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Dear LM-NET colleagues: Original request: I requested fun ideas to help teach information skills to middle school . Here is the hit. Thanks to everyone for all the super ideas. It's nice to know there are so many of you willing to go the extra mile to make learning fun! I know your students love you for it. I hope you enjoy these. Wendy 1. Check with the teachers and see what they want the kids to know. They might know of skill areas their students are lacking in. Try a pre-test and see how many kids can answer the questions you think they should know. I am often amazed at the lack of knowledge some of the kids have. Try using almanacs in a variety of ways. Compare a kid's almanac and a regular one. Give them a trivia sheet and have them use the almanac to answer it. A library directory told me that if you had a phone book, an an almanac, you could answer most reference questions asked a public librarian. Have them make up a trivia test for the other students. Explain how indexes are set up, then have them search for a variety of topics, with X number of sources (1 magazine, 1 valid internet page 3 books, 1 encyclopedia, etc.) Teach them how to make out a bibliography card. Make a bibiliography listing the sources you could use from your library for 1 subject. Teach them how to brainstorm topic ideas or good topics for a variety of subjects. (your teacher wants you to do a report on _____________ What would be a good topic? (not too broad, not too limited, etc. ) Have them come up with things they should know as they research something...types of questions to ask about a subject, how to use an encyclopedia index to find more information beyond the volume with the same letter. Teach them a search strategy (KWL, Big 6, etc.) Teach them mind mapping, or some other note taking procedure. Teach them how to scan for needed information. Use newspapers and have them highlight certain words in a paragraph. Teach them webbing as a way to brainstorm. Give them topics and let them web, then make a list of 4 or 5 sources they could use in the library to research that topic. Give them some general curriculum topics (Revolutionary War, Civil War, etc.) and have them list 10 different sub headings that could be more easily handled topics. Set up a grid. Have them list questions they want answered at the top of it. Along the left side, list types of sources needed (magazine, book, internet, encyclopedia, etc.) In the corresponding box, list the information found in that source. Show them how this could be used to set upa paper or easily compare information. We've also used phone books to teach research skills. They have table of contents, indexes, maps, alternative words (automobiles for car, physicians for doctor, etc. ) Teach them how to use the databases available to your school. Teach them what resources are best for what type of information. Teach them about the Internet....how to search, how to document, how to recognize a poor source, etc. 2. From: Linda Lucke We have worked very hard to develop active, hands-on and fun type lessons for our upper grade students. We do a lot of things with crossword puzzles, where they have to locate answers to the clues in specific sources and then fill the answers in on crosswords. We have lessons for dictionaries, encyclopedias, the guiness book of records, and the atlas all done in crosswords. We also have a crossword where the clue is a dewey number , and the answer is the subject of the number. I am pasting in a sample of another type lesson that we do, where the answers are mostly puns called Riddles from Deweyville, and one for the atlas, where the answers all have something to do with food, call gastronomic geography. However, this type of lesson has to be pretty specific to your collection, and designed for your library. These can serve as ideas and inspirations, but you have to develop the lesson sheets for your own collection. Riddles from Deweyville. Now that you are familiar with the Dewey categories, use the Dewey numbers to answer the following riddles. Look at the books in each section to help you answer the questions. 1. what 523.7 subject rises every morning, but never goes to work?____________(sun) 2.What 912 book has road, towns, and cities but never any houses? __________(maps or atlas) 3. What kind of witch lives in 641.8? _______(sandwich) 4. What 523.3 subject doesn't eat, but is often full?_________(the moon) 5. What 419 subject talks, but makes no noise? (sign language) Gastronomical Geography! Test your tastebuds with the following exercise. Below are clues to various geographic places_countries, cities, rivers, and more_but all the names are food-related. Be careful! Some are pretty funny! You need to use an atlas or other resource! 1. A country in central Europe whose capital is Budapest_________(turkey) 2A reservation on the border of Washington and Idaho.__________________ 3. The capital city of Peru.______(Lima) 4. A city in north eastern Maine. _____________(caribou) 5. A country on the Mediterranean Sea whose capital is Athens. _______(Greece) 6. A bay off the east coast of Massachusetts. (Cape Cod) 3. From: Terry Snodgrass, Librarian Marysville Middle School Library My favorite thing to do with kids is a bingo game called SKOOB. We use it to make sure the kids know the difference between atlas, almanac, dictionary, encyclopedia, etc. The boards were a bit of a pain to make but can be tailored to your library vocabulary list (things you want the kids to know). I included "verso" and "opaque projector" just to add a little fun. Make up definition cards with the word on one side and the definition on the other. You read the defn. to the kids and they decide what the answer is, check it out with me and then put markers on the boards on the matching squares. The real fun one is the Blowout game at the end where the kids are given only the definitions-anybody opens their mouth loses their board. Winner gets a brand new pencil along with a chocolate kiss. ( prizes for games before this one only get a chocolate kiss). The other game the kids like to do is the scavenger hunt . It helps them to locate things in the library. In some cases they have to find the fourth word on page 200 of a certain book, for others, they have to collect something from library personnel. When we've been working with Dewey numbers, I make them get books on general topics, but don't give them the Dewey numbers. They look up the number and then find a book. The group to get all of their books first gets a hershey kiss. 3. From M.S. Preissner, LMS Rockville,MD Click on ENTER HERE<then on the instructional projects link on school website. Look at projects: Time, Japan, Africa. 4. From:Alisa Keleher, Missouri Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - I did this activity with a fifth grade and sixth grade class. I taught a lesson which included skimming, scanning, trash/treasure, and citations. For my anticipatory set, I had all of the tables decked out in cloth tablecloths, flowers in vases, I had classical music playing, and the lights turned down loww. I seated the students to their tables in about groups of five and gave them menus which stated the "specials of the day" (topics teaching) also a history of the restaurant, and library/restaurant rules. I even had a bill for them at the end of the class. I spend 1-2 days with the power point, teaching skills. The students were writing biographies and I created a graphic organizer for them to take information on. The main activity they did was to write a story. The activity Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was a writing project in which the students were placed in random groups and had to write a story in which the people they researched for their biography came to dinner at their house during a certain day - which they randomly drew out of a hat. They spent a day in the library researching the year the event took place and a certain event- such as the day Lincoln was shot, etc. The students really loved the activity and it provided a chance for me to work closely with some teachers who would not have normally brought their students to the library for research. I also created a reference game for teaching students how to use reference books. This activity is really fun, the students to group research for two days and try to answer as many questions as they can and they we play a game in the end to see which team wins. It teaches them citing sources, because any anwers they had that didn't agree, I made them prove where they found it so I could decide whether or not I would take the answer. This game takes a lot of preparation, but is really fun and teaches a lot of different sources! I'm going to do it with a 4th grade class in the next few weeks, only we are going to focus on U.S. History. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=- All LM_NET postings are protected by copyright law. To change your LM_NET status, e-mail to: listserv@listserv.syr.edu In the message write EITHER: 1) SIGNOFF LM_NET 2) SET LM_NET NOMAIL 3) SET LM_NET MAIL 4) SET LM_NET DIGEST * Allow for confirmation. 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