Lesson 6: Gale Virtual Reference Library

Basic Discovery Exercise:

1.  I clicked on "Title List" and chose "Novels for Students, 1998, Vol. 1".  Then on the left, I searched within this resource for Tom Sawyer, and I changed the search to "all volumes".  Then The Adventures of Tom Sawyer does come up in Volume 6 of the Novels for Students resource.  I selected this title, because one of our fifth grade teachers just requested a copy of this book.  Students are usually very interested in the books their classroom teachers read aloud to them, so I thought I might get some questions on this book and its author.  The sections on author biography, plot summary, characters, and themes could all be of interest to students.  I also liked the sidebar notes.  I think "What do I read next?" and "Media Adaptations" would be particularly interesting to students who enjoyed this title.

2.  If you do a Basic Search on "foods with zinc," and limit to the nutrient zinc, you can find foods with  various concentrations of zinc in them:  oysters, beef, chicken, turkey, and yogurt are a few.

If you do a Basic Search on "Huckleberry Finn," and limit the document type to "Plot Summary," you will find a summary of the novel.  Then, exploring further, you can look in the resource Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream, and click on "Full Text" and the "Plot Summary" link, and you will get to a section that describes the book in 3 to 6 chapters at a time.  The "Listen" feature does work and reads you any section you have highlighted in the resource.  Although it isn't eloquent or flawless in fluency, it would be beneficial for ELL students who need to get through a bunch of text in a short amount of time.

3.  I read and commented on Mark Kenefick's and Kristi Jones' blog posts.  It is interesting to see what others used for searches. Different searches can lead to learning different things about the databases.

Common Core Connections:

I clicked on "Education" on the left sidebar, and then searched for "creativity" within the "Education" subject.  There were many articles under this search.  One I skimmed was Team Teaching.  I like how this article explains how team teaching can encourage creativity.  Collaborating is something we want to do as teacher librarians.  Part of our job is to work and teach along with classroom teachers so we can best meet the needs of all our students and help them learn in a variety of ways.

Another article I looked at that could be used to tie in to the common core standards is Lifelong Learning.

In The Encyclopedia of Education, lifelong learning is defined as:

Lifelong learning is the development of human potential through a continuously supportive process which stimulates and empowers individuals to acquire all the knowledge, values, skills, and understanding they will require throughout their lifetimes and to apply them with confidence, creativity and enjoyment in all roles, circumstances, and environments. (Longworth and Davies, p. 22)

I think the idea of applying skills such as learning new vocabulary is important.  We want students to learn this in school but also keep using the skill throughout their lives as they read and come across words they don't know.  


5.L.4 Vocabulary Acquisition and Use:
Strategies
a.  context
b.  affixes and roots
c.  reference materials


To teach this skill, I would copy a page from one of this year's Prairie Pasque books such as "Harry Houdini:  The Legend of the World's Greatest Escape Artist" or "The Elephant Scientist" and have students highlight a word they either don't know the definition of or would like to know the exact definition of (even if they "sort of" know what it means).  I would model one word like this for the class and show them how I would use the strategies of context, affixes and or roots and reference materials such as dictionary.com to learn its meaning. If using Elephant Scientist, for example, I might model the word "vibrational."   Then I would ask them to go through the same process for a word they found.  This could be done individually or in pairs.  

Works Cited
LONGWORTH, NORMAN, and DAVIES, W. KEITH. 1996. Lifelong Learning: New Vision, New Implications, New Roles for People, Organizations, Nations and Communities in the 21st Century. London: Kogan Page.