World Book Lesson 1A

Advanced Challenge:
#1 I have introduced and given students hands-on time with all 5 of the special features listed. I have had students work with assignments where they have had to use these special features to locate answers. They have also used them when looking for information for projects. The "World of Animals" feature is great for both young and old students. I had older students browse through the animals to get ideas for what animal they would like to work with, this created much more variety of selection than just telling them to pick an animal. I have also used the "World of Animals" iPad app with K and 1st and it is amazing how quickly they were able to learn and use this software. Both the "World of Animals" and "Compare Places" features have been useful when working on compare and contrast concepts.

#2 I liked the section called "Research skills for students" looking at the information listed here it seems to go pretty well with the "Big6" information literacy program that we are using in the Rapid City Schools. This could be another tool that we use to help show the different steps of the research process. It would also be a good place to compare and contrast the steps from the Big6 to what World Book has written, the students will see that they are both similar. This would help to reinforce the steps that we are teaching from the Big6 process and show students that these steps are consistant with many different programs.

#3 This is a good e-book site if you want to demo how e-books work but don't have any in your collection. It looks like much of the material is beyond elementary school level so I'm not sure how much I would use this with the kids I teach. I think that the read text aloud feature is nice, especially when you can just highlight and hear one word. I also used World Book's translate feature last year when I had an ESL student transfer here from Brazil. I also like pointing out the "related information" links to my students. I tell them that when ever they find something they like that these links can lead them to other similar material.

#4 I really like the explainations for the dictionary skills found in the "Dictionary" Section. I have a power point that I use that has similar information. This would be a good place to send students to work independently with the various dictionary skills. They would have acccess to the list of skills and their meanings as well as access to the electronic dictionary itself. I also liked the "visual dictionary" and I think that it would be good to use with younger (k-2) students to help them learn to read and to build vocabulary.

Common Core Connections:
1A: Last week my 4th and 5th grade students worked on CCSS 4.RIT.7 and 5.RIT.7 and also SDLS 2.12.8 by using the "World Book Kids" Edition to look up information and answer questions in an on-line quiz on Edmodo. It worked very well, I linked the World Book site on the quiz so students could have the question open in one tab and then look up the information in World Book with the other tab. In this quiz the students needed to work with the different special features and basic search strategies to locate answers to multiple choice questions. We started by discussing both paper and electronic encyclopedias, I then demonstrated the various features of the World book and then had students do some hands-on practice by answering the quiz questions. I believe that the majority of both the 4th and 5th graders were successful in using the World Book to complete the quiz.