Lesson 6 -- Gale Virtual Reference Library

Advanced Challenge
1. Your civic organization is sponsoring a community event with the theme, “Spring Holidays Around the World.” The organization needs your help in finding the following: a. Spring festival traditions from a variety of countries b. Traditional spring festival foods and their recipes c. Spring festival games or pastimes Report your findings and how you found them in GVRL. 

I started with an Advanced Search, looking for "traditions" and "Spring". The first hit I received had more to do with American History. Since we are looking for "Spring Holidays Around the World", I moved onto the third item which was called, "Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Cultures". After clicking on the source, I found that there was another source that would better suit my search called, "Junior Worldmark Encyclopedia of World Holidays". After clicking on that source, there were many different volumes and countries to choose from. After locating the source, I would more than likely choose the countries that I would be choosing to get traditions, foods, and games from. I would then proceed onto searching each individual country for their traditions, foods, and games or pastimes. There is a drop-down menu where you are able to choose which volume you would like to view from each country. That would be helpful in finding the traditions that are in the spring. 

2. Use Advanced Search to find recently added 2012 and newer titles. Then explore a couple titles and report your findings.

I did an Advanced Search and chose 'Publication Title' or 'Document Title' and I included the years 2012, 2013, & 2014 in the Advanced Search areas. I ended up with 583 results. I sorted them by Publication Date. There aren't any results from 2014 yet. My first hit was, 

 

TOPIC OVERVIEW

Architecture

Human Geography: People and the Environment

Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Sonia Benson. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2013. p666-669. COPYRIGHT 2013 Gale, Cengage Learning   Sara Louise Miller

I clicked on 'Architecture' and it listed an Introduction, Historical Development, a Current Application, and a Bibliography. 
I also took a look at my 2nd hit. It was: 

TOPIC OVERVIEW

City Types,  page(s): 640-643. word count: 1924.

Human Geography : People and the EnvironmentWilliam Arthur Atkins . Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Sonia Benson .  Vol. 2.  Detroit: Gale, 2013. 

A city is a large, permanent center of population organized as a community. The word “city” is derived from the Latin word civitas, which denotes a social body (community) of citizens (cives) that is able to manage its...

It also listed an Introduction, Historical Development, Current Application, and a Bibliography. 

I like how it listed the word count and the pages that the information was found on. 

Common Core Connections
In Lesson 5, on the GVRL home page, click “Education” on the “Subjects” in the left sidebar. Then search all the Education titles at once. Here’s how: in the upper right, search within “Education” for one of the following topics: “critical thinking,” “problem solving,” or “creativity.” Read at least two articles on the topic and discuss how what you read aligns with Common Core.

I searched for "problem solving". The first article that came up was, "Mathematics Learning". I did the same for, "critical thinking". 

I am thinking that it took the phrases 'problem solving' and 'critical thinking' and searched all articles that involved any problem solving and critical thinking actions. This would be great for teachers to keep in touch and up-to-date on recent publications about what they are teaching. Critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity are areas that are touched on again and again throughout the Common Core Standards.