1. Armadillos - Personally I'd like to know if was Jane or Julie who decided on armadillos :) I've actually been about 2 feet away from an armadillo once. They're kinda cute!
But on with the lesson...First of all I have to say that some of the article titles made me laugh: "Hard Body," "Boinngg! Here Come the Armadillos," and "Real Animals or Magic?" are among my favorites. It was nice that in the search results list articles with photographs had the little camera icon and the Lexile level listed. The articles were generally good and age-appropriate; but one entitled "The Face Only a Mother Could Love" from Southern Living caught me a little off-guard with the first sentence: "Beauty may be skin-deep, but when you're talking about an armadillo, ugliness goes all the way to the bone. What other animal looks like it was fashioned from leftover parts after God finished making everything else?" Ouch!!!!! So they may not be a delicate humming bird or a powerful tiger, but let's not teach our kids to be so snarky! I'll admit that armadillos seem a bit unfortunate, but have you seen Sphynx cats? Give me an armadillo any day over those!
2.a. Country Facts - I checked out both the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Along with maps and pictures of the flags, there were general facts about the geography and population, as well as a listing of important historical events. But more than that I like the fact-finder worksheets at the top of each article. I appreciate that each of these is created by professionals using reliable sources, but the articles referenced from the two countries I looked up are, frankly, old. The newest one from either is 2006. I'm sorry but in that respect Wikipedia's gotcha beat!
2.b. Maps of the World - I started out using some of the 7 boxes of map choices listed along the top of the page...maybe I'm just a negative Nelly today, but I was not impressed with these maps for the most part. It's nice that you can print the map out in color, but it bothers me that all the maps I looked at had dates of 1998 or older. Most teachers wouldn't look favorably on print information that old, so to have it in an electronic resource is disappointing. When I started using the alphabet options & the search options, I was amazed to see how many more options for maps there were. Many of these were much more interesting and informative. However, I was still disappointed by the timeliness of some of them. One map of the US for "Immigrants Admitted by Intended State of Residence" was from 1992! This is way too old!
2.c. I decided to explore the "Fiction" area. Not bad, not too bad at all. It's nice that most of the stories are short so they aren't hard to read on a computer, if you don't want to print them. These would be useful things to have for summer reading extras.
I also found the overall layout of this database to be rather unappealing.
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Summer Post17 years ago
1 comment:
You ARE a negative Nelly today! We welcome all comments, however. :) (And it was Julie who chose Armadillo.) Re: maps: we find that in presenting to teachers, they are very excited about the Outline Maps--hard to find unless they come with the curriculum--and have many uses. Social studies teachers are ecstatic about the historical maps, especially battlefields, and the other historical maps. Teachers are also enthusiastic about the Fiction, as it's hard to find short fiction with readability levels for practice with fluency, comprehension, and other reading skills or to use as a curricular supplement. SIRS and its special features are being constantly updated, so we hope those areas in need of updating will be made current soon.
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