Middle School Pathfinders: Guiding Student Research

(Paperback)

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Description

By providing students with a road map to respected, commonly available resources on a variety of topics, pathfinders help build independent research and information literacy skills. This book includes 70 pathfinders on various topics targeted to the middle-school level including the American Revolution, Lewis and Clark, astronomy, mythology, and more. The creation of original library pathfinders is very labor-intensive, so these ready-to-use pathfinders will save educators hours of time.

Reviews

Intended to be a tool to assist library media specialists in guiding their students' research, this title directly addresses those students with a step-by-step approach to the research process. An introduction explains how to select a topic for research and suggests ways that a topic can be further developed. It then describes how to find sources and what to do with the information. There is a very valuable discussion on evaluating resources from the Internet that cautions students to consider accuracy, authority, content, currency, and documentation, and how to cite sources. The greater part of the book is devoted to pathfinders developed by the author on a large number of topics, divided into sections for social studies, science, mathematics, language arts, health, music, art, and technology education. Each pathfinder includes a definition and introduction of the topic, a bibliography of print resources, and a bibliography of Web resources. This book will prove to be a valuable resource for busy library media specialists and teachers. The introductory chapter is a clear, concise discussion of the research process, and the individual pathfinders include adequate, current, and age-appropriate resources for the various topics. Index. Recommended. * Library Media Connection *

Author Bio

Nancy J. Keane is a library media specialist at Rundlett Middle School in Concord, NH. Her published works include Using Literature in the Middle School Classroom.