November is National Adoption Month. Adoption is a lifelong, life-changing journey for all members of the adoption triad: birth parents, adopted people, and adoptive parents.

Adoption, the legal transfer of parental rights from one parent to another, provides children with love, nurturance, and stability and promotes their well-being and their opportunity to become healthy, productive adults.

In the United States adoption is governed by state law, although state law must comply with overarching federal legislation. Adoption is essential for the permanency of many children, including:

• Children and youth in foster care who will not be reunited with their birth parents. In many cases these children are adopted by other birth relatives.
  
  
• Other U.S. infants and children whose birth parents make adoption plans for them. Birth mothers or fathers may or may not have ongoing contact with the adoptive family or child. Since the 1970's, most adoptions have become "open" which gives the biological parents the opportunity to have long-term contact with children.
  
  
• Children in other countries who need families. In inter-country adoptions, little or no information may be known about a child's birth family at the time of adoption.

As of October of 2009, 114,556 children in the United States, all ages, races, and backgrounds are officially available for adoption, although the average age is eight years old. Their parental rights have been permanently terminated and do not have a family to call their own. These same children wait an average of three years, if not more to be adopted, and move an average of three times during this period of time. They may or may not be separated from siblings in this process.

Research demonstrates that most children who are loving placed in an adoption thrive. With training and support, the most ordinary people have grown into their roles as adoptive parents with amazing results. These parents clearly show that adoption is one path to the love, stability, and nurturing all children need.

Assign students to write a report of at least 100 words (or a presentation of at least five slides) that cites at least three sources. Students should use the pathfinder provided below to help save time searching and ensuring the best results.

Students should address the following essential questions for critical thinking in their reports (you may create or substitute others);

• Why would birth parents agree to lovingly place their children for adoption?
  
  
• Why do adoptive parents seek a child to adopt?
  
  
• What qualities must, by law, adoptive parents have in order to qualify for adoption rights and why?
  
  
• What qualities should biological parents have in order to qualify for bringing their children into the world?
  
  
• Should there be any real difference in qualifications between biological and adoptive parents before bringing children into their homes through traditional and legal (adoption) means?
  
  
• What happens to children who are not adopted, and what can be done about this?

Select the Subject Heading Search > Type "Adoption" in the Search box > Click "Adoption" link (related links are available if needed)

November is National Adoption Month. What most people do not know is how many children are currently in serious need of a loving home in the United States. At any given moment there are 423,000 children in foster care, and roughly 115,000 of those same children are available for loving placements via adoption.

The problem we currently see surrounding foster care and adoption today is many would-be adoptive parents enter the process expressing an initial interest in adopting a newborn (newborn to 2 years old) of Caucasian decent, who unfortunately are few and far between when it comes to adopting through traditional public processes.

November is a time to help raise awareness about these children, their stories, and ways that our society can help these children get loving placed (never given away or given up) into forever homes, with forever families, so they can thrive.

As of October of 2009, 114,556 children in the United States, all ages, races, and backgrounds are officially up for adoption, although the average age is eight years old. Their parental rights have been permanently terminated and do not have a family to call their own. These same children wait an average of three years, if not more to be adopted, and move an average of three times during this period of time. In some cases, they are separated from siblings in this process.

One of the largest problems we are seeing with adoption through foster care, and foster care in general is more children are going into foster care annually than being adopted into forever homes. In the year 2009, 69,947 children had their parental rights terminated through the court system, but only 57,466 were adopted. Sadly some children will never be adopted.

In 2009, 29,471 children turned 18 years old in the foster care system, never having the opportunity to be adopted into a loving forever family.

ProQuest has created a custom BookCart learning activity that address this issue: "Adopting Children."

BookCarts are flexible lesson plans for inquiry-based learning activities. Rather than sending your students out to search eLibrary Elementary, and often waste time struggling with search terms and results lists, send them to the BookCart lesson plan for the topic/issue.

This BookCart includes all the information that students need to complete the assignment—in a single place!

• Essential Questions for Critical Thinking help students develop critical thinking skills.
• Student Directions that list what students are expected to do with the resources.
• Call numbers for optional correlated print resources.
• The option of including a ten-question quiz to help assess what student have learned.
• A 21st Century information literacy standard.
• Models for written and PowerPoint reports in the Web Links section.

To copy this BookCart learning activity:

• Logon to the eLibrary Elementary TEACHER EDITION.
• Click the BOOKCART ADMIN link.
• Click the PROQUEST CARTS tab.
• Type "Adopting Children" in the Search box.
• Click the COPY icon (middle one) in the ACTIONS column to the right of this title.
• Click RETURN TO MY LOCAL CARTS.

To edit this Cart for your students to use:

• Click the new BookCart Title with the prefix "COPY OF".
• Delete "Copy of" and then type your name in the AUTHOR boxes and your initials in the EMAIL box.
• Option: Edit the existing Essential Questions in the DESCRIPTION box.
• Option: Edit the existing Student Directions for your students to use.
• Scroll down and click SAVE.
• Return to My Local Carts.

Assign students to write a report of at least 100 words (or a presentation of at least five slides) that cites at least three sources. Students should use the pathfinder provided below to help save time searching and ensuring the best results.

Students should address the following essential questions for critical thinking in their reports:

• Why would a birth parent (or parents) agree to lovingly place their children for adoption?
  
  
• Why do adoptive parents seek a child to adopt?
  
  
• What qualities must, by law, adoptive parents have in order to qualify for adoption rights and why?
  
  
• What qualities should biological parents have in order to qualify for bringing their children into the world?
  
  
• Should there be any real difference in qualifications between biological and adoptive parents before bringing children into their homes through traditional and legal (adoption) means?
  
  
• What happens to children who are not adopted, and what can be done about this?

Type "Adopting Children" in the Search box > Type "Adoption OR Children OR Orphans" in the Document Title box