Monthly Archives: February 2010

Questioning – Kilmacolm’s innovative Blooming Blooms approach

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Blooming Blooms

Blooming Blooms

In 2009 Katrina Little, the nursery teacher at Kilmacolm Nursery (which is part of Kilmacolm Primary School) using Bloom’s Taxonomy worked with parents to form Blooming Bloom Questions for familiar fairytales so that the children are introduced to the benefits of questioning (Innovative approaches). See Blooming Blooms example questions for Goldilocks and The Three Bears.

 

Colour Coded Blooms

Colour Coded Blooms

The questions are colour coded to represent the different  parts of Bloom’s Taxonomy and attached to the responding coloured flower and put into a pot which is inside the front of  each book (see above picture).

The questions are there to reinforce that the activitiy is not just about  reading the book but about gaining knowledge and understanding, applying, analysing and evaluating what has been heard and then creating new thoughts.  It is also about fully involving the parents in their children’s learning.

Jack and the Beanstalk

Jack and the Beanstalk

A visit to the nursery on Wednesday (17th February 2010) saw Katrina and the children in action. The story was Jack and the Beanstalk and I joined the children (a preschool group of 4 years old) as Katrina started to question them using the Blooming Blooms questions (copy of original Jack and the Beanstalk Questions).

The children seemed to enjoy answering the questions and often you could see the thought process going on.  In the applying section different children showed how they would climb the beanstalk. One boy talked about using an ice axe to help him climb which would indicate that somebody he knew used an ice axe to climb.

Unfortunately Katrina didn’t get through all of the questions as a group of younger children had finished their activity and had returned to the nursery. This disrupted the older childrens concentration a bit.

The books also go home with the children on a Friday so that the parents can be involved in the learning activity. Reports indicate that  parents  are enjoying using the Blooming Bloom questions and children enjoy them too.

This has lead to plans which are under way to introduce Blooming Blooms in Primary 1 linking it to their reading bookings and the Oxford Reading Tree. Those parents that were involved in the nursery project are said to be keen to be involved in the extension to Primary 1.

 

 My thanks to Mrs Katrina Little, colleagues in the nursery and children at Kilmacolm Nursery and the headteacher for allowing me into their world.

Information Literacy in Junior (Primary) 2

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Returned to St Margaret’s School, Edinburgh (Monday 8th February 2010)  where I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 2 class (pupils are 6 years old) as part of the work I’m doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team – Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was really interesting with the following information literacy activities linked to the Curriculum for Excellence Experience and Outcome HWB 1-30a 

By investigating the range of foods available I can discuss how they contribute to a healthy diet.

  • Research activity – ‘Facts about our topic’ – working in pairs the children research a topic (fruit, vegetables, bread, dairy products) finding interesting facts about their topic using a selection of books from the school library that the teacher had picked and displayed in her classroom.

One of the pair I observed copied text straight from the books they had selected. It made me think – is this where it starts, the copying of text rather than putting it into your own words. I suppose when you are learning to write you do copy text! As the teacher was busy with another activity / group I decided to ask the girls if they could pick out the words that were important in the text they had written which was about bread making (the topic they had chosen to research was bread). The girls were able to do this and we started to talk about different breads and which ones we liked including French sticks (baguettes) and chapatis (one of the girls mothers mother lived in Dundee and always made then chapatis and Biryani
 when they visited so chapatis for this child is associated with Dundee rather than Indian cuisine).  As a result of our discussions the girls were able to identify key fats about their topic.

Another pair working on fruit successfully selected their facts without writing / copying whole texts.

  • Evaluation Exercise– working in pairs the children had to discuss with their partners and use the evaluation form (see attached photo) to carry out an ‘Evaluation of my Picallili Monster’.

Their Picallili Monster was made out of food chosen by them the previous week as part of a project relating to food. I wish now I had taken a photo of the Picallili Monsters. The pair I observed didn’t work as a pair until they were reminded by the teacher. Whilst one child was more focused and could decide on: St Margaret's School, Junior 2 Evaluation Form

  1. what she liked best about the project
  2. the part of the body she liked best and why
  3. if she could change her monster would she and why.

The other child was indecisive and even with some questioning from me seemed to choose something randomly resulting in the part she liked best being the part she would change.

As indicated the above exercises worked best when there was an interaction between the children and the teacher or myself with these activities to direct / encourage their thinking. Active learning is a wonderful thing to see in action but a single teacher on her own is not able to interact all the time with all the individual pupils or pairs. It did however make me think that assistance from other practitioners such as school librarians with such learning activities would be greatly appreciated and beneficial.

My thanks to Miss Elizabeth Wood and her class at St Margaret’s School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world.

Libraries R 4 Learning Project: Information Literacy Multimedia clips

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Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service started filming last week on their Libraries R 4 Learning Project: Multimedia clips. As one of those approached, I travelled north last week (2nd and 3rd February 2010) to do some filming. It was an interesting process writing the scripts for the introduction sections on Information Literacy, Information Literacy in schools and Information Literacy in the workplace and then filming them. A new experience for both myself and the film crew (Sue Cromar and one of the network librarians whose name I have forgotten – my apologises to her). I now have a great respect for news readers, it is not as easy as it looks.

During my two day visit I also had a meeting with some of the Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service staff – Primary School Librarian and Early Years / Young People in Schools Librarian plus one of Aberdeenshires Literacy Development Officers (Katherine who is an English teacher on secondment). We had an interesting session where I shared information on the information literacy work I’m involved with specifically the LTS Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level) CPD Toolkit.

Katherine was amazed to hear that Aberdeenshire Library and Information Service is not just about books, they also have objects / educational tools – religious artefacts, puppets, costumes etc that teachers can use for lessons. As a teachers she is probably not alone in thinking that libraries are just about books. She was also not aware that tours of the service have been organised for probationer teachers and that several teachers have requested visits once they heard of the resources available from the probationer teachers. I made a note to myself to remember to include Library and Information Services as a resource for teachers in the Real and Relevant  CPD Toolkit.

Information Literacy in Junior (Primary) 1

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In December 2009 I spent the day in a Junior (Primary) 1 class as part of the work I’m doing for Learning and Teaching Scotland CfE Literacy Team – Real and Relevant – Information and Critical Literacy Skills for the 21st Century Learner’ (Early and First Level). The day was amazing with lots of information literacy activities based around some of the CfE learning outcomes and experiences. For example:

Finding and using information: Early Level

I listen or watch for useful or interesting information and I use this to make choices to learn new things. LIT 0.04a 

The children aged 5 years old listened to a chapter (chapter 4 I think) from a book about an owl finding out about night and darkness.

The book - The owl who was affraid of the dark The book – The owl who was affraid of the dark

They had to listened for a specific piece of information which they then had to remember. Questions were asked to ensure that they had heard and remembered it. Later on in the day they were each given a worksheet and had to draw a picture to represent what the chapter was all about. The teacher then went round each of them and asked them to complete a sentence with information they had heard. Some repeated the information exactly others put it into their own words. Whatever the child said the teacher transcribed it onto their worksheet.

Other examples of activities included:

  • selecting books in groups to find information about a particular night animal that the group had chosen i.e. a fox, badger, bat. Night animals and birds

With the help of the teacher reading the text the children decided on the 4 most important facts about the animal. Later each group told the rest of the class what they had found.

  • art of the week where they had to look at a picture of a piece of art Rodin’s Thinker and say what they thought it was about. It was amazing to see then looking at it, thinking about it and then giving their thoughts.

I could go on but will end there. My thanks to Mrs Lisa Bonar and her class at St Margaret’s School in Edinburgh for allowing me into their world. Discussions regrading the sort of things that would be useful to teachers regarding their own information literacy was also covered. It has certainly helped my thinking for the work ahead of me and I look forward to using this knowledge along with other experiences of Primary 2 and 3 to come in the new year.