"Self-directed learners:" Easy to say, hard to do.

• Expanding Literary Horizons
• A Web of Learning
• Students are Doin' it for Themselves
• Asking the Right Questions

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Watch a baby learning to crawl and you will see an incredible hunger for learning and an astounding level of persistence. Some people keep that drive and hunger for learning for their entire lives. Others do not. How is it that schools so often fail to keep the drive to learn alive?

Good teachers try to deal with this by continually experimenting with teaching methods, keeping what works and discarding what doesn't. But there are deeper issues as well that involve questioning the whole purpose and overall goals of education. Many teachers wonder about these things and a few have taken the time, and associated risks, to try new approaches that begin with the children themselves. Approaches that help students discover how much they can do.

It is a tricky project and it is still unclear how easily this approach fits into traditional practices - some believe it can be added on to current practices while others advocate a radical overhaul of the entire education system. Whatever the conclusion, some very valuable lessons are being learned along the way. The teachers in this section send a series of reports from different fronts.

How can I make sure students of varying abilities are not cut off from the magical world of literature? James Moore has used a variety of approaches to allow students to use their current strengths to help them develop literary interests and skills.

Expanding Literary Horizons

Bringing it All Together

Capitalizing on cross-curricular sharing and subject integration is something I promote in all my courses. Here are a few examples that others can adapt to their purposes.

Teach them to say what they think…

Knowledge by itself is of little use to students if they don't know how to communicate ideas to others. I think teachers should always be looking for integration opportunities, but we should never lose sight of the need to teach students to think critically, organize information effectively and communicate it well.

…and defend what they say

Students' ideas have value, either as a valid conclusion or as a discussion point. As a teacher, you must supply students with the confidence and opportunity to offer any interpretation they have with appropriate textual reference, logic and creativity. With this model, defending their work becomes a strong academic exercise.

Encourage achievement

By developing communication skills you help students achieve. Many of my students challenge the Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exams each year with great success. They are also regular winners of local, provincial, national and international competitions in public speaking and creative writing.

Build partnerships

• Members of my Advanced Writing class have worked with students associated with the Bishops College Art Gallery. I took my students there one afternoon (you could go to a local gallery if your school doesn't have one), then asked them to choose one work of art and write about it.
• Partnerships and mentoring arrangements with university students expose high school students to a rich and diversified source of scholarly endeavour.
• I have arranged a sponsorship from Nortel for an annual essay and public speaking contest, for which students draw upon many subjects for topics and supportive knowledge.

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How can I help young students whose brains are full of widely divergent ideas and enthusiasms grow into thinking, reasoning individuals? Cheryl Andrews uses a "concept web" to help children see how the things that interest them now connect to a whole world of interesting ideas. The Web also helps them find their way around this new world.

A Web of Learning

The Six-step Project Program

First, the children form groups for a brainstorming session and record as many words as they can think of relating to the topic. I accept all suggestions and write everything down on a class chart. Brainstorming establishes connections between how much the children already know and what they don't know, or would like to know.

To create a concept web, I write the name of the project in the centre of a large sheet of paper. Then, on lines radiating from the centre like spokes, we write some of the concepts suggested by this title. We use the students' brainstorming lists to fill in the concept web and to suggest areas of further research. We also examine the curriculum objectives and decide where they fit into the concept web at this stage.

Inspired by the concept web, the children formulate questions about what else they'd like to know about the topic.

The research step takes the most time (three or more weeks) as the children read books, explore the Internet, look at maps and pursue a variety of information sources. Research skills - the ability to collect, assess and compile information - are invaluable to learning.

Representing the learning in a new form, which requires in-depth understanding of the topic, is critical. To ensure that the whole class learns what each individual is learning, we share information every two or three days. The children teach the topic, gaining confidence in communication and public speaking and practice in organizing their thoughts and ideas, and are increasingly excited about learning.

Each project is based on the provincial science or social studies curriculum and is evaluated according to provincial standards. Reading and writing skills are critical components evaluated throughout the course of the project. I assess the children's progress frequently and offer guidance when and where they need it.

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How am I supposed to teach students how to use technology that changes so fast that I spend as much time learning myself as the students do? Peter Sol's students rely on him as a consultant but they take the lead in electronic publishing projects. In the process, they learn how to solve problems in a changing environment.

Students are Doin' it for Themselves

Looking at the Results

New books, movies or plays are reviewed when they are first released, and student productions should be too. Authors or actors have a very clear idea of the standards by which they'll be judged. Students have the same determination to do an excellent job, and they deserve to be aware of the criteria by which they'll be judged.

Before any project begins, each student reviews the objectives and grading criteria. For example, when students are designing their first web page, the minimum requirements are worth 10 marks:

• a text box
• a link to a linked list
• a thumbnail graphic linked to a larger graphic
• an animated GIF.

These earn eight marks. The students earn an additional two marks for what I call the razzle-dazzle factor - the artistic merit and design an employer is looking for in an employee's work. The students then choose the mark they want to achieve and plan how they'll meet their goal. They then sign a contract to that effect.

Before they even begin to work, the students know what they need to work hardest on, and have a way to determine the quality of their work and learning when they're finished. They have a good sense of when to ask for help, too. Sometimes I lead, sometimes I follow, but mostly I just stay out of their way, and let them surprise me.

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How can I get kids thinking on their own to lead their own research? Patricia Clifford and Sharon Friesen have thought a lot about the answer to this question… and about questions in general.

Asking the Right Questions

Good Question!

Here's what we look for in good thinking questions:

Good questions are so compelling that people have raised them in many different ways. For example, the question "What is light?" has scientific, mathematical, aesthetic, literary and spiritual dimensions. That's why a good project has to cut across so many subjects at once.

When we tackle a great question, we explore the connection between our personal experience of the world and the experiences we all share across time and space. In exploring essential questions together, kids are able to find expression for their own strongest gifts and interests at the same time as they are able to establish a sense of community with others.

A fantastic question allows us to explore what knowledge is, how it came to be, and how it has changed through history. Have you ever wondered about how people learned to count?

Good questions live at the boundary of the known and the unknown. They come from people's attempts, throughout human history, to learn more about the world(s) we live in. Kids come to learn both that humans have figured out an awful lot about the world and that there are still genuine mysteries about even the most ordinary things such as gravity and dirt.

Great questions are embedded in ideals of freedom, strength and possibility that permit people to come-to-know without becoming trapped in ideas that are oppressive or no longer useful.

Good questions come from the imagination. People can know only a limited amount about the world through direct experience. It is questions that spark the imagination that permit young and old to journey together into unknown realms.

And does it work? You bet it does. It features everything from information on knights and castles to a conversation between Joan of Arc and Eleanor of Aquitaine that our Grade 2 students wrote. The work our students did on another project - retelling The Odyssey in pictures - was also a great success. In fact, a professor of Greek literature has used one of the illustrations on the cover of his new translation of The Odyssey.