Fine Arts

• Nine thousand straws : teaching thinking through open-inquiry learning by Jean Sausele Knodt Teacher Ideas Press, 2008, 324 p., $_____ ISBN: 9781591586401 At the last ASCD national conference, I ran across the following concurrent session title: Teaching Thinking to Children Through Open-inquiry Learning. Interested, I attended the session and discovered that the author had written an amazing book that I had neglected to review in 2008. My advice is to acquire a copy of this amazing book and read the first few chapters and sample the seemingly hundreds of ideas for hands-on learning that stimulate higher-level thinking. For years and years, it seems, crafts in schools were thought of as restful, recreational, and take-a-break from learning activities. We have, in other reviews, made fun of the “crayola curriculum” that results in all the curtsy take-home projects that are fun for the moment but really meaningless in terms of major learning goals.  Dr. Knodt set up in a public school an inquiry lab based on the principles of habits of mind, inquiry, and thinking. This book is an account of that experience but also a recipe for using the think, think, think idea in any elementary school. More importantly, as we have developed our own ideas of the transformation of the library media center into the learning commons of the school, we instantly recognize that the active learning here, the creativity, the inquiry, and the thinking fit perfectly in the type of learning commons that is central to the school. We have envisioned the learning commons as a place where all the specialists of the school work together to knock down the classroom door and team with classroom teachers to achieve the goals that have been heaped upon that classroom teacher. After reading the first several chapters of this book, imagine Knodt and her teacher librarian join together not to have two separate spaces, but a single space in the school where inquiry is explored not just in a sea of information, but in hands-on projects and challenges that foster habits of minds. Knodt has an art background and a brilliant mind. Her program reaches the individual child in the lab, spreads like a pandemic into the classroom, the library (learning commons), out into the parents and homes, and into the community. It is a virus we could all dream about contracting. There are enough ideas here that would keep you busy integrating into those learning commons great learning experiences for a year. Bottom line: Amazing ideas, creative strategies, and practical tips make this book a candidate for the best professional book list of the year. Get it; read it; try its ideas. And, watch for a forthcoming article by its author in a future issue of Teacher Librarian.

• The hipster librarian's guide to teen craft projects by Tina Coleman and Peggie Llanes (ALA, 2009, 90 p., $_____, ISBN: 9780838909713) Don’t show this to a teacher, but perhaps to an after school adult looking for fund and cute. We get instructions to make melted crayon bookmarks, pressed flower notecards, blank books, layered fabric collages, coasters and trivets, and rubber band bracelets to name a few. Could we suggest crafts that have an educational purpose? Don’t look for anything of value here. And published by ALA? Ignore this collection of time wasters.

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