Lesson 3: SIRS DISCOVERER and ISSUES RESEARCHER

SIRS DISCOVERER

My grandson and I decided to pick parrot (because it rhymed with his name, Barrett) as my animal and learned something about them in SIRS DISCOVERER.  There were articles that he could read and then some that were more difficult.  We liked the pictures of different parrots.  We liked the ones with all the colors but the cockatoo is a parrot that is usually all white.  I liked the color coding for the levels which made it easy to pick something appropriate for his level very quickly.  The camera next to those articles which included pictures were the ones that we clicked on first.  The Lexile levels are a nice bonus because the local school is going more towards using the Lexile levels for their students now.

I let Barrett chose the country of his interest.  He decided that Guatemala sounded interesting, so we looked that up first in the search box on the SIRS DISCOVERER also.  We found the map and the flag, which was interesting.  It had Spanish writing on it and together we decoded what it meant.  Then I clicked on the WebFind Sites (there were 3) and it led us to a CIA website called World Factbook which I was surprised at discovering.  My son was listening in and said that he used that one quite extensively while teaching high school history as it was a reliable site.  

Next we tried going to the Country Facts link and looking for Guatemala and what a wealthy of information there was!  I loved the teacher graphic organizers on the three levels.  Where was this stuff when I was teaching???  We even discovered the name of the president of the country (Alvaro Colum in case anyone is interested!)  The only thing that Barrett wanted was more pictures.  So we went into the Maps of the World section and looked at Guatemala and there were some pictures and maps with varying amounts of detail.  

Finally we checked out Guatemala in the Pictures section and discovered a cool picture (and scary) of a sinkhole that was caused by a violent rain of 4 inches in 12 hours and one of a volcano (which erupted in 2004...I didn't know that either.)  Lots of very neat pictures. 

Somehow I also found my way into the spotlight of the month...what a great resource for teachers along with all the other great tools found in this database.

SIRS RESEARCHER:  Topic:  Human Trafficking

The topic overview provided a brief summary of human trafficking but much more.  There was a long list of possible pro/con questions that could be asked about various aspects of the topic, including genocide, child labor, internment, and so on.  This would be great for debates or to present both sides of a specific aspect of the topic.  It would allow the student or researcher to more clearly define exactly what portion of the topic would be covered and help them narrow down the topic.  

If one could not write a paper well while using the research tools provided, I would not understand why not.  The iThink Skills Tutor is such a great assist for students who might be floundering with their research.  It provides step by step help.  There is SO much information under each one of the research tools and there is even a place to organize your notes.  What more could you ask?  I even found a template for putting together a power point.  (Better late than never!)

When looking up the actual articles that support the topic, the legend to the left denotes the various formats from which the supports are gleaned, such as newspapers, magazines, websites and so on.  This could be helpful if a teacher is requiring a specific source for research, such as only magazine articles.

I spent quite a bit of time looking through the curriculum pathfinders.  I connected with a math pathway that led to a fun activity for code breakers.  Then I found out that there was a link to BBC's free language tutorials and phrase learning for about 40 languages.  That was lots of fun.  Shukran!

The databases for this lesson have so many different resources within them that I think it would be necessary to spend a little time with them on a regular basis just to remember what is available here.  What a wealth of help there is!