At the start of a research cycle, we generally gather and scan our resources. This means that we look across the available texts and begin to get a sense of what there is to know about this subject. You’ll probably want to sort the books you have into some cate- gories—though if your students are experienced social scientists, you could begin with all the texts in one place, and the students will sort them as they browse. For the first day or two, you’ll probably want to teach your students that researchers read fairly quickly, trying to get a broad overview of the topic at hand. It’s often helpful to start a
word chart for words related to this study—students can add to these teaching tools as they study, putting up information they feel would help the class, using index cards and markers.
For instance, after a first day of reading across some of the texts on European coun- tries, you could help children to notice how the books they read about countries often have similar subtopics. In addition to giving some facts about the country, such as major cities, population size, and population statistics, they often talk about daily life, food, his- tory, sports, government, and culture. In clubs, children will be reading about these dif- ferent aspects of countries and can discuss what they learn, bringing forward all they know about powerful nonfiction reading. As they read, coach your readers to draw on strategies that served them well when reading nonfiction in the past, such as noting big ideas and comparing and contrasting. This would certainly be a good time to pull out some of the charts you created earlier in the year to support nonfiction reading work.
In these early, collective inquiry stages, teach your students that vocabulary and con- cepts that appear in more than one text, or in more than one place in a text, are prob- ably important. Remind them that right now, we want to get a lot of reading done, so we’re not stopping to write lots of notes in our notebooks—instead, we’re using Post- its to mark information that might be important, going on and reading more, and then sharing our findings at the end of class. You may need to reteach a quick lesson on how to sort texts from easier to harder, which readers should do quickly with a partner before choosing a text to read. By this time of year, though, readers don’t necessarily have to begin with the easiest available text—instead, they can look across the texts, fig- ure out where they, as readers, are on that continuum of difficulty, and get started there. Teach your readers to use the strategies they already know—to quickly walk through a book, looking at how it is organized, at how much white space there is, at how dense the text is, at how much the vocabulary is explained, and to start with a book they can read comfortably. Partners may share books, reading silently, pausing briefly to syn- thesize, scribbling very quick Post-its as they go, saving big conversation until they have read lots of pages. However, stress that this time is about reading the words and synthesizing the information in the words with other text features and pictures on the page, not just for perusing interesting photographs.
If you haven’t already taught your children how to make on-the-run teaching tools for a classroom study, take a moment to model how to use an index card or Post-it, and markers or pencils to swiftlycontribute to the classroom word charts, time lines, and so on. These types of visuals will support the Common Core State Standard of interpreting visual representations of information and realizing how the information contributes to the understanding of a topic. A group that is studying art in Italy might have a card that says: “Uffizi—famous museum in Florence.” Another partnership might add on to this card with a Post-it, saying: “Old museum—has Renaissance paintings!” A group that is studying people might dash up and put a Post-it on the map that has the words: “Rome—Vatican—where Pope lives.”
Meanwhile, during read-aloud, you might choose both narrative and nonfiction texts, and perhaps some primary documents. This work will assist in the Common Core
State Standards’ supported skill of drawing central ideas and information from primary and secondary sources. After each read-aloud experience, add to your learning tools— kids will stop and jot as you read, and then at the end of the read-aloud they could add names, places, events, and so forth to your charts in the room. As you read aloud, model how you make connections between what you are studying and what you have previously studied as a class. You’ll want to emphasize how the new information you are collecting is adding to the knowledge you already had. As the Common Core State Standards remind us, students should be able to summarize new information they are collecting and distinguish new information from prior knowledge or opinions. For example, if you’re learning about the cultures of Italy and England, you may want to encourage students to make connections between what they are learning and what they already knew about these places.
By Day 4 or so, you’ll guide student groups to pay attention to specific aspects of Italy and England. You will show them how to break apart a topic into smaller, more spe- cialized, and more manageable subtopics. For instance, you’ll gather students together and say, “Readers, for the last two days we’ve taken a survey course on Italy and England. We’ve been working hard to get a broad overview of these countries. I noticed that a lot of you were reading, talking, and writing about different ideas that you are learning about both countries. It made me realize that this might be a time where we can break down this big topic and begin to research smaller topics to be able to do a better job comparing and contrasting—for example, the culture of Italy and England, the geography, or even study the differences between the urban and rural communi- ties within each country.”
Encourage students to keep up their reading strategies, like using Post-its to mark information that might be important or keeping track of names that repeat or specific dates that begin a chapter or paragraph. We know that if students are reading about the music of Italy, they are probably going to hear the names Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli again and again. This is something to draw students’ attention to as they read, to find important information by looking for names or ideas that repeat.