Last week I had the privilege of spending a couple of days making up a pathfinder for a year 9 Social Science topic. All this came about because there is a new SOSE teacher who is now the Department Head and was recently teaching at the senior level. He found that kids in years 10 and above had no grounding in research. He was determined to make amends and came to the library to ask advice. We suggested the idea of pathfinders to him as well as two intensive lessons on avoiding plagiarism. He was enthusiastic.
The Teacher Librarian set to work to develop her anti-plagiarism lessons with the teacher and I was directed to make a pathfinder on the topic of Plate tectonics. The teacher was so thrilled with what I'd created that he took the hardcopy to his department meeting and insisted that all his staff use pathfinders in future when conducting research lessons in the library.
As I was only filling in for the library technician at the time, I suspect I have probably created an extra workload for an already overworked TL. However she was so delighted with the SOSE teacher's enthusiasm and the fact that they would be working together to improve the students' research skills that I think she won't mind.
