Blog Post #6 -

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What is inquiry? Inquiry is defined as a seeking for truth, information, or knowledge. In the educational setting, it is described as the learner's desire to look deeply into a question or idea that interests him or her. As a result of this, the School Library Media Specialist is the person to help when students and teachers are working on class projects and/or research. Library Media Specialists teach students and teachers how to find reliable information from valid sources both online and in print. Teaching students the steps to determining which websites to trust for getting information. For example one way to determine if a website is reliable and has valid information is to check to see if the site has been recently updated. Sites that are recently updated are more likely to post information regularly and can be seen as a reliable source. For my three mini-lessons, the middle school computer lab will be used. I will focus on teaching middle school students how to differentiate between good information and sources and bad information and sources. Since students in middle school have to complete science fair projects each year, in the first lesson, I will get the attention of the students by asking them what they would like to do for their science fair projects. I would then give them an in-class assignment to search for 4-6 websites to find information about their science fair projects. Once, they have searched for sources I will then ask them out of the sources they find, which ones do they think has the most reliable and valid information. In the second lesson, I will teach them steps and guidelines to use when looking for sources to use for research and projects. At the end of the lesson, I will ask them to check the sources they previously found to see if they contain all the information in the guidelines for checking reliable sources. Once they determine which sources are reliable, they will tell why the other sources, if any, are not. For the third lesson, the students will complete a final search for information about their science fair topic. The teacher and myself will observe the students to make sure they are using the steps and guidelines given them to find valid information sources. Students will be able to ask any questions they have concerning searching websites and given immediate feedback.