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Themes:
American Education Week,
Children's Book Week & More
Dear %%NAME%%,
Welcome to this month's issue of ProQuest Teachable Moments! This issue focuses on health and fitness, as well as geography, Children's Book Week, child safety and awareness, plus American Education Week.
Our free monthly newsletter 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.
Reading A-Z
Children's Book Week
Grades K-6
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In November, schools celebrate Children's Book Week. Reading A-Z books, coordinated with other November themes, provide a great way to read for enjoyment and learning in your school or at home. RAZ’s developmental K-6 reading books are inexpensive to print, so teachers can have students take them home, unlike more expensive reader sets. Some other major themes that create interest in reading in November: Health & Fitness; Sports; U.S. Geography, and Child Safety & Awareness.
Activity: Here’s a Children’s Book Week sampling of mostly non-fiction titles that teachers can assign so students learn more about these topics/themes. They’re especially effective when students complete the worksheets.
- Health/Fitness: My Body, Josh Gets Glasses; The Food We Eat; Healthy Me; Inside Your Body; Jenny Loves Yoga; An Apple a Day The Hard Stuff! All About Bones Get Moving! All About Muscles Book of Blood What Makes You, You? Genetics at Work
- Sports: Summer Olympics Events; Jessica Loves Soccer; Summer Olympics Legends; Skydiving; The Olympics: Past and Present
- U.S Geography: Mount Rushmore; National Parks The Last Great Race Ancient Cliff Dwellers The Lost Dutchman, The Eruption of Mount Shasta Native Americans of the Great Plains The Transcontinental Railroad
- Child Safety: Police Officers; Firefighters; Playing It Safe; Fireworks; Rattlers; Severe Weather The Firefighter
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 recently added Awesome Autumn activities. Celebrate fall by checking out the new materials filled with autumn leaves, harvest foods, and more.
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SIRS Leading Issues
American Education Week
Grades 7-11
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In November we celebrate American Education Week. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a bipartisan effort to help predominantly poor and minority students, in mostly urban and rural public schools, close the education achievement gap between themselves and more affluent and predominantly white suburban students. No Child Left Behind requires annual state testing of students as the measure of accountability. Schools that don’t meet new standards for more than two years face cuts in federal funding.
As of 2003, 26 states required high school seniors to pass an exit exam before receiving their diploma, even if they passed all their classes and fulfilled all other graduation requirements. The pressure for results tempts teachers to "teach to the tests" or even to cheat, while underachieving students may drop out of school because the GED (General Educational Development) test is easier to pass.
Activity: Locate the Leading Issues section of the new Researcher interface. Scroll down and click "Educational tests and measurements." The pro and con of the issue on testing:
Pro: Supporters of standardized testing insist that it is necessary to measure and evaluate what students have learned. They argue that teachers and schools must be held accountable to ensure a quality education for all students.
Con: Those opposed to testing say it’s often unfair to disadvantaged and minority students. They believe that students are often tested on material not covered in the curriculum and feel that no exceptions are made for disabled or special-needs students.
Leading Issues articles are selected to provide a range of viewpoints on each side of the issues. Teachers should consider the variety of activities that can help students form and express reasoned opinions on either side of the issue or somewhere in between: Formal research paper; mini-research report; PowerPoint presentation; and informal debate. Researcher presents teachers with curriculum guides that help them and students express themselves through any of these four methods. Click "Educator's Resources" at the top of the page. Scroll down the resource list to the following new resources:
- Guide to Writing a Research Paper
- Guide to Writing a Mini-Research Paper - Student
- Guide to Writing a Mini-Research Paper - Teacher
- Guide to Creating a Debate Outline – Student (Informal)
- Guide to Creating a Debate Outline – Teacher (Informal)
- Guide to Creating a PowerPoint Presentation
Mini-research reports that are presented orally in two to three minutes are an excellent way for students to share their reasoned conclusions. Students get practice in making presentations to other students, as well as an opportunity to learn from (or challenge) them. Presentation skills are an important part of language arts and social studies essential skills standards, and oral reports also help discourage plagiarism.
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eLibrary
Health & Fitness
Grades 6-10
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ProQuest has selected Health & Fitness as its Teachable Moments theme for November. Each month's theme offers an opportunity to bolster learning in different curriculum areas through the use of mini-research activities. Scientific research has shown that engaging and in-depth activities provide the most effective way for students to learn and retain what they’ve learned.
ProQuest has created a variety of engaging mini-research activities supported by correlated and standards-based BookCarts that focus on Health & Fitness. Health educators will find this combination a great way for their students to learn more than what's in their textbooks.
Activity: The activities for Health & Fitness are dependent on the teacher or librarian downloading eLibrary BookCarts and the Engaging Issues BookCart Mini-Research Guide. With these resources, it’s easy for teachers to create, manage, and evaluate a variety of student research assignments including the following:
- Alternative Medicine
- Food Safety and Preservation
- Cosmetic Surgery
- Performance-Enhancing Drugs
- Healthy Food Choices and Junk Food
- Obesity in Children
- Dietary Supplements
- Genetic Testing
- Legalization of Drugs
- Managed Health Care and Rationing
- Exercise and Health
- Aging of America
- Drug Testing of Students
- Assisted Suicide or Euthanasia
- Medical Malpractice Reform
You’ll find a guide for copying these and other BookCarts to your local collection here.
The guide for using these BookCarts effectively includes examples of essential and engaging questions for each topic assignment. To download and print the guide, visit this link.
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CultureGrams
U.S. Geography
Grades 4-8
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U.S. Geography is one of the major themes for the month of November. A great activity for grades 4-8 is creating state comparisons. How does your state stack up against the others? Is your population better educated than most? Younger? More bilingual? How ethnically diverse is it?
Activity: Have students access the Create-Your-Own-Tables feature in the States Edition.
For the states, have them "Add All." For the categories, you can either have them "Add All" again or assign them certain selections. Once they click "Create Comparison Table," a sortable table appears in a separate window. Clicking a category heading once ranks the category from lowest to highest; clicking the heading again ranks highest to lowest. Have students use this feature to compare your state to the rest. What results did students expect? Were any of the results surprising?
CultureGrams subscribers can access concise, reliable, and up-to-date country reports on 187 cultures of the world, along with a photo gallery, famous people biographies, and recipe collection.
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eLibrary BookCarts
American Education Week
Grades: All
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American Education Week is celebrated in November. To help teachers and students examine controversial issues in K-12 education today, ProQuest has created a series of BookCarts accompanied by a mini-research guide that show how to use the BookCarts effectively. The BookCarts focus on a variety of issues being debated today as solutions for questionable K-12 academic performance, especially in urban and rural areas. Critics of the existing system like to point out that one-third of even our best students who go on to college require college remedial courses in writing and mathematics. As one-time K-12 students themselves, most people have strong feelings about what's wrong and how to fix it.
Activity: The following list of education-related controversial and engaging topics for student research are part of the more than 300 ProQuest BookCart collections. The BookCarts listed are supported by the Engaging Issues BookCart Guide (easy for librarians and teachers to download and print), which provides models and questions that build critical-thinking skills. Look at the table of contents of the guide under the ED series.
- Vouchers for Private School Attendance
- Performance Pay for Teachers
- Sex Education in the Schools
- Internet Filtering in Schools
- School Uniforms
- Single-Gender Schools
- Preschool Education
- Internet, Learning, and Virtual Schools
- eBooks
- Future of Traditional Libraries
- Bilingual Education
- Student Plagiarism
- Affirmative Action in College Admission
- Technology in Education
- Digital Divide in Education
- Fairness of SAT Scores for College Admission
- Education Reform in Public Schools
- Student Use of Cell Phones in School
- Drug Testing of Students
- Emotional Violence, Harassment and Bullying
- Alternative Schools for Disruptive Students
- Evolution vs. Creationism
- Virtual Reality Simulations
- No Child Left Behind Act
You’ll find a guide for copying these and other BookCarts to your local collection at this link.
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eLibrary Elementary
Children's Book Month
Grades K-8
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If it’s November, it’s time to celebrate Children's Book Month. One of the most famous of children's authors is the pseudonymous Dr. Seuss. Students will want to find out more about the real person behind the pen name.
To help teachers create a study and research unit on Dr. Seuss, ProQuest has created a BookCart, "Celebrating Dr. Seuss." It’s one of more than 60 K-8 BookCarts designed to help elementary school teachers use eLibrary Elementary more effectively for building reading and writing skills. Other BookCarts that support K-8 reading: Fairy Tales, Fables, and Folklore; Poetry Power.
You’ll find a guide for copying these and other BookCarts to your local collection at this link.
For a complete list of all BookCarts, go to this link. Updated!
Activity: Each student should use the Dr. Seuss BookCart to find at least two articles and then summarize the most significant points in a two-minute oral presentation. Oral presentations give students valuable experience and confidence. They also help other students earn more about the overall topic.
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ExploreLearning Gizmos
Alzheimer's Awareness and Diabetes Awareness
Grades 5-9
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November themes include Alzheimer's Awareness and Diabetes Awareness. Many diseases have genetic causes. Scientists today are experimenting with ways to find the genes that cause these diseases and then develop therapies that replace the faulty genes with healthy ones that can replicate and replace themselves in the human body. To understand the genetics of these revolutionary methods of curing diseases, scientists have to study the human genome and DNA.
Activity: ExploreLearning helps students understand genetics and DNA so they can continue their education and perhaps even ultimately help unlock the secrets of preventing or curing diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, and other genetic diseases.
The following examples of Gizmos support the study of genetics and reproduction and their impact on diseases:
You can find links to these, and our full collection of hands-on Gizmos at ExploreLearning.com.
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Historical Newspapers
World War II
Grades 7-10
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November marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Many crimes against humanity took place during World War II, most notably the Holocaust against Jews, and other people the Germans considered inferior, as well as Japanese war crimes in China and the Pacific. After the surrender of Germany and Japan, the Allied powers held trials to punish the most heinous offenders. The Nuremberg war crime trials began in 1945 and lasted until 1949.
War crime trials were also being conducted in Tokyo, Japan, and Manila in the Philippines. Japanese military and political leaders were indicted on charges categorized as Class A, Class B, and Class C crimes. Many of the more notorious offenders, such as the Japanese generals Hideki Tojo, Tomoyuki Yamashita, and Masaharu Homma, as well as German officials Joachim von Ribbentrop and Walther Funk, were executed. Some committed suicide during the trials and others were given life sentences or shorter prison terms. Some of the higher-ranking German officials fled Germany at the war’s end and thus escaped prosecution.
Activity: Historical Newspapers makes searching for information on many standards-based and textbook-enriching topics easier, so you can devote valuable classroom and library time to building skills in reading, critical thinking, writing, and communication. Primary-source documents give students the contemporary perspectives not found in textbooks. The use of primary-source documents is required for research activities in AP courses in Social Studies.
Click the Topics tab, then click "Post-War World (c. 1945 - 1960) > War Crimes Trials." Each student should be able to use and cite three articles from the collection of resources listed for this topic. Educators recommend assigning oral reports of two to three minutes to help students develop research skills, as well as skills in reading, critical thinking, writing, and presentation. They also discourage plagiarism and give students a chance to share what they’ve learned with others. Oral reports and presentations are addressed in all state standards.
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ProQuest Platinum
Health & Fitness
Grades 7-12
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November monthly themes include a focus on Health & Fitness, and in particular, Diabetes and Alzheimer's Disease Awareness. These and many other diseases are related to faulty genes. In this era of DNA, the Human Genome project, stem-cell research, and gene-splicing techniques, scientists are getting closer to solutions that will save many lives and many dollars spent in health care of disease.
ProQuest Platinum learning resources go beyond the textbook to help Health educators make assignments that meet state standards and give students a chance to learn what's current. Many students have family and personal experiences with genetic diseases, and virtually all will find research activities on these topics both motivating and relevant.
Activity: These are some of the genetic diseases that teachers can assign students to research: cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, sickle-cell disease, Tay-Sachs, Huntington's disease, Marfan syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, Alzheimer's, and some types of diabetes. Have each student or team research and deliver an oral report on one of these diseases. Addressed in all state standards, oral reports and presentations provide a way for students to share what they’ve learned with other students and discourage plagiarism.
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SIRS Decades
Veterans Day
Grades 7-10
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Veterans Day is celebrated in November. This past September 2, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the formal signing of the Japanese surrender and the official end of World War II. These events give students an opportunity to study the problems encountered by World War II veterans on their return from the European and Pacific War theaters. While all veterans since then have faced an uncertain welcome home, World War II veterans were universally appreciated in their communities. Many postwar veteran-support programs, some still in place today, helped veterans readjust to civilian life, opened higher education to the masses, and helped launch the economic boom of the late 1940s and the 1950s.
Activity: SIRS Decades helps students understand Veterans Day as more than a day off from school. Many students have relatives who served in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and now Iraq. Here’s a chance for them to compare and contrast the treatment of servicemen both during and after each war.
Click the 1940s decade icon > "World War II--Returning Soldiers." Assign students different aspects of the transition from serviceman to civilian. Here are some examples: racial equality; health and rehabilitation; economic opportunity; gender equality; continuing education; and the transition from war to civilian economy. SIRS Decades provides a variety of information on these and other issues so teachers can build understanding through the use of important and engaging questions. Of course, oral reports help curb plagiarism and give students an opportunity to share perspectives and learn the presentation skills emphasized in state standards.
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SIRS Discover & WebFind
Diabetes & Alzheimer's Disease Awareness
Grades 4-7
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November monthly themes include a focus on Health & Fitness, and in particular, Diabetes and Alzheimer's Disease Awareness. These and many other diseases are related to faulty genes. In this era of DNA, the Human Genome project, stem-cell research, and gene-splicing techniques, scientists are getting closer to solutions that will save lives and treatment costs.. Many students have family, friends, and personal experiences with genetic diseases, and virtually all will find these research activities both motivating and relevant. Here are some genetic diseases that students can base their research activities on:
- Alzheimer's disease
- arthritis
- autism
- birth defects
- Bloom's syndrome
- cystic fibrosis
- diabetes
- Down syndrome
- dwarfism
- Friedreich's ataxia
- hemophilia
- Huntington's disease
- Joseph disease
- Lou Gehrig's disease
- lupus
- Marfan syndrome
- multiple sclerosis
- muscular dystrophy
- Prader-Willi syndrome
- scoliosis
- sickle-cell anemia
- Tay-Sachs disease
- Tourette syndrome
- Williams syndrome
Activity: Assign students a genetic disease from the list above. Click the Subject Tree icon "Health and Human Body" > "Physical Conditions, Diseases & Disorders." Each genetic disease is a part of the overall listing of subtopics.
Each student should find at least two articles and summarize the most significant points for a two-minute oral presentation. Oral presentations help students learn more about the overall topic and develop the confidence and skills in presenting their ideas to others that state standards call for.
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Cordially,
Your ProQuest K-12 Team
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