Lesson 4: Sirs Issues Researcher and Discoverer

Basic:

SIRS Discoverer

11)    Favorite Animal

I looked up lion. The page that appeared has as an easy navigation menu. The top of the menu are tabs that have a tab for:

• ·         all articles found
• ·         newspaper articles
• ·         magazine articles
• ·         reference book articles
• ·         pictures
• ·         websites

Underneath the tabs is a navigation key. The key shows colored book icons indicating reading level. There are also icons for images and pdf documents. The other icons show the interactivity of the links

Opening up articles reveals some cool features. First on the top is a read aloud tool that is easy to use so even the lowest readers can get information from the article. The only difficulty I found was that a general search topic like lion brings up a lot of articles like Detroit lions, Sea Lion etc. For younger students this can be a little confusing.

22)Useful Features:

Country Facts Link: I click on the country facts link and a page with three options appeared. The user can pick from “Country Facts”, “State Facts”, and Canada Facts”. I select the County Facts A-Z List. A list of countries appeared. I picked the country Belize.

The Belize page contained a quick facts page that consisted of four parts. First section was consisted of basic facts:

• ·         County name
• ·         Capital
• ·         Population
• ·         Country size
• ·         Continent

·         General  country characteristics

The second section contained a quick fact section covering the major events in the history of the country. The third section consisted of a map of the country and flag of the country. In this section is also is a link to additional information about the country. This takes the user to basic search result interface.  The final section at the bottom of the page provides additional links to outside web pages like the U.S Department of State country background information.

3) Maps of the World Link:

This link gives the user access to many types of maps. There were general political maps, Historical maps and outline maps that students could use to build their own maps. In my curriculum one of the areas I need to teach is reference materials which include the use of an atlas. This link could help with that instruction.  

4) Other Area Link: 

I chose the A+ Skills Discoverer. In this area a student would have six areas to choose from:

• ·         Art
• ·         Health
• ·         Language Arts
• ·         Math
• ·         Science
• ·         Social Studies

When you click on one of these links a subject are specific menu appears which gives the user more specific choices.  For example within Language Arts were choices like Authors, Reading, etc. In the reading area appears a flash video that give the user more choices. These links sent users to outside websites.

SIRS Issues Researcher:

1Leading issue:

 I picked the issue of the Keystone Pipeline. In this area I found two main parts. The top part was a quick over view section that provided an overview of the issue and pros and cons about the issue. This section also provides to an interactive section with even more infromation.

At the bottom of this page was article list. This area was a standard search result section. This area list article links to the selected topic.

2Curriculum Pathfinders:

In this area there is a navigation bar across the top that gives the user curriculum areas to choose from:

• ·         Math
• ·         Science
• ·         Social Studies
• ·         Language Arts
• ·         Fine Arts
• ·         Health

When you hover over these links the bottom portion changes and provides three different navigation panels. On the left side is a “My Courses”. The middle section is a “Research Ideas” area. Then the right panel gives a preview of interactive pages that fit the selection

Common Core Connections:

The Core Content Standard I chose is W.3.& Conduct short research projects that build knowledge about a topic.

I have been working on this area in my 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th grade classes. Each student is getting ready to build a PowerPoint presentation on a topic of their choosing. The first step was for students to pick 3 to 5 topics of personal interest. The students then used a graphic organizer to survey the world book kids and student encyclopedias. They were then to select the topic they found to be the most interesting and use that topic to search SIRS Discover.  They would use a graphic organizer to search this site as well.

My second and third graders will get the experience of search a research type database. The main thing they will use in the SIRS research database will be the graphics tab. They will pull these images into their websites. Since the 2^nd and 3^rd grade research standards requires them to use one reference they will be using the world book site for their primary research source. Fourth graders need to have more than one source for their research. So they will be using both the World Book and SIRS.