A Curriculum Built Not to Last

Doug Johnson -- School Library Journal, 4/1/1999

Illustration by Joan Hall

Three years ago, when our school district's media and technology advisory committee asked us -- nine media specialists and myself -- to create an information-literacy curriculum, we knew it would be anything but easy. For starters, we knew it would take loads of time and involve lots of research, meetings, and discussions. We also knew from past experience that to create a truly successful curriculum, we would need to involve a troupe of administrators, teachers, and parents in its creation. And we realized sadly that in little less than a decade, our existing library- and technology-skills curriculum had become a dusty fossil.

Back in 1995, our nine elementary schools (with 3,600 students and a staff of 200 teachers and librarians) were following learning guidelines that had been developed in the mid- to late '80s BC (Before Cyberspace): before our schools were connected to the Internet, before the libraries had been automated, before we had installed electronic references, and before most teachers realized that students learn best when skills are taught as part of the classroom's content areas (rather than being taught in isolation in the school library).

And there was another factor fueling our desire to revamp the curriculum: our home state of Minnesota had recently passed standards requiring students to be information and computer literate in order to graduate. Yes, it was time to overhaul the old curriculum.

A Curriculum Called Agatha
At one of our first brainstorming sessions, the library media specialists and I decided that our K-6 media/technology curriculum would have the following learning outcomes, or goals:

• The curriculum would require students to use a variety of different media and formats.
• We would teach technology skills using software that was available to all of our students and teachers district-wide.
• Information literacy skills (rather than "library skills") would enable our students to learn how to find information and how to use it.
• Research would encourage students to use higher-level, critical thinking skills, which, we hoped, would combat both boredom and plagiarism.
• Skills and projects would be integrated into the classroom's content areas, and units would be team-taught by librarians and teachers.
• The projects would be assessed using "real world" devices such as checklists and conferences, and our assessment tools would serve as models for evaluating other areas of the curriculum.
• Above all, we wanted to make sure that what our students were learning was meaningful to them.
• We also decided that our future curriculum needed a friendly, easy-to-remember handle. I decided to nickname it "Agatha," after the late English novelist (and information-solving specialist) Agatha Christie.

Our elementary school librarians, as well as the computer coordinator and I, were involved in every step of Agatha's creation -- all nine of them. Additionally, a group of administrators, teachers, and parents from the school district's media advisory committee helped during the first three steps.

1. Identify Current Skills
Our first step was to examine the current curriculum, as well as some exemplary models used by other school districts, to make sure we didn't leave out an essential skill. Then, we carefully formulated the technology and information-literacy skills, using clear, concise language, and included a minimum of one observable learning outcome with each skill, such as locating the media center's fiction and reference sections, or being able to recommend books to others.

Then, we selected software programs for each grade that could be run on all of our district's computers, and we made sure the district could afford the licensing fees. Our software list for grades K-6 was relatively short and included ClarisWorks; the Writing Center; HyperStudio; KidPix; Cruncher; Eudora; Netscape; the online library catalog; an electronic, age-appropriate magazine index; the networked version of World Book Encyclopedia; an electronic dictionary; and a typing tutorial program. While I am not endorsing any of these products -- I am sure that others could be substituted successfully -- we have been very happy with them.

2. Select an Information-Processing Model
Next, we examined a number of popular information-processing models developed by the American Association of School Librarians and the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado. But we ended up choosing the Big Six model, written by Michael B. Eisenberg and Robert Berkowitz, because it was simple to understand and comprehensive.

The model's six components are: (1) task definition; (2) information-seeking strategies; (3) location and access; (4) use of information; (5) synthesis; and (6) evaluation. (For more information on the Big Six skills approach to information problem solving, see the World Wide Web at www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC-Digests/ed392463.html.) The Big Six also provides good supplementary materials, such as an electronic mailing list, a Web site, and a newsletter. And permission to use the model is free and easy to obtain. In retrospect, the Big Six model has proven to be a good choice for us.

3. Group Skills Within the Model
Our final task before conferring with classroom teachers was to organize and group the laundry list of skills that we had selected. This proved to be surprisingly easy, since most of the skills fit naturally into the Big Six's framework.

As we categorized the skills, we discovered there were some serious omissions in our planning. For example, we found that we had not provided students with ample opportunities to learn how to determine their own information needs or to evaluate their projects. And we realized that we needed to take a careful look at our approach to designing research topics to make sure our students would find the assignments interesting. (Consulting Bloom's Taxonomy of Higher Level Thinking Skills proved to be a help.) A record of our information-literacy guidelines, may be found on the Web at www.isd77.k12.mn.us/resources/infocurr/infolit.html.

(Michael Eisenberg, one of the Big Six's authors, and I also developed a curriculum similar to, but more comprehensive than, the Big Six model that groups technology skills. It's available on the Web at www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed392463.html.)

4. Identify Areas in the Curriculum for Integration
By the beginning of our project's second year, we had accomplished as much as we could without major collaboration with our teachers. Since we hoped to create a uniform, district-wide curriculum, we knew it was essential to meet with at least one teacher per grade, from each of our schools. That meant we needed to schedule meetings with at least 63 teachers. To keep the meetings productive (and manageable), the library media specialists and I decided to meet with the teachers one grade level at a time. We scheduled the meetings to take place over the course of two mornings.

The first morning was devoted to familiarizing the teachers with the concept of information literacy and with the Big Six model. The best way to accomplish this, we reasoned, was to assign the teachers a series of projects to complete. The assignments included choosing a movie, planning a vacation, organizing a Thanksgiving dinner for a visiting family of Buddhists, and helping a son or daughter decide whether to purchase a business. Each of these projects required teachers to design a good research question, identify needed information, determine sources of information, and so on -- in other words, to experience firsthand what it was like working with information-literacy skills and the Big Six model.

On the second morning, the teachers worked with us to create curriculum maps, or brief outlines of the major study units for each grade. A common complaint among elementary school teachers has been that there is too much content to teach successfully in any one grade. Knowing that, we integrated information-literacy skills into preexisting study units (rather than adding more content, such as an extra unit on animals, for third graders). In less than an hour per grade, we were able to create simple curriculum maps that showed what was actually being taught in the classrooms.

We were also careful to add information-literacy skills and projects solely to those content areas that were weak. This was important because we didn't want to run the risk of weakening some of our stronger units -- we wanted to make sure we improved them.

5. Brainstorm Projects
As part of our planning, we began to brainstorm for projects that could take the place of traditional written reports. It didn't take long before we had generated a list, which included:

• crossword puzzles
• short stories
• games
• videotapes
• models
• drawings
• audiotapes
• slide shows
• advertisements
• multimedia shows
• puppet shows

6. Identify Necessary Resources
Now that we had an idea of the content we wanted our students to learn and the projects we expected them to complete, we needed to identify the additional technical resources they would need. We realized that the available resources would determine which projects could be implemented immediately and which would need to be phased in slowly. (For example, how could we expect all of our sixth graders to complete a multimedia project if there were no multimedia software and only 10 computers available?)

Another important resource that we examined was the skill level of our teaching staff. As we reviewed the projects we hoped to offer, we realized that some of our staff would need more training in certain areas. While most teachers could, say, help students with word processing, e-mail, and graphics tasks, only a handful felt comfortable using hypermedia, databases, and spreadsheets. As it turned out, our library media specialists stepped in and taught the newer, more complex technology skills. And as the library media specialists taught, many of the teachers were able to observe and learn, along with their students.

7. Develop Assessment Tools
We wanted to move beyond traditional paper-and-pencil tests and, instead, allow students to demonstrate actual working knowledge of the skills they had been taught. In order to do this, we created a new set of assessment tools, including checklists and rating scales.

Describing student learning outcomes in concrete, observable language was ultimately one of our greatest challenges -- but well worth the effort. Now, even our youngest students are able to use checklists to evaluate their progress on projects. And our teachers and library media specialists have become genuine leaders, devising powerful assessment techniques and sharing their experiences with other educators in our region.

8. Develop a Record-Keeping and Reporting System
We realized, of course, that we needed to share the results of our assessments with students and their parents. So, we added a new media/technology skills section to our computerized elementary-school progress reports. Initially, we had planned to report on 10 separate skill areas for each student, but this proved to be far too demanding for our library media specialists, who work with up to 600 students a year.

This year we will be assessing four major skill areas: research and inquiry skills, lifelong reading behaviors, appropriate-use of resources, and technology skills. Each skill has its own grade-appropriate, curriculum-related learning outcomes, or benchmarks (see "Agatha's Technology Skills" below for some specific examples). The benchmarks are important, especially for letting parents know how well their children are doing and what skills they are expected to master. Our next step will be to evaluate the data on a building- and district-wide basis, and report the results of how well the students are doing to our school board and community.

9. Review and Revise
It's unlikely that we'll be growing complacent any time in the near future. During our third year we kept busy making sure that our teaching units and projects addressed our state's new graduation standards. And since our technology and information-literacy skills are linked to what's taught in the classroom, any time there is a significant change in course content, our information-literacy curriculum will also need to change.

President Woodrow Wilson once remarked, "It's easier to move a cemetery than to change a curriculum." We've never relocated a cemetery. But we can confidently state one thing: creating an information-literacy curriculum keeps you constantly on your toes.

Doug Johnson is director of media and technology at Mankato Area Public Schools in Minnesota. His latest book is The Indispensable Teacher's Guide to Computer Skills (Linworth, 1998).

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