Big6 and Information Literacy Skills

http://www.big6.com/2008/08/18/do-integrated-information-literacy-skills-affect-student-learning-enews-93-2/

In this article from the Big6 website there is a lengthy discussion about teaching students using the Big6 model for researach and its affect on both student achievement as well as student self esteem. I have spent quite a bit of time in the last few months studying the Big6 and am preparing to implement its concepts into my own classroom. I feel like its focus on student centered learning and also on investigation of a research question fits well with the topic of "teaching thinking" our chapters discussed this week.

Research is a frightening idea for students. One student once described it like learning to walk and then being thrown out into the middle of the Boston Marathon. Often times as teachers we just expect students to know how to look up information and to translate that into some kind of grand research project. When the fact is we have spent so much time telling students this is the question go here to find the answer we have almost crippled their ability to work independently of us much less think for themselves. Many students seem frightened to some extent when given any kind of freedom to think on their own.

The solution to some extent I think was answered in our chapter, by daily working to ask deeper more thought provoking questions and to ask students to really think about how they arrived at their conclusions leads them toward having the ability to be independant and critical thinkers.

My school has spent the better part of the last year trying to figure out the best "program" to help students learn to be better researchers, when in actuality there isn't any program out there that will be successful at teaching students to research until we teach students to think!