Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing Welcome to the age of images.The signs are everywhere—for those who can read them. 1 Lynell Burmark As adults we browse by flicking through a book or magazine or surfing the internet for informa- tion. When browsing in this way, we often glean information from the visual parts of a text and bits of the writing, especially headings and captions. While we process wrien text sequentially, we take in all the data from an image simultaneously, so we process visuals 60,000 times faster than we process wrien text. 2 Thus, if we are too busy to read a full news story, we use photo- graphs and captions to get a snapshot of the current event. Young children naturally engage in browsing, too. Emergent readers may look at both the graph- ic and wrien parts of a text, while those who aren’t yet reading look mainly at the graphic parts. Children under the age of 5 can work out ways to interpret images, that is, to read visual texts. Therefore, it is arguably even more important for younger children and those who have diffi- culty decoding wrien text to access and focus on visual images as a way of inquiring—this is the main way they gain information from texts. Inquiring through browsing photographs During a unit of inquiry* about homes, with the central idea* that all people need a home to provide for their basic needs, a group of boys aged 6 to 7 were independently browsing a series of large photographs. They chose to focus on a photograph showing a Samoan village, and the following conversation ensued. Simon: There’s no food. Chris: They could fish. They could go fishing. Eddie: They could make a fire. Simon: They could rub sticks together and fire would come out. Lucas: Get a stick, put fish on the stick and cook it. In this case, the photograph was a provocation* for the children’s conversation. It enabled them to make connections and draw inferences about what people might eat in this part of Samoa. It also allowed them to explore collaboratively. Their conversation made their thinking visible. Unit of inquiry Central idea: All people need a home to provide for their basic needs Transdisciplinary theme: Where we are in place and time Key concepts: Form, connection, responsibility Related concepts: Needs/wants, belonging, similarities/differences Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
Transcript
Chapter 3:Inquiring through
browsing and viewingWelcome to the age of images. The signs are everywhere—for those who can read them.1
Lynell Burmark
As adults we browse by flicking through a book or magazine or surfing the internet for informa-tion. When browsing in this way, we often glean information from the visual parts of a text and bits of the writing, especially headings and captions. While we process written text sequentially, we take in all the data from an image simultaneously, so we process visuals 60,000 times faster than we process written text.2 Thus, if we are too busy to read a full news story, we use photo-graphs and captions to get a snapshot of the current event.
Young children naturally engage in browsing, too. Emergent readers may look at both the graph-ic and written parts of a text, while those who aren’t yet reading look mainly at the graphic parts.Children under the age of 5 can work out ways to interpret images, that is, to read visual texts. Therefore, it is arguably even more important for younger children and those who have diffi-culty decoding written text to access and focus on visual images as a way of inquiring—this is the main way they gain information from texts.
Inquiring through browsing photographs
During a unit of inquiry* about homes, with the central idea* that all people need a home to provide for their basic needs, a group of boys aged 6 to 7 were independently browsing a series of large photographs. They chose to focus on a photograph showing a Samoan village, and the following conversation ensued.
Simon: There’s no food.Chris: They could fish. They could go fishing.Eddie: They could make a fire.Simon: They could rub sticks together and fire
would come out.Lucas: Get a stick, put fish on the stick and cook
it.
In this case, the photograph was a provocation* for the children’s conversation. It enabled them to make connections and draw inferences about what people might eat in this part of Samoa. It also allowed them to explore collaboratively. Their conversation made their thinking visible.
Unit of inquiry
Central idea: All people need a home to provide for their basic needs
Transdisciplinary theme: Where we are in place and time
Key concepts: Form, connection, responsibility
Related concepts: Needs/wants, belonging, similarities/differences
Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
50 Ways to Learn Through Inquiry: Guiding Children to Deeper Understanding
In this unit of inquiry about homes, in which I participated as a teacher-researcher, there was an emphasis on inquiring through browsing. The children browsed photographs, books, maps, at-lases, globes and other materials to glean information. Many of the visual materials came from the children and their families. The teachers also worked with the teacher-librarians over several years to collate an extensive collection of photographs of homes. The photographs were selected to feature people and their homes in both rural and urban settings, locally and globally, and care was taken to avoid images that were stereotypical or outdated. The teachers called this exhibi-tion of visual texts a “gallery”, and the children were able to browse and discuss in small groups, alone or with a teacher.
Browsing images is a very direct way of inquiring. We found that children often spontaneously posed questions while looking at these visual texts. When a group of boys viewed a photograph of people in Northern Thailand, two boys spontaneously posed questions and the other boys responded.
Ethan: How do they keep alive?Chris: They could climb a tree and pick coconuts
and drink coconut milk.Sam: They might eat turkey.Chris: Is that a turkey or a chicken?Ethan: I think it’s a chicken.Sam: They could make a bonfire to cook.Ethan: There’s plenty of wood.
Supporting inquiry by providing prompts
Not all browsing is so effective. Young children sometimes browse superficially. We have all seen children flick through something and say, “Finished!” We know that it usually takes a little longer to absorb the full thousand words that a pic-ture is metaphorically worth! How long they stay with a text depends, of course, on what children are browsing and whether they find it interesting.
One way to invite children to dwell longer on an image is to prompt with open-ended questions, such as, “What do you notice?”.3 During a browsing session in this class, the teacher and I moved around the room watching and listening. One group of boys wasn’t sure what to look for. I had heard the teacher talk about identifying the features of the homes, the resources used to build them and how people live, so I joined in to prompt as follows.
Teacher-researcher: What do you notice about the home?Sam: The house is built on stilts.Teacher-researcher: Do you notice anything else?
Inquiry strategy
Display visual texts in a gallery—a designated space in the classroom.
Keep visual materials brought in by children prominent in the display.
Children browse visual texts at special browsing times and choose texts that interest them.
Variations:
Create folders for digital images relevant to each unit of inquiry; children take their own photographs and/or locate and download digital images and add them to the folder.
Assessment strategy
Teacher moves around the room—listening, observing and providing prompts where necessary.
Ask open-ended questions such as, “What do you notice about …?” and, “What information does the photo give you about …?”
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing 51
Chris: It has coconut palm leaves for the roof.Teacher-researcher: Uh-huh.Ethan: And a balcony and walls.Sam: How do the coconut palms stay on the roof?Ethan: They probably put them together and tie them with rope.Sam: How do the huts survive earthquakes?
This led to a discussion about where earthquakes occur and whether there could be an earth-quake in Samoa. One of the boys fetched an atlas and I helped the group to look up where Samoa was located. This created an opportunity for me to introduce the idea that some countries are more prone to earthquakes than others. Although it has taken me a while to learn to ask open-ended questions, I was pleased that this strategy proved effective.
Teaching children to read a visual text
One of the teachers had learned about children reading visual material while attending a workshop about the Reggio Emilia philosophy*.4 She thought the idea would catch on with the young children in her class who were learning to read written texts. The teacher called the children to the meeting area and each child sat cross-legged in a semicircle, so they could see each other, the teacher and the flip chart.
She explained that they would be reading a photo-graph of homes in Madras in India and that this meant looking at the details closely, just as they would when reading words. The photograph was passed around the group while one of the boys talked about how he had lived in India. He said, “I didn’t live in these houses but I lived in a house with a garden at the top. There were lots of houses close by.” As the children viewed the photograph, the teacher posed the question, “How do people live in this part of India?” The teacher asked the children to look closely at the homes and tell the group what they saw. One child responded, “There is a fence on the edge of the roof to stop people falling off the roof.”
The teacher followed up on this comment by prompting the discussion with other questions about the shape of the roof and why the children in the photograph were playing on the roof. Again, she emphasized looking at the details. The teacher scribed the boys’ responses with their initials next to them. The responses included the following observations.
Chris: There are no gardens here and the roof is flat. There are not many windows.Will: The homes have flat roofs for the children to play on top. They don’t have many win-
dows because it is a hot place. There are heaps of homes that are crowded together because it is a busy place and there are lots of people.
Josh: Children play on the roof because it is the only place they can go.
Inquiry strategy
Choose a relevant photograph and pose a question about it to promote children’s thinking.
Write the question at the top of the flip chart. After showing the photograph, place it on the flip chart.
Scribe children’s comments with their initials next to each one.
Variations:
Children write or draw their responses to a photograph; use the interactive whiteboard for viewing an image and type comments next to it.
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
52 Ways to Learn Through Inquiry: Guiding Children to Deeper Understanding
Tim: The children must play inside or on the roof.Ray: There is not very much space.Tom: The rooms look small because the walls are small.
Reading a photograph provided many insights about these types of homes and the way the peo-ple lived. The teacher skillfully kept the discussion going until the children’s comments indi-cated that they were observing in greater depth and reflecting on what they observed.
Developing a culture of active listening
Teachers know how hard it can be for young children to wait for their turn to speak and hold a thought in their mind that they are bursting to tell us about. The turn-taking in the previous example was possible because in this class the children had learned to listen to each other’s com-ments and wait for their turn to contribute. Even though the children were obviously eager to speak, there was no frantic raising of hands and calling out. This degree of self-management was the result of a culture of active listening that was fostered by the teachers over time.
Developing a culture of active listening is an essential part of learning through collaborative inquiry*. The skills required to be an active listener include:
These skills are often referred to as executive func-tion*, and they are proven indicators of academic achievement.5
One of the ways these teachers encouraged self-management was through class agreements. Just as teachers develop classroom agreements for being safe and getting along, these teachers also guided the children to consider how they could show they were interested in others’ perspectives. Through role play the children demonstrated the body lan-guage they use when they are not attentive and when they are (this was fun!). They role-played the positive comments they could make to encourage other children to contribute, which was powerful. I subsequently observed children responding with eye contact and attentive posture when listening to other children’s perspectives and comments.
These and other ideas were formulated as agreements to be followed during discussion times. Sometimes the teacher or the children read the agreements out loud as a reminder. The listening and speaking skills the children learned in the whole group had a positive impact on their ability to work in pairs and triads.
Inquiry strategy
Formulate class agreements about discussion.
Role-play class agreements.
Display class agreements and refer to them each time there is a class discussion.
Call upon children to contribute rather than calling on those who put their hands up. Give them the option of commenting.
Assessment strategy
Have children self-assess using a rubric about listening and speaking.
Ask children to draw what attentive listeners and speakers do.
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing 53
Obviously if children haven’t been involved in this kind of discussion before, it may take time for them to learn to listen to and value other children’s perspectives. The teacher always com-plimented the children for listening, for showing body language that indicated they were listen-ing, and for contributing positively to the group discussion. This doesn’t mean that the teachers didn’t sometimes shorten discussion time and move on to hands-on investigations when they realized that attention was waning.
Inquiring through browsing books
In my class of 5 year olds we began a unit of inquiry about materials, with a central idea that how hu-mans use and dispose of materials can have an im-pact on the natural environment. First we gathered many texts and other resources. After browsing in-formation texts and talking about what constitutes a material—such as plastic, metal, wood and rub-ber—the children started searching at home for items to put in their discovery boxes*. The children loved collecting things and soon we had two
Unit of inquiry
Central idea: How humans use and dispose of materials can have an impact on the natural environment
• Set up a gallery, where texts and photographs are displayed and stored invitingly on shelves and book stands.
• Use floor space for displaying resources for browsing (as seen in Photos 3.9 and 3.10, later in this chapter).
• Use baskets—which save space and are easily transportable—to store visual materials and books (see Photo 3.1).
• The children can sort the texts into different baskets—such as storybooks, information books, photographs, self-published books, songbooks—and label them. In this way they know where to find and return texts, and they can work out where to put additional texts.
• Use folders to store photos in plastic sleeves.
• Use maps and globes that have lots of visual images and icons for young children to read. Store these in a place where children can always access them.
• Depending on your resources, set up digital devices for browsing.
Photo 3.1: Browsing baskets
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
54 Ways to Learn Through Inquiry: Guiding Children to Deeper Understanding
displays—one of books, as shown in Photo 3.2, and one of the children’s boxes. The displays were dy-namic because they changed every day, as the chil-dren discovered more natural and human-made materials and more related texts.
The children were provided with many opportuni-ties to browse the books and resources, especially at the beginning of the unit of inquiry. During this immersion the children had spontaneous questions and wonderings that I recorded on chart paper.
Each day we investigated the building site at school. The children found materials, such as wood shav-ings, wood chips, sawdust and pieces of bitumen. We informally interviewed the workers and the site manager on the building site and asked how the waste materials would be disposed of, as well as finding out about their steel-capped boots and hard hats and why they have them.
During this time, the children had many questions and wonderings. Bonita (5), for example, asked, “What is a hard hat made of that makes it so hard?” The children thought it was perhaps made of hard plastic, but Bonita found a photograph of a hard hat when she was looking through a book about glass. She tagged the page with a sticky note and asked me to read it. When I said that Bonita had found the answer to her question in the book about glass
the children laughed and said that the hat couldn’t be made of glass. I read that it was made of fibreglass and we found out that this was a very strong material.
Browsing books with interesting visual images
Books with lots of interesting visual images are often interesting for younger children to browse because the illustrations “tell the story”. For example, there was a group of children who loved the big book The Paper Skyscraper: The technology of materials, which I had read to them.6 The book takes a humorous approach to serious science content and helped answer the question “What different kinds of materials are there?” Initially I judged the text and some of the concepts in it as too difficult for children aged 5 to understand, but their response to it was overwhelmingly positive. The absurdity of some of the visual images, such as a rubber bridge, made them shriek with laughter, and they enjoyed lifting the flaps to reveal information about materials. They had been learning a lot about materials and this book not only captured their imagination but stretched it.
Inquiry strategy
Ask the children to display books and artifacts for browsing and viewing.
Ask each child to collect resources from home that are relevant to the unit of inquiry and put them in discovery boxes, which are also displayed.
Provide time for children to browse, view and investigate—to become immersed.
Provide opportunities to share in pairs.
Photo 3.2: Display of browsing resources relating to materials
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
Chapter 3: Inquiring through browsing and viewing 55
Whenever they browsed the book each one of them remembered different parts of it and they helped each other to read the illustrations and words. Here are some of the comments I heard while four children, as shown in Photo 3.3, browsed both the visual and written parts of the text.
Darren: Oh no, it’s a rubber ladder! He’s falling off the ladder! (Laughs)
Harrison: There’s no such thing as a rubber ladder!
Darren: Hey, let’s look for the rub-ber bridge. (They find it and laugh)
Freddy: Hey, the rubber would break. It would go twisty turny.
Darren: Look at the wooden blan-ket! (Laughs) If you had a wooden blanket you’d have to climb out where your head is. (Laughs)
Teacher-researcher: Why?Darren: Because it’s nailed down (Shows me the illustration of a nailed-down blanket
and laughs)Harrison: Jo, what does this say? (He reads) “And it is tran ...” (He hesitates)Teacher-researcher: Keep sounding it out. Tran … s ...Harrison: Trans … p-a-r-e-n-t. Transparent! (Smiles at his efforts)Teacher-researcher: Do you know what that means?Henry: You can see on the other side.Demetria: That’s transparent. (Points to a glass panel in a door) That’s glass. (Hurries
over to the glass and taps it)Freddy: That can’t be glass cos it doesn’t break easily.Demetria: It is glass!Freddy: It’s plastic!Demetria: No, it’s glass!Teacher-researcher: How can we test it to see?Darren: We’d have to break it and we don’t want to do that!Harrison: (Lifts up the flap in the book) It says glass! Glass is trans-par-ent.
Browsing the book was an effective way of inquiring into the properties and uses of materials, which was one of the lines of inquiry* in the unit. Because the children were presented with absurd possibilities, it helped me to see how much they did know about materials and their uses.
Books with lots of photographs, illustrations, diagrams, pop-ups and flaps that children enjoy manipulating are ideal for browsing. These elements encourage visual literacy, which is impor-tant for all children to develop but is particularly essential in classrooms where not all children speak the same language. Visuals can become an international, universal language that helps express those concepts that may be challenging to understand solely through words.7
Photo 3.3: Browsing the visual images in a big book
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
56 Ways to Learn Through Inquiry: Guiding Children to Deeper Understanding
The Paper Skyscraper was so popular that I decided to make five small copies of the book available. I was amazed that the children would sit for a long time, browsing, reading, talking, laughing, lifting the flaps and saying, “Ta da!” then reading words such as “glass”, or “wood”, or “alu-minium” (usually slowly, as in “a-l-u-min-i-um”). Sometimes I heard the children saying to each other, “What does this word say?” Sometimes they called me over to help them. Some of the children had memorized the text, some were using the illustrations as cues and some were read-ing. All the while they were exploring new concepts and inquiring about materials in an exciting way.
Bookmarking and tagging
Most children of all ages enjoy using bookmarks for remembering their place when reading a fiction book. They can do the same for favourite pages in information texts, helping them track their inquiries during browsing time, using a bookmark or a sticky note. For example, a group of children aged 4 bor-rowed an information book about sea creatures after becoming curious about flying fish during a unit of inquiry about marine life (with a central idea that marine life is impacted by human activity). This book was placed in the browsing baskets in the
classroom and was one of the most popular books at browsing time. Because this information book had so many pages that covered a number of sea creatures, we showed the children how to use a sticky note to tag the page about flying fish, as shown in Photo 3.4. After I had modelled how to attach a sticky note, the children practised and we placed the sticky notes in a convenient spot near the baskets of books.
During browsing time we made the following observations.
• The children went straight to the favourite page that they had tagged.
• One group of boys found other sea animals that interested them, such as sharks and whales, so they tagged those pages, too.
• When an adult was free to read to a small group, it was easier to find these special pages; every little shortcut helps when time for work-ing with small groups is precious!
The children learned to respect each other’s book-marks and sticky notes and leave them in place. In
fact, some became very interested in why other children had tagged certain pages and often asked them about their tagging choices. When a particular page had a lot of tags or bookmarks I often read it aloud to the whole class.
Unit of inquiry
Central idea: Marine life is impacted by human activity
Provide bookmarks, sticky notes, mini-pegs, or paper clips for children to tag pages that answer their questions, that they find interesting or puzzling, or that they want an adult to read to them.
Variation:
The terms “bookmarking” and “tagging” can be applied to digital technologies.
From "Ways to Learn Through Inquiry" by Jo Fahey. (c) 2012 International Baccalaureate. http://store.ibo.org/
Endnotes 1. Burmark, L. 2002. Visual Literacy: Learn to See, See to Learn. Alexandria, Virginia, USA. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. P 1.
2. Burmark, L. 2004. http://mat-tech.net/COTF%20CD/WhyVisualLiteracy.pdf.
3. Johnson, P 2003. Choice Words. Portland, Maine, USA. Stenhouse Publishers.
4. Millikan, J. 1998. An Introduction to Reggio Emilia. Adelaide, Australia. Prince Alfred College.
5. Diamond, A, Barnett, WS, Thomas, J and Munro, S. 2007. “Preschool Program Improves Cognitive Control”. Science. Vol 318. P 1387.
6. Drew, D. 1992. The Paper Skyscraper: The Technology of Materials. Port Melbourne, Australia. Rigby Heinemann.
