First of all I checked the Science Projects section. I enjoyed looking over the projects and found some simple projects for younger students using worms. The hydrofoil experiment was an easy project.
The second place I checked was the Games and Activities. I tried the mazes, the tic tac toe games, and the math activities that involved coloring. I tried different levels to see how difficult each level was.
I tried the flag matching activity. I found that to be challenging. I think the students would enjoy giving that a try as an activity that they don't spend a lot of time studying on a regular basis.
For the lesson 1b, I checked out the section, "Behind the Headlines." I read through articles on animals, weather, space, and historic celebrations. I also tried the Current Events game for several weeks. I discovered that I needed to do more careful reading before I take the quizzes. All of these articles would be very helpful to teach critical thinking for older students, plus provide up to date information for them on a variety of topics. A student could choose an area of interest, read a certain number of articles and summarize them. Following that activity the student could try the current event quiz and see how well they comprehended what they read. The articles are quite easy to read and are interesting to read as well.
For the lesson 1c I checked the Advanced World Book section. First of all, I looked through the story list of Hans Christian Anderson. I decided to read through the Ugly Duckling. After reading the story, I checked the notes and articles related to the author. I didn't find a great deal of material that was as helpful as I expected, but I did find historical notes.
Next, I looked at the story of Huckleberry Finn. I checked out the historical notes, the articles that could be found about Mark Twain and other available information. I found this story to have some very interesting articles linked to the author and the story. I especially enjoyed the news story of Mark Twain's visit with Helen Keller. I would think it would be quite an experience to tell a story with a person touching your lips to follow the story and the teller's expressions. The story was very interesting. It would be particularly helpful to use after students did a study of Helen Keller and watched the movie of her and her teacher Anne Sullivan," The Miracle Worker."
I also think I would use the feature of having the story read aloud to the students. I would encourage each student to sign in to the story and listen to it personally and then read the articles of interest that the teacher assigns and one that the student has chooses. Students enjoy some illustrations when they read, so since there are no illustrations, it would be helpful to have them listen to the story to help hold their interest.
For the next lesson on World Book Discover, I checked out the World Book videos. They were interesting and would help a student find a topic of interest. The section on how to do a research project is definitely very helpful. I would definitely put each student to work on an individual computer and have them work through this whole section. Too often students do not understand the differences between primary and secondary resources. They do not know how to cite and they do not what to take the time to gather all of the information. World Book Discover has all of the information in one site. I think students would enjoy making their own podcast, too. Making a podcast would be a good addition to their written research paper because it would help them realize what they understood about their research.
