ERC Wrap Up

It is hard to believe that the challenge is at an end, but I had a great review of our databases and I learned a lot more about the Common Core too.

By far the assignment I struggled with the most was the Gale Virtual Reference Library week.  It was difficult to incorporate CC standards into that one.

The surprising and fun thing was coming up with lesson plans.  Since I am not a regular classroom teacher, it was fun to let my imagination run wild in coming up with lessons that would use the databases.  The great thing about incorporating these is that you are hitting different learning styles.  You don't just read a textbook, you can watch a video, or view a photo of something historical. 

If I were a classroom teacher, two of the exercises I would definitely use from what I came up with would be the Ebooks on EBSCOhost activity and the genealogy databases activity.  I had fun putting the lessons together, so hopefully the students would have fun doing them.  What I like about the Common Core Standards is that they encourage a lot of different active involvement in lessons as well as the opportunity for group work and individual work.  Being college, career, and life ready means being able to work collaboratively with others, being creative, able to get up in front of the class and give a speech or presentation and the CCS encompass all of these things.  It is up to the teacher about how they will craft lessons to incorporate all of the pieces, and the availability of these databases could help them.