Lesson 6: Reflection: Encyclopedias

In our discussions for this lesson it was interesting to hear that Linda said that she poured over the Encyclopedia set when she was a kid! I loved doing that too! I bet a lot of people did (at least those who are old enough to have had encyclopedia sets in the house back then!). I wonder if I had my own set of encyclopedias at home today, if my own kids would pour over them? I teach grade one and I don't have a set in my classroom. What I do have is a set of junior atlases and I have to say the kids really enjoy looking at them during free reading time. It sounds like the way Linda is using the encyclopedias is really teaching the students good information literacy skills. She makes a game of it and students look up specific items. They talk about guidewords, using last names for looking up people, and they notice that the information is kept short. She teaches her students that this is “a good starting point in doing research because of its limited scope.”  She also shows World Book online, including World Book Kids so that they can compare them. I really think that this is a good example of teaching beginning information literacy skills. It is nice to see how these resources are being used. 

One of the comments that came up a lot in the discussions was the readability level of encyclopedias and the concern that it is too high for younger students. Brenda mentioned in the discussion that in the online WorldBook there is an option to have the text read aloud to the students and they can even speed it up or slow it down! It can also be translated into other languages. I think this would do a lot to help to alleviate the readability concerns. I am so glad that I learned about this through the discussion post, and I am excited to use this with my class!

I would like to try a little experiment with the encyclopedias at our school. I would like to ask the TL in my school if I could borrow them for a week to use in my grade one classroom with the students (as long as they are not being used in the library – which would also be interesting to note) and see what happens. It would make for an interesting lesson. Then I would like to have them explore more with WorldBook online and see what they have to say about encyclopedias. It is good to get information straight from the source!

The need for TL's to make regular time to share information about resources, etc, came up in one of the discussions as well. It is really important to do this so that teachers and students know what exists out there.