At my girls school the 5th graders are expected to do a lot of reports, projects and events because because they are the oldest kids in the school and they want to get them ready for the much bigger middle school. Some of the events are just great like the trip down to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. They have done things like an egg drop and write a report on how they did experiments to end up with the egg holder that they ended up with.
One of the things they have to do is write a report on a state that they picked out of a hat. History Girl ended up with Utah. We discovered that she had very little knowledge about how to do a research paper without using the Internet. So we decided that she should spend the morning at the library doing research the old fashion way. Having paid a good part of my college expenses by working at as an assistant to the reference librarian, it was not a good thing to have my daughter not to know how to do research at a library without the Internet. I did let her use the computer library catalog I didn't make her use a card catalog...I don't think the city library even has a card catalog.
History Girl is sitting at the dining room table right now whining because of how hard we have made this report for her since she has to use real books rather then just looking up info on the computer. Poor poor her, we just torture her. She should contact Department Human Services and report us since clearly we are unfit parents. Maybe we are unfit parents because I just assumed that the teachers would show how to do book research as well as Internet research....well we all know what they saying about assuming things.
So I am not sure if History Girl will ever use the info she is learning about Utah, but she will always remember how she found it. :-) Maybe I made her do this report this way because I still have fond memories doing my report on Newfoundland when I was her age. It was my first big report that I needed to research at the library. History Girl has done many many reports but it seems all of them she did the research online. From now on she will know how to do research even if the power is out and the Internet connection is down. ;-)
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2 comments:
I think that if power were out and the Internet was out that teachers would consider that a good excuse for handing in an assignment late.
HA!!! Not for History girl -- she can do it anyway :}.
You're such a mean mom, what's the number for your town child services, I'll have to call first thing Monday.
My guess is that teachers will expect History Girl to use a variety of sources as she moves on in her academic career. She'll have a head start now! I am surprised that she hasn't been required to use different sources before now, though. Most of my kids' research projects will specify the requirements for using a variety of sources.
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