What Are You Reading?

Most of us understand how teacher modeling helps readers. A small step you can take in modeling how reading is a life-long process is by discussing books you have read for pleasure with your students. You will be surprised how casual book talk can influence what students are willing to pick up for independent reading.

The ladies in the curriculum and instruction PDC offices (Dr. Julie Pack, Dubraska Stines, Betsy Hammond, and Lori Eggleston) and I have started posting our current reads. If you would like a sign to post outside your classroom or office door, click here. Just click on "File" and "Make a Copy" to add it to add to your Google Drive; after that, you should be able to edit the document to customize to your liking. If you put it in a plastic sheet protector, you can write on top with a dry erase marker and reuse over and over.

Happy Reading!
~Chandra

ThinkCERCA

Last year I learned about and shared Newsela. It is AWESOME. If you have not heard about Newsela already, it is a website with current news articles that allows users to adjust Lexile levels. (Click here to read a past post on Newsela.) Now, I have discovered another source for informational texts...ThinkCERCA.

ThinkCERCA is an online, CCSS-aligned literacy program for students in grades 4-12 (with parent consent) with content and tools to help students read closely, think critically, and write sound arguments. It is free to join and access basic functions, but there are additional tools available through a paid subscription. CERCA (in the title) actually stands for Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, Counter-argument, and Audience. When students complete full lessons they are both reading and writing-- "Common Core style". There are some really cool features to explore:

• An audio feature reads each article aloud to students. 
• Teachers have the option to input constructed response questions.
• ThinkCERCA has an embedded dictionary within each article.

Take look through the website and see how you can use it to increase access for your students.

Explore ThinkCERCA from ThinkCERCA on Vimeo.

Barnes and Noble Fall Educator Reception

Take a look at an offer for educators from Barnes & Noble:

SMART Notebook Express

Here is a great resource, particularly useful to Asheboro High School teachers and students using Chromebooks!  Check it out...

Tina Webster, Instructional Technology Facilitator at the high school, shared with the SMART Notebook Express site with me last spring. This is a way for students to access Smart Notebook files on their Chromebooks. It basically allows all your interactive notebook files to be accessible to students, which most of us know is great for flipped learning or for students when they are absent. It is very responsive; even interactive games and activities still work...perfect for test review time.

Here is the link if you want to just copy and paste in the url: http://express.smarttech.com/# 

Here is a screenshot. It should look pretty familiar to you already:

~Chandra via Tina Webster

Publishing with Flipsnack

One part of the writing process that may get unintentionally overlooked is the publishing/sharing element. Holding writing celebrations is an excellent way to get students motivated and excited about writing.

Flipsnack is a digital tool that can take a PDF and turn it into an online digital flipbook...a perfect way to share student writing within and beyond the classroom walls! Documents can be downloaded, embedded, linked out, or shared. It is free and very simple to use. You don't even need to register to use the basic services. Please note that Jay Williams, NAMS Instructional Technology Facilitator, brought to my attention that the Terms of Service specify that users need to be at least 13 years old or have parental permission to use the service. Whether the PDF has images or is just text, Flipsnack will make the final copy look professional and thoughtful.

Here is a link to an Occasional Paper (OP), that I wrote and uploaded to Flipsnack this summer: http://www.flipsnack.com/965E578F8D6/op6-the-signs.html .

These make for really engaging informational texts like procedural manuals and brochures, which are authentic writing tasks in science, social studies, and technical subjects. Hopefully, once you look it over, you can think of many ways students can use it for your class.

~Chandra

Daybook Defense

The daybook defense is  way to assess student learning through selection and reflection of daybook assignments.  It is more than a simple notebook check where students and/or teachers are just looking for an item to be present or in the correct order. With a daybook defense, students are combing back through their work to find evidence of progress and learning. Here is a sample daybook defense assignment:

Take a few minutes to look through your daybook. Use sticky notes to find examples of the following points. Label each sticky note and adhere it to the page so you can reference it later.

Find an example of:

1. A relevant and strong connection you made to something you read
2. Where you were confused
3. When you showed understanding of an idea or concept
4. An "a-ha" moment
5. A favorite daybook passage
6. Something you wished you understood better

After you have marked and labeled these passages in your daybook, take a few minutes to reflect (through writing) why you picked the passages you did. One the next available page in your daybook, spend the next 10 minutes writing your daybook defense. This is when you can show your understanding of what you have been able to accomplish this year in this class. Use the daybook as "evidence" of your accomplishments. You can write in paragraph form or bullets, but try to address each of the six sections you marked in your daybook.

Here is an example of a daybook defense shared in a blog from a college student: http://understandmylingo.wordpress.com/daybook-defense/.

Happy writing and reflecting,

Chandra

Daybook and Interactive Notebook Tips

"Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences."

The words above are Writing Anchor Standard 10 from CCSS in Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Yep, that's right. Routine writing is an expectation for subjects beyond just English/Language Arts.

This summer, I used a daybook for everyday writing during our extensive writing professional development experience. I was sold. It helped me with reflection, revision, and a quickly referencing important terms, ideas, and notes. Although I love tech ed, it was really valuable to have this low-tech task. Not soon after my daybook experience, I read an Edutopia article, "The Lowdown on Longhand: How Writing by Hand Benefits the Brain," which provided even more support for using handwritten journaling and note-taking.  

The weekend before school started I was unable to find any traditional marble composition books in the back-to-school section! I hope that was indication that many of you are using them in class, too. Here are just a few tips to help in your implementation:

• I found a tip on Pinterest (yes, I'm obsessed with Pinterest, too) to link technology to your notebook: create and print QR codes for videos or sites that students can access with a smart phone or tablet for additional practice. (Photo Source: Teaching...the art of possibility Blogspot)

• To make sure that you and students value these notebooks, plan out the way you will use them in advance. Click here for a Google Doc link to an interactive notebook plan sheet.

• Encourage students NOT to tear out sheets. It is actually beneficial for students to see the progression of their thinking. Too often, students go with their first idea, when often times, third or fourth thoughts are far better (Gallagher, 2011). 

Happy writing,

Chandra

Peer Feedback

When I was a growing up, I loved being my mother's helper and grading papers from her 1st grade class. She gave me a red pen and I was ready to roll with a check, check, check, and topped with a "Good Job! :)". When I became a teacher, I will admit that I was still guilty of sometimes giving "empty" feedback to students. It took (and still takes) intentional practice for me, now a veteran educator, to provide descriptive feedback. That little trip down memory lane is to show that giving feedback must be intentional as well as specific and targeted. When we pair up student peer reviewers to discuss their writing, we cannot expect that students will naturally have beautiful and articulate academic peer review conversations without some instruction, modeling, and scaffolding.

Here are a couple of strategies to get peer review started off right with your classes. 

TAG Strategy

During the August 19 PD Session, we showed pictures of students in the high school writing camp group working together to provide feedback on their writing. Prior to them trying it out, the teachers in the group modeled the TAG Strategy with our own writing. It is easy, yet effective.

Peer Feedback Sentence Starters

If your students need more help with academic discourse around peer review, click here for a bundle with sentence starters and other response cards (Source: Panicked Teacher). These can be used across content areas and for a variety of writing and project-based learning tasks.

Be sure to connect with me or one of the UNCG writing workshop participants to learn more about students sharing their writing with peers. 

~Chandra

Using Mentor Texts to Support Student Writers

The Northern Nevada Writing Project defines a mentor text as "a published piece of writing whose idea, structure, or written craft can be used to inspire a student to write something original." Mentor texts can be used in multiple ways to support student writers:

• To be studied and imitated
• Help students make powerful connection to their own lives
• Help students take risks and try new strategies

(International Reading Association, 2008).

So how do we avoid cookie-cutter writing products when providing models for writing? We must give students time to: 1) analyze and talk about mentor texts, 2) practice what they have studied, and 3) share their own efforts with peers for feedback. The ACS Literacy Plan includes the use of mentor texts in its "Framework for Writing Instruction at the Secondary Level" (Section 5). Here is a resource from that section that will provide more insight into using mentor texts:

Movingwriters.org is site created by two secondary English teachers to support writing instruction. The site has a collaborative Mentor Text Drop Box Project for any teacher to find and/or add mentor texts. It is a Google folder that you can add to your own Google account in just one click.

Participants from a 2013 Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts Conference named some of their favorite mentor texts:
Thank You Notes by Jimmy Fallon
World Shortest Stories by Steve Moss
Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce
Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite by June Casagrand
Six Word Memoirs from SMITH Magazine

I am currently reading a young adult novel called Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar. Despite being entertaining, educators may pick up on how the main character uses "mentor texts" from his English teacher to emulate in his articles for the school newspaper. Check it out!

~Chandra

Welcome Back! Let Me (Re)Introduce You to FAT-P!

Those of you who have visited my blog before may have noticed that I did a little face-lift to the design. I've changed the name from Literacy Links to ACS Teacher Talk because this will be a place to share instructional ideas that span wider than just literacy. The URL address remained the same, just to reduce headaches. 

All of us here in ACS started the school year with professional development on project-based learning and writing instruction. I plan to use the first several blog posts to support learning and implementation in those two areas. If you have ideas, success stories, tricks, tips, or documents related writing instruction or PBL that you would like to share with others, please email them to me so I can share on the blog!

Here is a little something to get you started with keeping writing a focus:

One of the easiest strategies to try out in your classroom is pre-writing and reading analysis with FAT-P.  If you have forgotten, the acronym stands for:

Form:  What are you being asked to write? 

article, letter, blog post, proposal, instructions

Audience:  For whom is this piece likely written?

friend, classmates, teacher, employer

Topic:  What are you writing about?

Purpose:  What is the author trying to accomplish with this?

to inform; to persuade

These are a few ways to use it in your class:

• First, have students write the acronym in their daybooks. If you want a typed version for them to paste in notebooks, click here.   It is also a good idea for them to flag it with a small sticky note or highlight the edge of the paper since we want them to reference it often.
• Have students read articles or text and determine the FAT-P before they begin discussing or writing about the piece.
• It can be used to "attack" a writing prompt and help students to understand what they are being asked to create. (Sample below)

• After writing an initial draft, have students answer the FAT-P for their own writing. 
• During peer review/conferencing, have students read someone else's work and see if they can provide the FAT-P for their peer's writing.

If you have other ideas, please leave them in the comment section.  Have a great year teaching and learning!

Chandra Manning

DOGO News

AHS Media Specialists (Laura Holland and Carla Shinn) and Tech Facilitator (Tina Webster) shared a resource for using current events in the classroom. DOGOnews.com is a site filled with interesting news article postings from around the world. There are thousands of articles and new original content (some written by young people) in their library, and many more are added every day. The maps features is an interactive way for students to read news headlines geotagged on a world map.

There are also a couple of spin-off sites connected with DOGOnews.com:

• DOGObooks.com is a place where kids can share their reactions, thoughts, and opinions about books. 
• DOGOmovies.com is a new launch where students can rate and express opinions on movies (rated G, PG, or PG-13) in the DOGO library.  All reviews are moderated prior to being published online.

DOGOnews looks to be primarily geared for students K-8, but the text complexity can still be appropriate in high school based on the reader and task. I really like how most of the articles have lots of photographs and a quick video to accompany them along with a vocabulary bank, comprehension questions, and a critical thinking challenge.  

~Chandra

#ThankATeacher

National Teacher Appreciation Day is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 6.  Dubraska Stines, ESL Lead Teacher, shared a neat campaign from the U.S. Department of Education. They want us to tell the world what we would like to #ThankATeacher for doing.

It's pretty simple:

• Click here to download the Dept. of Ed's "#ThankATeacher" sign.
• Fill it out.
• On Tuesday, post the picture on social media using the hashtag #ThankATeacher.

If you want to do this within your class, skip the social media aspect and post around the classroom or school building!

Dubraska Stines

Dr. Julie Pack

Chandra Manning

Betsy Hammond

Actively Learn

Actively Learn is an online e-reader that allows students to interact with text in a unique way. Teachers can upload texts from PDF files and websites and insert questions, comments, and multimedia. Students can work through the text at their own pace, get help when they need it, and share their ideas with other students. Watch the video below to take a quick walk-through of the site.

Pros

·         It’s 100% FREE!

·         The kids love it.

·         Kids can see and respond to other peoples’ posts.

·         Inserting videos and pictures is super easy and adds a lot to the text.

·         You can assign different texts to different classes. If you wanted small groups you could easily create “classes” with just a portion of your students. (Just your AIG students, one literature circle group, etc.)

·         Kids can sign up easily using their ACS Google accounts and a class code or link. If they use Chrome and log into their Google account, they are automatically logged in to Actively Learn. I use a couple different websites with my kids that they have to sign up for, and this one is BY FAR the simplest.

Cons

·         Uploading a file can sometimes be tricky. Some PDFs don’t load or look right. Sometimes links, comments, or captions on websites end up included in the text. Occasionally I’ve had to upload a text multiple times in a few different ways before it really worked right.

·         Once you upload a file, there is no way to edit the text or things like the title.

·         The site can be a little buggy at times. It occasionally freezes up or doesn’t load. Refreshing the page usually fixes it.

·         There are no alerts or anything to let kids know they haven’t finished an assignment. 

Submitted by guest blogger,

Carlie Abercrombie

7th Grade ELA Teacher at North Asheboro Middle

Wing Clips

Recently I was teaching my seventh grade language arts students how to identify the theme of fiction texts.  I wanted them to be able to identify the theme of both print and non-print texts.  We started by identifying themes in well-known fairy tales, and then moved to themes of songs.  Some of the students seemed to understand the concept of identifying theme, but most students were still struggling with the topic.  So, I thought about what kind of text I wanted to use next.  I decided to move to something most students can relate to and get excited about using in the classroom…movie clips.  I was going to use YouTube for the clips, but I always worry about what kinds of “other” videos will show up on the sides, or what kinds of advertisements will pop up before the video actually starts.  After a little research, I found a wonderful website called Wing Clips (http://www.wingclips.com).   Here, I was able to find appropriate and relevant movie clips, and I did not have to worry about “other” videos on the sides or any advertisements.  I created a LiveBinder of the clips I wanted my students to use, and then I created a graphic organizer for the students to use as they watched the clips.  This activity was a success!  During the lesson students were engaged in watching the clips, and after I read their graphic organizers, I learned that they finally understood how to identify the theme of fiction texts.  

Here’s the link to the LiveBinder I created http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=1276182    (the access key is “lamb”).   All the clips I used are in the blinder, along with the graphic organizer students were responsible for completing while they watched the clips.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Guest Blogger,

Kerri Lamb, NBCT

SAMS 7th Grade ELA Teacher

Reading and Discussing Are Perfect Partners

Although it has officially been spring for several days, we are just beginning to thaw from our challenging winter.  As we come out from the cold, hopefully there is a sense of rejuvenation emerging, too.  Here is a challenge to coincide with your renewal:  INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF STUDENT ACADEMIC CONVERSATION IN YOUR CLASS!

I know that several of you have embraced the idea of students doing close reads. Student discussion and writing have to be a part of the mix.  At the January mini-conference, I shared 40 Ways to Read Text, which was compiled by the ELA section of NCDPI.  I put the strategies together in a LiveBinder for ease of use. Start out tacking speaking and listening skills by studying cards #10-15; they contain simple discussion and questioning strategies. You will find that they are great for different grade levels and pretty much any content area.  

40 Ways to Read Like a Detective: Supporting Text–Centered Inst

Email me if you would like to co-plan or collaborate using these resources!

~Chandra

Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL1
Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Last week, the 6-12 ELA Vertical Team met to discuss chapters from their book study on Teaching Students to Read Like Detectives.  We started by discussing the instructional implications of Speaking and Listening Anchor Standard 1:

• Students need time every day, in every class, to practice their collaborative conversations.
• Students will need to be held accountable for those interactions.
• It is important to provide students with instruction on how to engage in a collaborative conversation.
• Provide students with Sentence Starters
• Have students develop Rules of Conversation

Later we tried out two speaking and listening activities.  Try these in your classroom to build students up towards mastery of that first S&L anchor standard:

Facts in Five 

1. Have students individually generate a personal list of the five most important concepts or facts they have learned about the topic being studied or a list of five predictions, concerns, or areas of interest related to their learning.
2. Have student move into groups of five.
3. Have the group reach consensus on the five most important facts or concepts and clarify their rationale for selecting each.
4. Have each group present their selections and the rationale for each selection to the larger group.
5. Lead a discussion about the content identified, the similarities and differences and the process.
6. Post the choices on the bulletin board for later examination.

Another version of this activity is the 1-3-6 Protocol.

Inside-Outside Circle

It is a Kagan structure summarizing technique that gets students up and moving.  It provides a way to get students who normally would not talk to interact with others.

1. After students read a section of text, the teacher divides the group into two concentric circles containing the same number of students.  Students in the inside circle face a partner standing in the outside circle.
2. Students from the inside circle share something with their partner.
3. Students then reverse their role.
4. The teacher controls the timing, e.g. "Outside circle, it's your turn to share for one minute."
5. The inside circle needs to rotate and the students turn to face their new partner and share.

Inside-Outside Circle engages all students simultaneously and allows the teacher to increase or decrease the number of different pairings that occur. 

~Chandra

NowComment

Many of us know how to use Google Docs for online annotation.  It works, but there is an even better tool: NowComment.

Here is a video on the basics:

Some advantages of NowComment over other annotating sites:

• Two panes scroll independently, allowing better focus on flow of text, video, images, and comments.
• Annotations always appear to the right of text, never blocking the text.
• Teacher options control precise access dates when the text can be read, and when comments can be added.  The same time controls can be used to hide classmates' comments from individual students until a specified time; thus, students in the first round of annotation will not be able to simply parrot the comments of peers, nor will they be swayed by what anyone else has said.
• Comments can be sorted by user which allows for easy assessment, or for students to the locate the responses of select peers.
• Notification options can be customized, allowing you to schedule the "feed" from the site, and "Update" lets you stay informed of every single comment that is added.
• In addition to the two-pane view, a combined view aggregates both panes into a narrative timeline, easily allowing you to note which lines and paragraphs receive the most annotation.
• The number of simultaneous viewers/annotators doesn't seem to be an issue; according to the site, over one hundred users have accessed the same document concurrently without a problem.

Some uses for NowComment:

• Students can upload their own writing to engage peers in discussion.  Microsoft Word works extremely well in the interface.
• Many classic works of literature are now available in the public domain online at sites such as Project Gutenberg, providing teachers a huge list of texts.  Mashable also has some online texts.
• NowComment is especially useful for leaving responses regarding images and videos.

~Chandra

CNN Student News

CNN Student News is a ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program designed for middle and high school classes.  The show, along with its curriculum found on the companion website, offer an easy way to address Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards for secondary students.  Transcripts are also available, which can be used to promote reading comprehension.

The "Daily Curriculum" includes:
Key Concepts--highlight topics that students will hear in each day's news
Fast Facts Questions--assess what facts students have gathered and how well they were listening or reading
Discussion Questions--designed to promote critical thinking and written
Media Literacy Question of the Day--help student examine media messages and their delivery

Below is an image of today's (March 10, 2014) Daily Curriculum .  <--Click the link to get to live site.

Teachers can sign up for their free Daily Email, which offers information on the major stories CNN Student News will cover that day.  Remember that CNN Student News is a news program that presents current events and issues in the world.  It is strongly advised that you preview each program before showing students, as you are the best judge of the appropriateness of its news content for your specific class.

~Chandra

Read Across America Day

Schools across the country will recognize Read Across America Day on Monday, March 3, 2014.  The day's purpose is to bring excitement for reading to students of all ages.

Penny Crooks, Assistant Principal at AHS, shared this great video titled, "How Reading Fiction Makes Our Brains Better":


Dr. Toth (AHS principal), Mrs. Crooks, Mrs. Shinn (AHS media specialist), Mrs. Holland (AHS media specialist), and I have organized 20 minutes of D.E.A.R. for the beginning of 4th period on March 3 to join in the Read Across America Day fun.

I am happy to help with any other school's or individual teacher's efforts to celebrate reading on this day (or any day).  Here is a link to some other possible Read Across America event ideas from the National Education Association:  http://www.nea.org/grants/plan-a-reading-event.htm.

Don't forget to mark your calendars!

~Chandra

4-Corner Sticky Note Thinking

Integrating critical thinking in your classroom does not have to be an overwhelming task.  Here is a easy activity.  It's called 4-Corner Sticky Note Thinking.

• Provide a really thoughtful, open-ended question with many possible "right" answers.
• Give students sticky notes to write down their answers. (The trick is to provide 5 different sticky note colors.)
• Students will then find their group members (students with matching colored sticky notes) and place their sticky notes in the 4 corners of a paper.
• After reading through and discussing all the answers, students have to collaborate and combine their answers to make the best possible answer.

With this activity, students are evaluating and communicating their own thinking.  It's simple, collaborative, and adaptable to various content areas.

Here is a sample from a 6th grade teacher's blog.  

Image and text credit to rundesroom.com 

Word Up!

On December 5, 2013, level 1 beginning teachers at NAMS, SAMS, and AHS learned and discussed ways to incorporate engaging vocabulary strategies in their classes.  The sessions were a part of the Asheboro City Schools' S.E.E.D.S. (Setting Expectations for Educators and Defining Success) New Teacher Induction Program, and were led by Betsy Hammond (Science Coach), Dubraska Stines (ESL Lead Teacher) and me.  The teachers in attendance immediately began to brainstorm ways they could take our ideas and make them work in their different content areas. We charged them with documenting and reflecting on their efforts. I'm excited to share an Animoto with work samples from most of the participants...


 Are you interested in learning about vocabulary, too?  Click here for a link to a Vocabulary Instruction LiveBinder. Below you will find the presentation they viewed with videos and links to vocabulary strategies. Please take a look and feel free to contact Betsy, Dubraska, or me if you would like additional explanation and/or support.

 

 ~Chandra

Writing Instruction Site

Tina Webster, Tech Facilitator at AHS, sent me links to some writing web tools a few days ago.  The sites are created to help students through the writing process, from the pre-writing stage all the way to publication.  She shared them just in time for me to add it to wikispace I want to reveal to you all...

 http://comets-write-now.wikispaces.com/ .  
  

It is a writing instruction site that the AHS Literacy Leadership Team has worked on for the last year. It's geared toward helping you, the teacher, have quick access to tools, tips, and resources. The first section is all about the writing process.  The web tools from Tina (Kaizena, Crible, Protagonize, and Slatebox) are found in the appropriate stage of writing in this portion of the wiki.  The second portion provides content area writing tips.

We wanted to create a site for all content teachers.  It is still a work in progress, but it's meant to be collaborative.  Share your resources with me and let's learn from each other.

1 

http://comets-write-now.wikispaces.com/

Flubaroo

How many of you have used Google Forms to create quick, online assessments for students?  If you have, you probably know that after students complete the form you receive a spreadsheet filled with student responses.  Are you looking for a way to dig through that data?  I have a tip for making that Google Form work better for you (just in time for end of semester assessments)...it is called Flubaroo.

http://eddatatech.edublogs.org/files/2013/05/Flubaroo-2cyl21t.jpg

It is a free tool (it's actually a Google script) that can help you grade multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank assessments created with Google Forms. In addition to correcting your quiz, Flubaroo computes the student's grade and provides teachers with a summary of class data, inclduing identification of low-scoring quiz items and a distribution graph of student scores.This is a great alternative to other sites that may be slow or connectivity may not be reliable.   

Click here to access the Flubaroo website that has more details, a sample form, and a 3-minute video tutorial.  Please use Google Chrome as your browser.  It doesn't play well with Internet Explorer or Firefox.  If you want help trying this out, I am happy to help.  Just email me and I can set up a time to walk you through the process.  

Isn't this awesome for formative assessments?!!

~Chandra

To Infinity...and Beyond (Google)

There is a lot of information out there…..both authoritative as well as junk.  Students often need help in muddling through the plethora of information available.  The following search engines are credible alternatives to standard Google, the largest search engine on the planet. 

http://www.ipl.org

A public service organization and learning/teaching environment that is maintained by students and volunteer library and information science professionals.  This site is hosted by Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology. 

www.sweetsearch.com

Every website in SweetSearch has been evaluated by research experts.

http://scholar.google.com

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature.  

http://www.refseek.com/

Web search engine for students and researchers that aims to make academic information easily accessible to everyone.  RefSeek searches more than one billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.  

Happy Researching!

Laura Holland

AHS Media Specialist

AHS Literacy Team Member