Initiation, when a person first becomes aware of a lack of knowledge or understanding and feelings of uncertainty and apprehension are common.(Kuhlthau, 2000)
At the moment, I am feeling very overwhelmed about this subject. I have never blogged, so this is a new learning experience. So, I think this blog is up and running now. I am feeling overwhelmed because I don't know how to blog about emotions of searching. First I searched for a blogging tool and decided to use this one because it appeared easy to use. I am now feeling happy that I have it up and running.
Questionnaire 1: Year 2
First of all, when I was told we had to find a class to do a research activity on, I was really excited and thought great there are heaps of classes I could choose from. So, I chose the class that I was going to observe. At this point I felt great about finding the right class.
A day later I was talking to a teacher from the Year level and found out that they had already started doing the Information Report and were two weeks into it. I just didn't expect them to be starting right from the first week of school. I didn't realise that they were doing five weeks of information reports and then five weeks of another report. So at that moment I felt rather stressed "What am I going to do?" I have to find another class in a hurray to observe. So I looked at a high school class. But that didn't work out either. So now I was really panicking. I decided to go back to a different Year 2 teacher and ask if they were doing any research activities. To my relief they were and they had not started yet. So I went into the classroom and I decided to do a KWL chart and a questionnaire. At last that I felt I was back to being in control of the report.
After sitting down with the head of year 2 I discovered that they are doing four different research activities:
1. Diorama - researching an endangered animal of their choosing and then making a Diorama.
2. Webquest - Where they are in pairs and one has to be the zoologist and one is the biologist. They discuss a endangered animal together and then they search out and fill out information about the animal. They are then asked to create a PowerPoint about the endangered animal.
3. A research book - They look at different countries and look at what animals are endangered and how to help save the endangered animals.
4. Information Report - they have a picture of an endangered animal and have to find out information about it.
Today I went into the classroom and to do the first Questionnaire and explain that in a couple of days their teachers was going to hand out a piece of paper and they had to choose an endangered animal and make a diorama about it and find out information about it. I didn't realise that there were a lot of students that had a lot of learning problems and I didn't realise that they might not understand the questions. I found this really frustrating.
I had to explain things really basic and simple so that they would all understand. I handed out pieces of paper and asked them to draw three shapes on it. Then I asked them to think about and tell me what they already knew of endangered animals. They came up with really good answers. However, when it came to writing them down on the paper this is when they had some trouble. I felt rather stressed at having to go around to all the students helping them spell out words and write them down.
After they had thought of what they wanted to learn about the endangered animal they had chosen, it was time to hand out the Questionnaire 1. I had to go through the questions one by one really slowly and explaining what they all meant. This took longer than what I had thought of and so I was trying to get it finished. Finally they had finished the questionnaire and I could go up to the library and work out what I was going to do with all the information I had gathered and then look at what model of inquiry they were going to be using to find out the information about their endangered animal so that I could then get onto looking for all the information and start blogging on my process of how I searched for it.
My Topic for the Research activity is: Guided/Open Inquiry in Primary SOSE/Science.
1. Take some time to think about your topic. Now write down what you know about it.
- Inquiry is searching and researching for information. There are four types of inquiry based learning:
- Guided, Open, Research, Problem,
- Guided inquiry is where the teacher is guiding the students into a research task and is giving them questions that they have to then find out the answers to. So this is teacher and student directed learning activity.
- Open Inquiry is where the students are designing their own learning experience and have to formulate their own questions.
- Information Literacy is developing skills for students to help them research effectively. It’s giving them tools that they can put into practice to help them locate, search, and find the information that they need to help them to do their assignments.
2. How interested are you in this topic? Check (ü) one box that best matches your interest.
a great deal :)
3. How much do you know about this topic? Check (ü) one box that best matches how much you know.
not much :(
4. When you do research, what do you generally find easy to do? Please list as many things as you like.
- Find relevant information.
- Choose relevant quotes and information for the research.
- Search using a variety of methods such as books, Internet- google, google scholar, QUT library
5. When you do research, what do you generally find difficult to do? Please list as many things as you like.
- Rephrasing the research so it makes sense to me.
- Think of my own words to describe what I am researching.
- Referencing the correct format.
- Find the topic that I am researching.
Kuhlthau, Carol. (2000). Information Search Process . http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/information_search_process.htm. Last accessed 6th August 2011.
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