This document discusses essential questions and information literacy models. It defines essential questions as open-ended questions that have no right answer and promote deeper thinking about a topic. Supporting questions provide background to guide work on a unit, while unit questions frame specific inquiries to uncover an essential question. The document lists qualities of effective essential questions and provides examples. It also briefly describes several prominent information literacy models, including the Big6 approach. The goal is to help students learn to ask their own essential questions to guide research and ensure their work goes beyond simply summarizing facts.

1. DIPTL P096Information Literacy Lesson 4Information Literacy Models - an overview of the development of information literacy instruction including related theoretical issues and programmes in school libraries

4. “Questions and questioning may be the most powerful technologies of all.”—Jamie McKenzie in Beyond Technology

5. Essential Questions!

7. Essential Questioning“Questions and questioning may be the most powerful technologies of all.The results of your research should be more than just a regurgitation of the facts or a summary of other people’s ideas. They should be based on new ideas, explanation, analysis, and evaluation. The best way to insure that your work is thoughtful and original is to pose an essential question and supporting questions for inquiry once you decide on a topic of study.-- Jamie McKenzie in Beyond Technology

8. Essential Questions…Have no right answerCan be answered by all students.Enable all students to learn.Involve thinking, not just answering.Make students investigators.Are provocative -- they hook students into wanting to learnOffer a sense of adventure, are fun to explore and try to answer.Require students to connect learning from several disciplinesChallenge students to demonstrate that they understand the relationship between what they are learning and larger world issues.Enable students to begin from their own past experience or understanding.Nido de Aguilas 2003 * created by Shari Barnhart 2001

9. Supporting questions work with the essential question to provide background and guide the work on a particular unit of study. tend to be more topic- and subject-specific. provide subject- and topic-specific doorways to essential questions.

10. Unit questions frame a specific set of inquiries; they are designed to point to and uncover the essential question through the lens of particular topics and subjects.

11. Qualities of Essential questionsThey point to the heart of a subject or topic, especially its controversies.They generate multiple plausible answers, perspectives, and research directions-leading to other questions.They cast old knowledge, ideas, text in a new light; they make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.They lead to discovery and uncoverage, as opposed to “coverage.” This means that you don‘t need to know all the information on a particular topic, but know essential information well. Less is more. Less is better. Go in-depth in your study instead of trying to cover a topic that is too broad.Essential questions engender further and deepening interest in the subject.They are provocative, enticing, and engagingly framed.Essential questions are higher-order, in Bloom‘s sense: they are always matters of analysis, synthesis and evaluative judgment. You must “go beyond” the information given.Answers to essential questions cannot be found. They must be invented.

12. Examples of essential questionsWhat would life in America be like today if the two World Wars had not been fought?How might our lives be different if the general election took place in Hong Kong?How do we learn about American life through fiction?What is poverty?Who is an American?How have attitudes of the Hong Kong people been influenced by cinema over time?Is Chinese history a history of progress?

13. It would be best if students could learn to frame their own essential questions, but in most cases they will require several experiences with teacher generated questions before they can shed years of practice with trivial information-gathering questions.

15. Information Literacy modelsInfo Literacy models from Shambleshttp://www.shambles.net/pages/learning/infolit/InfoLitMod/Info literacy model from NSW:http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/schoollibraries/teachingideas/isp/index.htmThe “Big6™” is copyright © (1987) Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert E. Berkowitz. For more information, visit: http://www.big6.com/kids/

16. Big6 handhoutsAvailable at: http://www.big6.com/go/wp-content/2008/02/Big6Handouts.pdf

17. Comparison of IL modelshttp://eduscapes.com/tap/topic71model.jpg

18. Source: http://www.infopeople.org/training/past/2004/k12infolit/handout_infolitmodels.pdf

19. School Library ProgramExample