Action Taken

Intervention

Due to the incompletion of the first ILA, the discussion relating to what action was taken to improve learning will focus on the second ILA.
  
One of the six principles of Kuhlthau’s Guided Inquiry model is that children require assistance at critical points in the inquiry process in order to construct meaning and develop higher-order thinking skills (Kuhlthau, Maniotes & Caspari, 2007).  Unfortunately due to the time framework of the learning inquiry activity, action was not able to be taken as a direct result of the information gained from Reflection Sheet 1. However, the teacher had observed several areas that the students were struggling with, such as developing sub-questions, finding suitable websites and bibliographies. Wilson & Wing Jan (2009) state that teachers "are active in supporting, scaffolding and intervening in timely ways to guide students..." and "may need to provide specific teaching sessions to explicitly teach skills ......... to meet the requirements."

According to the unit planner, the students were immersed in various aspects of the Industrial Revolution for 9 x 60 minutes lesson. The initial lesson suggested the viewing of a video (4 minutes) to tune the students in. The following lessons were not as specific in identifying resource material or pedagogy, but indicated copying information.  When partaking in various other units in this subject area, over a number of years, I have often observed that the students are given handouts or textbooks to read, summarise and answer questions from; asked to copy notes from OHTs or powerpoints; or view videos of questionable quality. Some students commented in Reflection Sheet 1 that their class notes were one their main sources of information. The focus of the 10^th class session was to develop an understanding of how to present and structure a bibliography, as well as differentiating between primary and secondary sources.

As mentioned earlier, the current teacher was not involved with the tuning in, or initiation phase, of the students in Industrial Revolution. The teacher was also constrained by the time frame of the assessment piece. However, the teacher had noted a lack of understanding by the students, when she took over the class and planned for some lesson time to extend their knowledge and understanding. This was very teacher directed. She lamented that she wished she had more time to immerse the students in the Industrial Revolution before they began their assessment piece.

The teacher observed that the students were struggling to research the inquiry question. The assessment inquiry (Figure 1) was scaffolded, however the students were overwhelmed with the big question, and were unsure of where to start. The teacher provided the class with a handout scaffolding sub-questions for the students. The teacher modelled the process and assisted students, where necessary in developing their subtopic questions to support the main question.

Due to the time factor and information skills of the students, the teacher provided some websites to assist the students in their inquiry. I was also able to provide assistance with search engines, online resources and search strategies such as key words and Boolean Logic.

Research Assignment- Was the Industrial Revolution Good for the World? Task: Produce a multimodal presentation that assesses the short and long term effects of a significant aspect of the Industrial Revolution (your choice of topics is below). Your multimodal presentation must combine three of the following elements: text, images, video, and music. Answer the following: To what extent did the changes in (insert aspect of the Industrial Revolution) in (Britain, Europe or USA) have a positive/negative impact on (insert aspect to be assessed) from 1750 to 1900? Choose one aspect of the Industrial Revolution to investigate: •       Communication such as telegraph, telephone or newspapers •       Transportation such as canals, roads, railways or ships •       Industry such as textiles, metallurgy (steel), mining or chemical (phosphorus) •       Agriculture such as a farming technique, invention or process (e.g. selective breeding) Then assess its short term and long term impact on two of the following: •       Society generally (e.g. movement of people, settlement, urbanisation) •       Economy (e.g. national wealth, banking, trade) •       Environment (e.g. pollution — air/water quality) •       Education (e.g. importance, literacy levels, public versus private education) •       Quality of life (e.g. working conditions) •       Family life (e.g. size, structure and relationships) •       Housing (e.g. styles, quality, size, sanitation and safety) •       Warfare (e.g. munitions and machines of war) Conditions: ·         3 weeks’ notice of task ·         You will have class lessons and homework time for research and production ·         2 to 3 minute multimodal presentation accompanied by a referenced script of 400 to 600 words ·         Bibliography – provide a minimum of six reliable source ·         Hand in all drafts, completed copy of your assignment, research notes and task sheet on the due date.

Figure 1

References:

Kuhlthau, C.C., Maniotes, L.K., and Caspari, A.K. (2007). Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century, Westport: Libraries Unlimited. Chapter 2: The Theory and Research Basis for Guided Inquiry

Wilson, J & Wing Jan, L 2009, Focus on Inquiry: a practical approach to curriculum planning, 2nd ed., Curriculum Corporation, Carlton South.