1.When searching armadillos in SIRS Discoverer I found many great articles. My first impression was that I really like how I could sort the results by lexile levels. I also found the key at the top to be very helpful telling me the difficulty, if I could find a picture in the article, activities, PDFs etc. I also found it to be very helpful that articles could be emailed to yourself or others working on the article with you.
2.Database Features
Country Facts is a great source when students are studying different countries. I really liked that once you picked a country it showed a timeline of important topics in the history of that country. It would be easy for students to continue research because of the additional hyperlinks to more resources. The basic information on the left hand side is also very interesting when comparing countries.
Maps of the World is a great resource for labeling capitals, states and getting the basic idea of the shape of each state, country etc. I think this will be a great resource for me to use in my first grade classroom when we discuss where we live.
The Educator' Resources is a great tool to be used to help students get familiar with research. I went into Elementary workbook and thought all the lessons were easy to follow and some easy enough for my young learners. As a first grade teacher I could walk through the lesson with a whole group or would feel comfortable enough to allow them to go step by step on their own computers.
SIRS Issues Researcher
1. I picked Gun Control as my leading topic. The overview was set up with keywords to know, pros and cons, different perspectives on the topic, a general overview, and other resources. I think its great that yet again this information can be read to the student. Also it has MLA citation and a simple summary on the right hand side.
2.The Curriculum Pathfinder is a great tool for teachers and students. This resources includes games, articles, interactive quizzes etc. Even though this resource to geared towards grades 6-12 I did find a few games I can use such as funbrain and supermathworld.
We're so glad you found things you can use in both of these resources! We love the maps. Do take a look at the historical maps--there's more there than you'd think, and there may be things you can use. We wish Discoverer would include a read-aloud, too. Thanks for the good report.
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