ILA Information
My ILA is a Year 4/5 Researching task, using the FIFA World Cup 2010 as a stimulus. One of the Year 4/5 teachers has asked if I can support her classroom unit focus in the RC (Resource Centre), by extending the students’ researching skills – in print and online, critical thinking skills and general use of the RC. The students are required to choose a country that has their own World Cup Soccer Team and complete a range of questions and information searching. The students are then required to complete a broad range of Thinkers Keys tasks as an individual inquiry, to support their ILA even further. The ILA will then conclude with an evaluation.
The activity will be running for six weeks – as a homework assignment, during SOSE lessons and RC lessons
The range of information they will be required to search for –
Information on their chosen country, Continent information, Capital city information Mapping and Geographical facts, Climate, Flag, Language spoken, Food, Famous person from chosen country, Information about South Africa, World Cup Tournament information, Locating and using atlases, Locating and using search engines, Locating and using in print resources
Boolean!
To begin my searching on Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) within a SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) setting, I began with Google and some Boolean searching.
My first Boolean search was "Inquiry Based Learning" and "Research a country"
This search came up with only 8 results, which I found extremely surprising. The first link on the list was www.circle.adventist.org and it housed a whole host of links to problem-based learning Webquests. I was excited upon entering, however unfortunately many of these links were both American content and needed to be paid for to view, so not very helpful for my needs.
The best link out of the narrow 8 hits, was -
The site called "MN Learning Loop" explored a broad range of units created by teachers who were completing an online learning course which explored cooperative learning, building learning communities and questioning strategies. The link above shows a video of Second graders using technology, a constructivist approach and IBL to explore their topic on travelling around the world. This video gave me a good comparison to my current ILA and some ideas for future learning tasks with primary aged students.
When using my next Boolean search of "inquiry" and "research country" I received 5,900 results. To narrow this down I played around with Google Wonderwheel. This gave me some good branch outs to further explore, including - project and research country, investigation and research country, enquiry and research country, report and research country, search and research country, information and research country. I am now in the process of exploring these branch outs in greater detail. Fingers crossed for some more successful responses than my initial searching.
Wonderful Wonderwheel
On another note, I have been using Google Wonderwheel and Google Timeline with my current Year 6 -Year 10s during Resource Centre Lessons. The students are really loving to use these functions and are becoming more efficient and accurate information locators and users. They often come into the RC to tell me about their searching and how much easier it has made locating information online for their assignments.
