“Information literacy is the set of skills and knowledge that not only allows us to find, evaluate, and use the information we need, but, perhaps more importantly, allows us to filter out the information that we don’t need.”
Kathleen Spitzer with Michael Eisenberg and Carrie Lowe, Information literacy: Essential Skills for the information age. NY:ERIC Clearinghouse,1998.
The library and computer programs have been combined this year in order to promote a more cohesive approach to teaching information literacy. The purpose of this class for fourth grade through eighth grade is to teach the students the skills necessary to be intelligent consumers of the vast quantity of information that is available to them through both print and non-print sources.
The projects we will be working on this year will be related to the areas of study taking place in the classrooms. The content focus will be on research skills and will include;
- Brainstorming and topic selection
- Locating appropriate materials (both print and on-line)
- Using the information – taking notes, citing sources, understanding plagiarism
- Organizing ideas and creating presentations, projects, or reports
- Evaluating what has been produced
This year promises to be an exciting one that will be a learning adventure for both students and teachers!
The classes in grades 4-8 are currently working on the following topics.
- Grade four is learning how to locate materials using the library catalog. They are presently working in the computer lab learning to use the on-line catalog for the public libraries. We will soon be moving on to a study of the Dewey Decimal System.
- Grade five is doing a brief research project on the solar system. Our focus in the library is on learning how to take notes and correctly cite the sources that they are using for their research. We will follow this project with learning how to use Microsoft Publisher to create a newsletter about the planets using the information that the students learned during their research project.
- Grade six is presently completing a research project on volcanoes. We have worked on how to take notes using note cards, how to correctly cite sources using source cards, and how to create a formal bibliography. Next, we will be learning how to use Microsoft Publisher to create a newspaper based on articles written in Religion class.
- Grade seven is currently learning about the parts of newspapers and news articles by using the Newsbank database to look up articles in newspapers stored on-line. They will also be learning how to use Microsoft Publisher to create a newspaper based on articles written in Religion class.
- Grade eight is finishing up an author research project that they have been working on for their Reading class. They have been formally evaluating the websites that they used for the project, and are working on correctly citing sources and preparing a formal bibliography. Their next project will doing some research on the Vatican for Religion class.
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