Lesson 3

SIRS Discoverer

1.  In SIRS Discoverer, you could show the third grader how to do the advanced search.  I put "solar system" in the Full Text field and then limited it to articles with the Reading Level of "Easy."  This resulted in 44 hits, 28 of which are magazine articles.  Several of the magazine articles contain pictures, which would probably be a good aid for this student who has difficulty reading. The student may want to take advantage of some of the activities included in some of the articles.

2.  To find maps and/or images of volcanoes, you could first try a Keyword search of the word "volcano" and then go to the tab labeled "Graphics."  I had 137 hits by using this method.  By scanning through the list, you can see the ones that have "Maps" listed as part of the descriptor fields.  A second method is to click on the "Maps of the World" link on the lower right and then do a search for the term "volcano."  This resulted in 21 hits of graphics of volcanoes, some of which are pictures and some of which are maps.

SIRS Issues Researcher

1.  I did a subject search  for the words "suicide prevention" and got 971 results.  Of those, 7 are WebSelect sites.  The rest are hits from newspapers, magazines, reference and graphics/media.  The WebSelect sites would likely be a much more pertinent search than what you would get by going through Google, since searching those terms on Google resulted in well over 8 million hits--and who knows what information or misinformation they might include, or what topic they may even be covering.  It would be a bit tedious to sort through them!  According to the SIRS Help section, "SIRS editors evaluate sites originating from around the globe for credibility and relevance to researchers' needs. WebSelect is continually updated to include new sites and dynamically changing data."  

2.  I searched for the term "drought" and got well over 1000 results.  Then I looked up "water restrictions" and again had over 1000 results.  Those are large numbers to sort through, although they can be sorted by date to bring up the most recent articles first.  Then I put all three terms in the search field (water restrictions drought) and the number dropped to 135.  Although some probably would not pertain to the issue of a town considering water restrictions (such as the article entitled, "Water, War and Peace in the Middle East"), this is a much more manageable number to peruse; and the summaries give a pretty good idea of whether or not the article would be pertinent to the issue at hand.