Ah, the search process

This is the point when I begin to web together my search stategy for my inquiry process. I am realizing as I am doing this that I am a lot more organized at this point than I would expect to be because of the amount of time I spent getting to this point. Typicically I would quickly select a topic and search strategy and spend most of my time looking for information, being redirected by new search terms, and distracted by ideas that I hadn't considered before related to my topic. Now I am realizing this is exactly what we have been asking our students to do. In many ways my search trategy has not evolved too much since fourth grade, my resources are just more sofisticated. I am now prepared for the process of webbing and compare this to Kuhlthau's stage of "forming focus." I am predicticting an outcome of a student research project centered around the issue of social justice. I am considering a theme of "Issues of Social Justice" and introducing through powerpoint pictures combined with storytelling. The introduction will include modeling of a discussion between collaborating teacher and I, where students will be active listeners.

My take off point for "webbing" includes the following areas: looking for other elementary lesson plans related to social justice, looking for stories about ordinary (not famous) people who take action in social justice, looking for specific issues related to social justice thinking about ways to give students lot of examples, thinking about providing time for discussion before topic selection as well as during the research process and how those discussions will be modeled, organized, and guided.

I have been collecting resources and thinking about them and am exited to begin usin them to develop a project in "examining social justice in a fifth grade classroom".

Pamela