Professional Reading: The Super3: Information Skills for Young Learners

The Super3 by Michael B. Eisenberg and Laura Eisenberg Robinson is a thin book with many worksheets throughout. The Super 3 are Plan, Do, Review. After reading the book, I have been thinking a great deal of the importance of empowering youngsters throughout their learning.

As the authors mention on page 15:

Another technique is to give less rather than more direction on assignments. Teachers often lead students through every step in an assignment–verbally or in writing. Sometimes it is necessary for teachers to be very direct and specific, but too often this is done without even thinking of the message being communicated. When teachers give a great deal of detail or step-by-step directions, they are doing most of the task definition or ‘planning’ work.

I have heard many complaints of teaching to the tests. The authors share how their open-ended tasks of Planning, Doing and Reviewing (the Super 3) do address learning standards and objectives.

One of our goals as librarians is to offer tools for life-long learning. It is very easy for me to focus on the Do with young learners, but the language of Plan and Review is important to share too. I hadn’t really thought of it in this way before reading this book. I like to have open-ended activities in the library programs that I plan, but these activities would mean more to children if I offer ways of sharing their planning and their own reviews of what they have created, their own evaluations of what they have done and what they have learned.