Challenge #1

Basic Discovery Exercise:

World Book Kids website is setup for younger students. It has an engaging front page which provides opportunity for kids to explore different areas. There is two different modes of selection. Each area has eight links. The top two rows of four are for upper elementary grades. The lower are areas for exploration by lower grade students. The search bar is at the top and clearly marked for all kids. World Book for Students is gear for upper elementary and middle school. The opening page is more businesslike. Much of the page is text based and requires more sophisticated navigation abilities to use.

I researched lion in both World Book for Kids and Students. The information in both pages was similar. The World book for Kids was the text is written at a lower lexical level and the articles are shorter in length. The pictures are bigger and easier to access.  In World Book for Students the article was longer and smaller font. The pictures were smaller. The lexical level is higher. Both version included pictures and videos. World Book Student also includes maps and sound clips.  

In World Book Advanced I looked up the country of Italy. The main page was setup similarly to World Book for Students.  The right and left bars provide addition related links to information about the country. The right sides links to additional world book related articles. The right side bar provides links to other outside information related to the topic. World Book Discover has the some information as the other World Books. All four of the world books provide the same support for low readers. At the beginning  of each article in all four versions is a panel that gives students common features. One of these features is the ability to turn on an electronic text reader. Once the text reader is turned on students have ability to read the whole article or selected sections.

Common Core Connections

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.3.7 Use information gained from illustrations (e.g., maps, photographs) and the words in a text to demonstrate understanding of the text (e.g., where, when, why, and how key events occur).

This month I have started a research project for my 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th grade students. This project is based on our District Information Media Specialist curriculum our district is developing. I have my students planning a PowerPoint presentation. Each student has put together a list of three to five topics. We are now working our way through the different online encyclopedia at the South Dakota State library website. Each student is using graphic organizer to survey the information they find on each of their topics. When we have finish our survey the students will then pick the best topic to build their PowerPoint presentation.