What can we teach kids today that will have utility ten or fifteen years from now? Angela Kohnen and Wendy Saul propose an approach to information literacy that goes beyond the teaching of discreet, easily outdated skills. Instead they use activity to help students build identities as curious individuals empowered to ask their own questions and able to navigate their information-filled world in pursuit of credible answers. A generalist is curious, open-minded, skeptical, and persistent in their quest for information. Thinking Like a Generalist demonstrates what it means to take a generalist stance in instruction and provides a set of teaching tools to be able to pass those skills to students-skills that will transfer beyond the walls of the classroom. Inside you’ll find the following: a thorough introduction to what it means to be a “generalist”, and how to develop the practices and tools that help generalists navigate the world we live in a focus on the teacher becoming a generalist and tips for modeling those practices in the classroom detailed instructions on how to write a unit of study that emphasizes generalist literacy skills and includes an overview and examples of five different units how to use the authors’ read-aloud-think-aloud strategy to orient students to generalist tools and practices The ideas, strategies, and examples in Thinking Like a Generalist will give you the tools to think like a generalist and then pass that knowledge on to your students, guiding them to become inquisitive, lifelong learners and preparing them for a future that we can’t yet imagine.
