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Themes:
Winter Solstice, Holidays, WW I +
Dear %%NAME%%,
Welcome to this month's issue of ProQuest Teachable Moments. This issue focuses on a myriad of topics, including December holidays, winter solstice, Nobel prizes, World War I, Pearl Harbor, and much more.
Our monthly enewsletter delivers a set of hands-on learning activities that encourage students to conduct quality research and produce meaningful results to increase their knowledge and understanding of everything from basic math to literature to history and beyond. Keep in mind that these activities are not duplicated in our other monthly newsletters, which also contain ready-made lessons.
Have an idea or feedback concerning this newsletter? Send email to tim.mclain@il.proquest.com today.
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SIRS® Researcher
Spiritual Literacy Month
Grades 6-12
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December is Spiritual Literacy Month. Throughout the ages, the scriptures of all religions have proclaimed that humanity is one great family. This is a simple truth, and it is simply and directly stated in every religion.
In fact, almost all the principles associated with religious thought are shared by every religion. When their inherent similarities are revealed, the collected wisdom of the world's religions shows a profound oneness of the human spirit, confirming that our differences are superficial and our similarities are deep.
Activity: Use this procedure to locate the Leading Issue on "School Prayer."
- Locate the Leading Issues section of the SIRS Researcher interface.
- Scroll down and click the link "more issues."
- Click "School Prayer."
- Click the Overview tab to learn more about this issue.
- Click the Pro/Con tab to understand both sides of the topic.
- Finally click the myAnalysis tab to get specific directions for the research report.
Teachers should consider the variety of activities that can help students form and express their reasoned opinion on either side of the issue or somewhere in between: Formal research paper; mini-research report; PowerPoint presentation; and informal debate.
Links to these student guides are included in step five. Researcher also presents teachers with curriculum guides that help them manage two non-traditional project types. Click "Educator's Resources" at the top of the page. Scroll down the resource list to the following new resources: Guide to Writing a Mini-Research Paper - Teacher and Guide to Creating a Mini-Debate Outline – Teacher.
Mini-research reports that are presented orally in about three minutes (such as PowerPoint presentations) are an excellent way for students to share their reasoned conclusions. Students get practice in making presentations to other students. They also get an opportunity to learn from (or challenge) them. Presentation skills are an important part of language arts and social studies standards for essential skills. Oral reports also help discourage plagiarism.
Find out more about SIRS Researcher and SIRS Leading Issues at our K-12 website.
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ExploreLearning® Gizmos
Winter Solstice
Grades 6-10
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Math & Science Solution Resources
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December marks the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Why does the Earth have seasons? What would happen if we had none? How do seasons make life as we know it possible on Earth? How do species adapt to the extremes of heat and cold?
Activity: Open the following ExploreLearning Gizmos that relate to these topics in Science > Grade 6-8 > Earth and space science > Earth, Moon, and Sun. Then open the Exploration Guide for step-by-step procedures to use these Gizmos effectively:
Also open Science > Grade 6-8 > Life science > Ecology and interdependence:
- Effect of Environment on New Life Form
- Rabbit Population by Season
Tap into the entire collection on a trial basis today. Keep in mind that each Gizmo is accompanied by teacher lesson plans and student activities and worksheets that help reinforce the concepts highlighted in the Gizmos!
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Reading A-Z™ & LearningPage™
December Themes
Grades 1-6
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Reading A-Z Resources
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December is the month of celebrating many religious and ethnic holidays. It's also the month of the winter solstice -- the shortest day of the year and the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Reading A-Z provides a collection of leveled readers that can help teachers make reading assignments that focus on both of these themes and that students will understand, learn from, and enjoy.
Activity: Here's a sampling of fiction and non-fiction titles that teachers can provide their students to read to learn more about these topics/themes especially when students complete the worksheets included with each book:
Holidays: World Holidays--Level L; Celebrating Food and Family--Level N; Holidays Around the World--Level T
Seasons: Winter--Level aa; We Make a Snowman--Level C;The Four Seasons--Level E; Changing Seasons--Level F; Hibernation--Level G; Wonderful Winter--Level N
You can connect to each RAZ book by clicking the ALL BOOKS tab at www.readinga-z.com.
Learning Page, a Reading A-Z sister site, offers more than 3,200 free educational activity sheets for K-3. Each month new themes are added to the collection.
Learning Page activities to celebrate winter and the holidays can be found online.
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eLibrary®
Pearl Harbor
Grades 7-12
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December 7 marks the 65th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The Pearl Harbor attack entered the consciousness of contemporary Americans more forcefully than any other single event. The attack was regarded as a dastardly "surprise attack" and President Roosevelt declared it the "day that shall live in infamy" as he prepared to declare war on Japan.
During the Second World War every effort was made to keep the memory of Pearl Harbor bright. Posters, popular songs, and other media were staples of wartime popular culture, regular memorial services were held to commemorate the dead, and flags that had flown at the Capitol and White House on December 7, 1941, were raised over enemy capitals when they fell to the Allies.
Activity: ProQuest has created a special BookCart/QuizCart for students to use to research the Pearl Harbor attack. ProQuest model BookCarts are an excellent tool for students and teachers to use to jump-start mini-research activities on hundreds of standards-based and curriculum connected topics.
BookCarts save valuable classroom and library time in searching, ensure relevancy, and can be customized to the reading level and interests of students at all levels.
Teachers and librarians can copy the "Pearl Harbor Attack" BookCart to their local collection to use immediately or adapt it to their needs.
After accessing the ProQuest Carts collection:
- Click the SS--US History folder.
- Scroll down and click the Page 2 link.
- Click the Copy icon in the Actions column to the right of Pearl Harbor Attack.
- Click Return to My Local Carts tab to view or edit the BookCart.
Notice that a sample quiz is included to illustrate how BookCarts can also be used to assess factual content. Teachers may want to use this as the first step before assigning the actual analysis and synthesis involved in a research report. Quizzes can be emailed to the teacher with automatic scoring included.
Also notice the Essential Questions for Critical Thinking included in the Description box. These questions help guide students integrate critical thinking in their reports. Scientific research indicates that permanent learning requires in-depth study and critical thinking.
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eLibrary® Elementary
Winter Solstice
Grades 1-6
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December 21 marks the winter solstice, the beginning of winter and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the Southern Hemisphere, it's just the opposite -- the summer solstice, the beginning of summer, and the longest day of the year. The solstices mark the beginning of winter and summer; the vernal and autumnal equinoxes mark the beginning of spring and autumn, when days and nights are of equal length.
Activity: The winter solstice makes an engaging mini-research activity, where students can find out more about the seasons and how the earth's and sun's positions in space determine them. Assign students an oral report with a poster, a model, or if equipped, a multimedia presentation of one of the four seasonal beginnings and the position of the sun and earth relative to the Northern and Southern hemisphere.
To help teachers and students save time and ensure good results for K-6 students, ProQuest has created a model BookCart. Teachers and librarians can copy this BookCart and other elementary models to their My Local Carts collection using this link for detailed procedures.
Look for the folder Elementary BookCarts in the ProQuest Carts collection.
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CultureGrams™
World AIDS Day
Grades 7-10
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Today (12/1) is UN World AIDS Day. Use the CultureGrams World Edition to help students understand the impact of AIDS in Africa. To begin, illustrate the severity of the African AIDS pandemic by having students access the "Most adults with HIV/AIDS" table in the Health section of the Extremes tables.
Then distribute a gray-scale PDF map of Africa to each student. Using the HIV/AIDS table, students should identify and shade with color the countries with the world's highest adult HIV/AIDS rates.
Explain the concept of life expectancy to the students (you may want to use the definition in the Concepts and Terminology section).
Then ask the students to access the CultureGrams Comparison Table. For the nations, have the students click "Add All." For the categories, have the students select "Life Expectancy (Female)" and "Life Expectancy (Male)." Then have them create the table and sort it by either "Life Expectancy" heading so the countries with the lowest life expectancy appear at the top.
Ask the students to identify the ten countries with the highest HIV/AIDS rates. How do these countries compare to other countries in terms of life expectancy? Conclude the activity with a discussion on students' findings. Discuss some of the social impacts of having nearly 40 percent of a country's adult population infected with HIV/AIDS. (Young population, large number of orphans, grandparents, or older children forced into role of family head, decreased economic activity, etc.)
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BookCarts™ & QuizCarts™
500 ProQuest BookCarts
Grades: K-12
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Did you know that eLibrary provides a collection of 500 BookCarts that teachers and librarians can copy and adapt for their students?
Using ProQuest model BookCarts provides many benefits for librarians, teachers, and students and is in essence, a digital lesson plan for research activities:
- Time spent searching for quality learning resources is reduced and can be reinvested in more critical thinking and writing.
- All resources are balanced, authoritative, and include a variety of media.
- Essential Questions for Critical Thinking are included to ensure students use critical thinking in their reports, reducing plagiarism, and increasing achievement.
- Quizzes can be included to assess knowledge of content with email to the teacher and auto scoring where appropriate.
- Teachers can add their own favorite websites and articles to models.
- All topics are standards-based, curriculum and textbook correlated.
- State standards can be included in editing and auto searching for more content.
- Custom reading level collections can be created using Lexiles.
- Students still must search but in a teacher managed information environment.
- Using ProQuest models prepares teachers and librarians to create effective new models.
Here's how to view, copy, and adapt our teacher-produced and reviewed ProQuest BookCarts for your My Local Carts collection.
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eLibrary® Science
Nobel Prizes
Grades 5-12
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Nobel Prizes in Science are awarded in December of each year for physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. Roger D. Kornberg of the Stanford University School of Medicine won this year' s Nobel Prize in chemistry.
George F. Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley, and John C. Mather of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center won this year's prize in physics.
Andrew Z. Fire of Stanford University and Craig C. Mello of the University of Massachusetts Medical School won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Activity: Assign different students the name of one of the winners. Students will research the role that this scientist played in the discoveries that they made in their field of work.
Here are some samples if essential questions that are designed to integrate guidance and critical thinking into the research process. Teacher can use these and create others:
- What background and preparation prepared the Nobel laureate for his work and discoveries?
- What discoveries did this scientist make?
- How do these discoveries have the potential to benefit mankind?
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ProQuest® Historical Newspapers
Pearl Harbor Attack
Grades 5-10
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The year 2006 is the 65th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack -- "A date that will live in infamy," as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt remarked while declaring war on Japan and the official entry of the U.S. into World War II. Many compare this tragic event to the terrorist attack and destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City because of the surprise and devastation involved in each event.
Read about this event from the perspective of people who witnessed it. ProQuest Historical Newspapers provides that opportunity for all students. ProQuest editors have collected the best primary resources for hundreds of standards-based topics and organized them using the Topics Search and Timeline feature. This saves time for teachers and students versus general searching and ensures excellent relevance.
Activity: Compare and contrast the Pearl Harbor attack and United States entry into World War II with the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent entry of the United States and other countries into the War on Terrorism. How are they alike and how are they different?
- Click the Topics tab.
- Click World War II (c. 1939 - 1945) > Pearl Harbor.
- Select 2 articles for My List.
- Click the Topics tab.
- Click The Turn of the Millennia and Beyond (c. 1999 - 2005) > September 11th Terrorist Attacks.
- Select 2 articles for My List.
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eLibrary® Curriculum Edition
Battle of Verdun & World War I
Grades 7-12
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World War I (WW I) may seem like ancient history to students because almost all the veterans of this war are deceased and no longer available to share their stories of the conflict. But, 90 years ago in December 1916, the Battle of Verdun was fought. This was the longest and bloodiest battle of World War I (known as the Great War at the time), with more than 750,000 casualties. American President Woodrow Wilson hopefully declared World War I the war to end all wars, and in fact it was the bloodiest one in history up to that time.
History Study Center Activity: Students can learn more about the Battle of Verdun and World War I using the Study Units created for that topic. To help students focus their research and integrate critical thinking, teachers need to assign essential questions for each topic about World War I. (These are examples. Teachers can include others that are available in the "end if chapter" critical thinking questions in most history textbooks.)
Click the special collections History icon. Type World War I in the Search box and select Study Units for the Search. Review and assign the following topics and correlated essential questions to different students.
- The Western Front and life in the trenches: How did trench warfare change the battle weapons and strategies of previous wars?
- Britain during the First World War, 1914-1918: What was unique about Britain's role in the World War I and why?
- The origins of the First World War: What strategies might have been implemented to help prevent World War I?
- America during the First World War, 1914-1918: What was unique about America's role in World War I and why?
ProQuest Learning: Literature Activity: World War I inspired many novels about the horrors of war and the courage of the combatants on both sides. Here's a list of authors of poetry and prose, suitable for assignments that help students learn more about their works dealing with the First World War. Teachers may choose to add others:
Conrad Aiken; Richard Aldington; John Buchan; Guillaume Apollinaire; Henri Barbusse; Edmund Blunden; Sir Winston Churchill; John Dos Passos; Ernest Hemingway; Ford Madox Ford; Robert Graves; Ernst Junger; Erich Maria Remarque; Siegfried Sassoon; Henry Williamson; and Arnold Zweig.
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ProQuest® Platinum
USSR: 1922-1991
Grades 6-12
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Fifteen years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian republics met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha to issue a declaration that the Soviet Union was dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Gorbachev described this as a constitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be halted.
Twelve of the 15 republics signed the European Energy Charter in the Hague on December 17, 1991, as if they were sovereign states, along with 28 other European countries, the European Community, and four non-European countries.
On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the USSR. By December 31, 1991, all official Soviet institutions had ceased operations as individual republics assumed the central government's role. The Soviet flag was lowered for the last time over the Kremlin.
Activity: Use the essential questions below to guide your research report on the reasons for the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
- In your opinion, what was the most important reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union?
- What were the roles of Gorbachev, perestroika, and glasnost, in the dissolution?
- What was the immediate impact of the dissolution on politics and the economy?
Here's the Search procedure to get the best results:
- Click the Advanced Search tab.
- Type "Soviet Union" in the first box and use the default Citation and Abstract.
- Type "perestroika" in the second box and use the default again.
- Type "glasnost" in the third box, change the option to Document Title, then Search.
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SIRS® Decades
America's Reluctance: WW I
Grades 7-12
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Ninety years ago, in December 1916, the Battle of Verdun was fought. This was the longest and bloodiest battle of World War I, with more than 750,000 casualties. Much of the fighting in World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by an empty space between the trenches called "no man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland.
On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and -- for the first time -- from the air. More than 9 million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and millions more civilians perished.
America's insistence on neutral rights while also trying to broker a peace resulted in tensions with both Berlin and London. In 1915, when a German U-boat sank the Lusitania, a large passenger liner with 128 Americans aboard, Wilson vowed "America was too proud to fight," and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships.
Former President Teddy Roosevelt denounced Wilson's "cowardice" in not responding with arms and supporting the Allies, but Germany temporarily complied with Wilson's warning. In January 1917, the Germans announced they would resume unrestricted submarine warfare.
Berlin's secret telegram inviting Mexico to join the war as Germany's ally against the U.S. was exposed in February, further angering American opinion. After German submarines attacked several American merchant ships, sinking three, Wilson requested that Congress declare war on Germany, which it did on April 6, 1917.
Activity: Examine America's reluctance to get involved.
- Click the 1910s icon at the top.
- Select "World War I--America Moves Toward War" in the Topics column.
- Click the links in the "So What" section to get a current perspective and return.
- Pick the Document Based Questions link at the top .
- Read and respond to the assignment essay question using at least three resources.
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SIRS Discoverer®
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
Grades 2-6
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December is Safe Toys and Gifts Month for obvious reasons. There are millions of toys out there, and hundreds of new ones hit the store shelves each year. Toys are meant to be fun, and they're an important part of any child's development.
But it's sobering to learn that in 2002, more than 212,000 children in the United States were treated in hospital emergency departments for toy-related injuries, and that 13 children died.
Consider these statistics from the National SAFE KIDS Campaign:
- Falls and choking cause most toy-related deaths and injuries in children. Choking alone causes one-third of all toy-related deaths--most often from balloons.
- Children four years old and younger account for almost half of all toy-related injuries and almost all deaths.
- Children younger than age three are at the greatest risk of choking because they tend to put objects, especially toys, in their mouths.
- Riding toys, including bicycles and scooters, cause many injuries in children.
Activity: Select the Subject Headings search option and type "safety" for your search. You'll get a list of a variety of subjects that include the following as relevant to the topic:
- Children's clothing, Safety measures
- Commercial products, Safety measures (See: Product safety)
- Cycling, Safety measures
- Exercise, Safety measures
- Food, Safety measures
- Household safety (See: Home accidents, Prevention)
- Playgrounds, Safety measures
- School buses, Safety measures
- Sports, Safety measures
Assign each student a different subject from this list. Each student should find two articles and summarize the most significant points for a two-minute oral presentation. Oral presentations provide students with valuable experiences in developing standards-based essential skills and overall confidence in presenting their ideas to others. Oral reports can also help other students learn more about the overall topic.
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Cordially,
Your ProQuest K-12 Team
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