Big6 Library Research

I spent twenty minutes yesterday teaching the staff about Big6. For the uninitiated, Big6 is a research model for students that teaches them how to do research in six relatively painless steps.

I started with the teachers yesterday. On Friday I will be teaching two classes from our sixth grade academy and then in January I will teach the rest of the school.

I think, given the make-up of my school, this could be very successful for students. We do not have a student body where you can just tell them to do a research project and they can produce something of value.

What that means to me is that we need to teach those skills, and importantly, it is part of the standards for library media teachers to do so.

For the presentation, I used one of the available PowerPoint presentations on the Big6 website, but then I modified it. They had a six-slide PP and I made it twelve by inserting examples of what it actually looks like. Helpful for the teachers, but also helpful for the students.

It went reasonably well. I was supposed to have a little more time that I did, so I had to rush a little (which is not always a good thing), but it was adequate. I will be doing some serious follow-up including in-classroom demonstrations and in-LMC mini-lessons.