SIRS continued…

Cyberbullying is one of the Top 10 Pro vs. Con Leading Issues in SIRS Issues Researcher found easily on the homepage. There are also many other features and search options. I especially like the Visual Browse which gives brief info about the topic and a link to the leading issue materials. Plus, RSS feeds are available. Once in the Cyberbullying section there are five major areas: a Topic Overview gives background information; Essential Questions offers pros and cons; Interactive links to the WiredKids site Stop Cyberbullying; Narrow Your Results reports sources found by type with the actual sources listed with Lexile score, summary, and subject links; Research Tools provides six options. The Note Organizer would be a great tool to use for beginning organization with students who are writing a persuasive speech or paper. The newly released Common Core Standards stress this type of writing. Standards Correlations are linked to both national (AASL is included) and state standards and I would predict that the Common Core info will appear soon. In addition to the summary when you click on "more" in Topic Overview or select it from the Research Tools, there are Terms to Know and Further Research suggestions which links to Primary Sources among other things. There is so much information the key would be to guide students to skim and use all of the options and not click through at the speed of light!

In Curriculum Pathfinders I explored Language Arts and ended up at Mythology with 365 matching subjects and 59 all source types in the Narrow Your Results box. I sorted the results by Lexile level low to high and the first thing that appeared was "The Lore of Harry Potter" from USA Today. Although the article is from 2001 with a Lexile score of 1060, I would use this as an intro to a project about the mythological allusions in the entire series in print and movie formats. In my former school we always offered a one semester English elective on mythology. This would give it a new twist and make a great connection between the "old school" stuff and popular culture – I'm sure even Twilight would lend itself to the same concept.

Again, much of the content in both SIRS resources is valuable to teachers as well as students. As a school librarian I would make sure I passed on a few links to these resources to staff when they ask "What does the library have on ________?"