New Year, New Models

ProQuest has good news for you about BookCarts -- our Model Carts collection has recently expanded to more than 650 lessons and activities!

Each of these is free for you to copy (Excel/PDF listing) to your local collection.

When you view ProQuest Carts in the BookCart Editor (Teacher Editions), you'll see that all these models are organized into folders by core curriculum areas. This makes it easy for teachers and librarians to review the collection and copy BookCarts of interest to them.

Here's more good news -- wach of our educator-created models is organized with the following lesson planning template in the Description box:

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING: (each model includes some examples to guide students, but teachers and librarians can create and assign others); STUDENT DIRECTIONS: (include what students should do with the resources they select and which essential questions to answer--Sample: Write a report of about 200 words using the ProQuest model. Use at least one print, one website, and at least two article sources in your works cited page); PRINT RESOURCES: (the librarian can provide pathfinders for your students here); ASSESSMENT: (options: include a QuizCart or links to a teacher webpage in the Web Links section of the BookCart)

Planning and managing inquiry-based activities has become much easier and less time consuming using eLibrary BookCarts and QuizCarts. ProQuest has done the work for you by collecting the best K-12 digital resources and correlating them to state standards, with essential questions for critical thinking -- all in a collection of more than 650 models.

The one-of-a-kind BookCart tool allows librarians and educators to build persistent links to pre-selected content, creating reading lists, subject and topic pages, standards-linked lessons and activities, community interest pages, and even pre- or post-assessments. Each BookCart addresses topics and issues that teachers assign most often to their students--and we've added some new and engaging issues as well.

You can copy and adapt any or all of these for your personal collection. Best of all, teachers can collaborate (more information) and share models helping to coordinate their teaching but still maintaining flexibility.

Here's what Diane Gallagher Hayashi had to say about her experience with ProQuest BookCarts customized for teachers' major research projects. (Read story.)