick book exchange and enjoy the fruits of their labour.
I am SO PROUD of the students. They really worked well together and used the previous lessons about reading maps and understanding where to find things in the library to help them solve the challenge. I saw proof that they could apply what they had learned previously for a new situation!
This same group also did a fabulous job with our library/science class partner unit: the Grade 3s made Lift the Flap book pages about plants and the Grade 4s made I Spy book pages about habitats. That project had a similar trajectory to the library layout familiarity work. The classroom teacher and I had our moments when we worried that the students would never understand the job and never finish within a reasonable time. We were so delighted when it all came together at the end. I tweeted some of the Grade 3 projects and we presented the Grade 4 book at our month-end assembly.
Really pleased to see the collaborative library/class work from Rm112 @AgnesMacphailPS posted on the walls - Lift The Flap book pages on various plants! Great job researching with @TDSBLibrary Virtual Library resources! pic.twitter.com/3asJOILXhT— Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) November 16, 2018
The concerns that the classroom teacher and I had are typical for people engaged in inquiry. Carol Kuhlthau, an American expert on school libraries, has done a lot of work about guided inquiry design. Her work on the Information Search Process, especially the thoughts and feelings associated with the process, are important to remember.
Thanks so much for the reminder that it takes practice and patience and faith to make learning adventures like this work!
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