May 2006
                           Vol. 2, Issue 5

SIRS® Researcher
SIRS® Decades
SIRS Discoverer®
eLibrary®
eLibrary® Curriculum
Edition
eLibrary® Science
BookCarts™ & QuizCarts™
ProQuest® Platinum
ProQuest®
Historical Newspapers
CultureGrams™
ExploreLearning®
Reading A-Z™
Email Service
Information
Themes: Asian Pacific Heritage Month & More

Dear %%NAME%%,

Welcome to this month's issue of ProQuest Teachable Moments. This issue focuses on Asian Pacific Heritage Month, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, Business Image Improvement Month, and 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.

SIRS® Researcher
Asian Pacific Heritage Month
Grades 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

The month of May gives teachers of social sciences an opportunity to assign activities that support Asian Pacific Heritage Month.

Multiculturalism is a fact of life in the U.S. today, and it's estimated that in the next decade today's Caucasian population majority will become the minority. That is why it is important to include learning experiences that help us all to appreciate the role of each culture group in continuing the "melting pot" tradition.

Activity: Mini-research activities with Researcher and SIRS WebSelect give teachers and students the resources to get a variety of viewpoints about the many ethnic groups that comprise the Asian American population of our country.
  1. Type "Asian American" in the Subject Heading search box, then click Search

  2. You will have access to more than 50 subject headings for articles

  3. Browse the list of subjects to determine the best ones to assign to your students

  4. Students can use the Tagged List tool to save the articles for their reports
Assign two- to three-minute oral reports that summarize the specific contributions of the Asian American group being studied. Students should use at least three articles to support their summary.

Presentation skills are part of all state standards and are important for success in college, careers, and life. Oral reports also provide students with an opportunity to learn more than they could simply by having teachers read and grade individual reports. They also help prevent plagiarism because students must know what they are presenting. Encourage several questions from the student audience.

Find out more about SIRS Researcher and SIRS Leading Issues at our K-12 website.

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ExploreLearning® Gizmos
Health, Wellness & Beyond
Grades 6-12
Math & Science Solution Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Older Americans Month. It also includes a variety of other themes that include health and wellness, especially as they relate to older Americans: Arthritis; Better Hearing and Speech; Healthy Vision; Osteoporosis Awareness; and Stroke Prevention.

Activity: ExploreLearning Gizmos provide support for studying concepts related to diseases and aging in these sections: Human biology, anatomy, and health and Human perception and behavior. Assign a different Gizmo to students and have them summarize how that science concept connects to health and disease prevention and cure.

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Reading A-Z™
Get Caught Reading Month
Grades K-12
Reading A-Z Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Get Caught Reading Month and a great opportunity to celebrate with RAZ books. May is also National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, so get your students to read books about this theme. Here are some examples from RAZ collections:
My Body
Senses
Doctor Jen
Our Camping
Summer Olympics Events
Healthy Me
Lance and His Bicycle
Jessica Loves Soccer
Inside Your Body
Jenny Loves Yoga
Skydiving Level
Cathy Freeman Level
The Hard Stuff! All About Bones
Get Moving! All About Muscles
The Last Great Race
Female Sports Stars
What Makes You, You?
American Sports Legends
InFLUenza
You can connect to each book by clicking the ALL BOOKS tab at www.readinga-z.com.

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eLibrary®
Physical Fitness & Disease Prevention
Grades 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. The warm weather creates the motivation for a variety of outdoor sports and activities. You'll see joggers, bikers, golfers, baseball players all come out of their winter doldrums. The weather and scenery in May are ideal for physical activity including gardening and lawn mowing.

Activity: The topic of physical fitness and disease prevention go hand in hand. Students will be motivated to research topics that have to do with wellness and disease prevention and their connection to outdoor activities. Fortunately for teachers and students, ProQuest BookCarts provide an ideal way to create engaging and standards-based mini-research activities for students to go beyond textbook learning and testing. ProQuest 400+ model BookCart collection includes a variety of models that focus on wellness and disease prevention:
Life Extension and Reversing Aging: High School
Exercise and Health: Middle
Healthy Food Choices and Junk Food: Middle
Building Self Esteem: High School
Drug Abuse and Prevention for Teens: High School
HM04--Performance Enhancing Drugs: High School
Tattoos, Body Piercing and Marking: High School
To access a list of health and other subject area model BookCarts, click here. To learn how to copy the health or any other of these model BookCarts, click here.

You must be in the Teacher Edition to access BookCart Editor to copy any or all of these:
  1. Logon to eLibrary
  2. Type the following URL in the Address box:
    http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/teacher
  3. This will open the new eLibrary Teacher Edition
  4. Click BookCart Admin to open the BookCart Editor
  5. Type the title of the first BookCart listed above in the Title box
  6. Type "PQ BookCart" in the Author box
  7. Click the Search button
  8. Click the Select box to the right for the desired BookCarts (ignore duplicates)
  9. Click the Copy button at the top and repeat the process for another
Students will be able to access these BookCarts by clicking the BookCart tab on the Student edition of eLibrary and then clicking on either to open them and use the resources. It's important to structure all research assignments with a variety of Essential Questions that invite critical thinking and the use of multiple resources.

Each BookCart has examples of essential questions (EQs) in the Description box. Essential questions include words such as "how" and "why" rather than "who, what, and where." These types of questions require students to use multiple resources and generate original and critical thinking in their reports/presentations.

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CultureGrams™
National Sports
Grades 5-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. Identifying popular sports can tell you a lot about a country. For example, environment clearly plays a role, with skiing popular in snowy Sweden and sailing popular in sunny Bahamas.

Some popular sports have deep cultural roots, like karate or sumo wrestling in Japan, while others are evidence of global connectivity, such as the spread of baseball and basketball from the United States. A country's popular sports can also say something about its colonial past. CultureGrams is your link to this kind of in-depth information!
  • Divide the class into a few groups, giving each of them a copy of a blank world map. Using one color, have each group mark the location of the world's international test cricket teams: Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe. The West Indies also has a team, so have students mark Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Lucia.

  • Assign each group to read the History sections of the above CultureGrams from the World Edition, noting each country's relationship with colonialism. Groups can read these together or, to save time, the countries can be divided among
    group members.

  • With a different color, have the groups indicate which of the countries are the former colonies of Great Britain.

  • Compare the two colors, noting the strong relationship between colonialism and the spread of cricket. Are there any countries where cricket is popular that are not former British colonies? Discuss the long-lasting cultural effects of colonization. After the discussion, you may also want to have students read the Diet and Language sections of the England CultureGram and talk about the ways in which Great Britain has been influenced by its colonies.

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BookCarts™ & QuizCarts™
New BookCarts for Spring
Grades: 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

Here's a list of a few new BookCarts for high school student mini-research:
  • Business Ethics: an Oxymoron?: SocStudies--Business: High School
  • Asian American History Month: U.S. History: High School
  • Building Self Esteem: Health: High School
  • Cosmology and the Universe: Science--Space/Astronomy: High School
You may want to search for the Cosmology BookCart because it contains a sample Quiz that demonstrates the new QuizCart multiple choice assessment tool. When you search for that title, indicate Quizzes as your choice in the Product field.

425 Free Model BookCarts for HS, MS & K-6 Curriculum

You may also be interested in this guide to help you use ProQuest model BookCarts more effectively.

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eLibrary® Science
Health & Medicine Publications
Grades 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Older Americans Month. It also includes a variety of other themes that include health and wellness, especially as they relate to older Americans: Arthritis; Better Hearing and Speech; Healthy Vision; Osteoporosis Awareness; and Stroke Prevention.

eLibrary Science content provides a robust source of health and medicine publications to support these themes for Older Americans.

eLibrary Science also has a growing collection of model BookCarts that Health and Science teachers can use to help students save classroom time and ensure focused results in their mini-research projects. ProQuest mini-research provides models and strategies that support the development of critical thinking and problem solving, both essential skills tested by the states. Students learn standards-based Science and Health content better than they would from textbooks, and also increase their essential language arts skills, and their technology and information literacy skills as well.

Activity: Copy the following BookCarts into you local collection and use them to assign mini-research activities to your students. Each BookCart includes model Essential Questions (EQs) in the Description box. These and similar questions that can be created by teachers help to ensure that a student research project is not a summary of an encyclopedia article on the topic but a real attempt to solve a problem or form a reasoned opinion on a controversial science/health issue.
  • Bioethics of Stem Cell Research: Science--Life /Technology: PQ-ELS-NJ Bookcart
  • Bioethics of Organ Transplantation: Science--Life/Technology: PQ-ELS-NJ Bookcart
  • Antibiotic Drug Resistance: Science--Life/Health: PQ-ELS-IN Bookcart
  • Reversing the Aging Process: Science--Life/Health: PQ-ELS-NJ Bookcart
To copy these BookCarts to your local collection:
  1. Click on the BookCart Admin link in the Teacher Edition:
    http://science.bigchalk.com/teacher
  2. Check the Product option to include Quizzes
  3. Type the Title in the Title box
  4. Type the Author PQ-ELS-NJ (first name) Bookcart (last name) in the Author box
  5. Click Search
  6. Check the Select box to the right of these titles and click Copy
  7. Return to your Search page and click Bookcart to view the results

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ProQuest® Historical Newspapers
Infamous Business & Government Scandals
Grades 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Business Image Improvement Month. The Enron scandal continues to play out in the courts and has become the symbol of all the business corruption of the last 10 years that has hurt so many corporate employees, pensioners, and investors.

Ethics and character education are part of the new focus of responsibility being placed on the next generation of business leaders in colleges around the country. The ethics scandals are not limited to business but also include government and voters continue to call for reforms that will bring trust back to the average American citizen, voter, investor, and consumer.

Activity: There have been other periods in American history that have produced equally infamous business and government scandals and calls for reform. It would be interesting for students to study some of these eras and compare and contrast those eras to the present.

Click the Topics tab and browse the following list of corruption and scandals in different eras:
  • Westward Expansion and Imperialism (c. 1865 - 1900) > Federal Policies Towards Native Americans

  • Industrial Age (c. 1880 - 1910) > Antitrust Movement

  • Progressive Era (c. 1880 - 1900) > Government Reforms

  • The Roaring '20s (c. 1920 - 1929) > Harding Administration

  • The Great Depression (c. 1928 - 1939) > Stock Market Crash

  • The Reagan and Bush Administrations (c. 1981 - 1993) > Savings and Loan Scandal
Assign students a different era and ask them to summarize the abuses and the proposed reforms and then compare that era with the abuses and reforms proposed in the present.

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eLibrary® Curriculum Edition
Asian Immigration
Grades 6-11
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

The month of May gives Social Studies teachers an opportunity to assign activities that support Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Multiculturalism is a fact of life in the U.S. today. Demographic experts estimate that in the next decade, today's Caucasian population majority will become the minority. That's why it's important to include learning experiences that help us all to appreciate the contributions and unique differences of each immigrant culture group in continuing the "melting pot" tradition exemplified by our national motto "E Pluribus Unum."

Activity: eLibrary model BookCarts help teachers and students to save time and ensure learning and great results from mini-research assignments. A new BookCart "Asian American History" helps support the study and appreciation of the struggles and the triumphs of Asian American immigrants.

Copy this BookCart to your collection and get started celebrating Asian American History Month. The BookCart includes examples of Essential Questions (EQs) in the Description box to help ensure that students use critical thinking in selecting the resources they use from the BookCart. Teachers should create additional EQs to meet and engage the interests of their students.
History Study Center Activity
  1. Click the History icon
  2. Type "Asian immigration to United States"
  3. Click Immigration and multiculturalism in America
  4. Scroll through the resources and look for highlighted ones
Assign 2-3 minute oral reports on a variety of subtopics that focus on different Asian-American ethic groups: religion; geography; holidays; significant historical events; unique cultural differences; etc.

ProQuest Learning: Literature Activity
  1. Click the Literature icon
  2. Type Asian authors in the Quick Search box and Go
  3. Click the More link to get a listing of all authors
  4. Assign a different author to each student to summarize their major theme and works
Presentation skills are part of all state standards and are important for success in college, careers, and life. Oral reports also motivate greater effort because of the pressure of peer audiences. They also provide an opportunity for students to learn more than they could when reports are written and presented only to and for the teacher. Teachers may also choose to allow each student to answer two or three questions about their report from the peer audience.

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ProQuest® Platinum
Book Reviews
Grades 6-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Get Caught Reading Month. This would be an excellent time to be planning to motivate students to do some summer reading when they have more time and are away from the pressures of school and daily assignments. ProQuest Platinum book reviews can help students select some of the possibilities for their summer reading pleasure (and education).

Activity: First, students will need to access a list of the best sellers, both fiction and nonfiction.
  1. Click the Publications search tab
  2. Click the "N" publication title search link
  3. Scroll down the list and click New York Times Book Review; New York
  4. Click the most recent date link
  5. Note: You may also want to look at the lists of the past
  6. Scroll down and click Best Sellers
  7. Review the list of books and their descriptions
  8. Select three titles of interest: at least one must be nonfiction
Second, you'll need to research a book review.
  1. Type the selected book's name in the Search box in quotes (example: "The Da Vinci Code" or "American Theocracy")
  2. Click the Search button
  3. Scroll through the results list to find information and/or reviews of the book and author
  4. Repeat the above steps until you have found at least three books that can make your summer reading list
  5. Using the reviews, summarize the significant points that appeal to your personal interests and why you have decided to read these books

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SIRS® Decades
Corporate Scandals Over Time
Grades 7-12
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

May is Business Image Improvement Month. Corporate ethics and character education are part of the new focus of responsibility being placed on the next generation of business leaders in colleges around the country. The ethics scandals are not limited to business but also include government and voters continue to call for reforms that will bring trust back to the average American citizen, voter, investor, and consumer.

Activity: There have been other periods in American history that have produced equally infamous business and government scandals and calls for reform. It would be interesting for students to study some of these eras and compare and contrast those eras to the present--using SIRS Decades!
  1. Click the 1900s icon
  2. Click the Big Business Topic link
  3. Click the 1920s icon
  4. Click the Stock Market Crash
  5. Click the Teapot Dome Scandal
Each of these topics represented a major abuse of power by big business leaders and interests. Each resulted in major harm to workers, consumers, and investors. Each of these situations called for major reforms by government to stop the abuse and restore the American people's confidence in business. Assign one era to each third of the class and have them compare the abuses and reforms to those happening in their present world.
  • What are the *similarities* between the abuses of this era with today?
  • What are the *differences* between the abuses of this era and today?
  • What are the *similarities* and *differences* between the reforms of this era with the reforms proposed today?
Assign a two- to three-minute report that requires the use of three resources.

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SIRS Discoverer®
Family Health & Aging
Grades 3-8
Training & Educator Resources | Free 30-Day Trial

In May, we have an opportunity to celebrate Older Americans Month. Students in grades 3-8 usually have grandparents who are in their 60s and may be experiencing many of the signs and affects of aging. Students should and do want to know more about their grandparents and how they can understand and support their quality of their life.

The resources in SIRS Discoverer and WebFind provide an excellent teaching opportunity to get students to learn more about family health and the aging process.
  1. Click the Health & Human Body icon in the Browse Subject Tree
  2. Click Aging in the Subtopics list
  3. You'll get a list of 60+ articles for students to use to write a report on aging
Articles are coded by color to indicate editor-determined reading levels. A new tool for teachers and students is the Lexile reading score, which scientifically measures the reading difficulty of each article. Lexiles have become increasingly popular and many standardized tests and many states have adopted this tool to help teachers customize learning resources for their students. Teachers should assign a color code or a Lexile score range for students to use for browsing these articles based on whether they're reading at, above, or below grade level.

You may want to assign reports that focus on a variety of issues that are related to aging and are contained within these articles. Assign different students to limit their browsing of articles to these different issues: diseases affecting mostly older Americans, life expectancy, physical fitness activities, nutrition, medication, healthcare, etc. Students should be able to create a summary using two articles or websites.

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Your ProQuest K-12 Team

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