Town School for Boys Library

In Chapter 6 of The Golden Rat, we meet a “salt girl,” a child whose job is to wash dead fish in a bucket, salt them, and wrap them in lotus leaves.  What do you think this little girl’s backstory is?  Who is she? Where does she come from? Does she have parents? A family?  Where does she live?  What does she eat?  How does she survive?  Use your imaginations!

What are we up to in our library classes these days?  Here are just a few of the things the boys have been working on.

Third- and fourth-graders have recently learned to use library databases to search for information.  They now know how to hunt for facts on Searchasaurus, a database that stores digital versions of magazine, newspaper, and encyclopedia articles.   The third grade is busy creating a science and politics magazine, with each boy writing his own carefully-researched article based on information he found through Searchasaurus.

Here’s a screen-shot of Searchasaurus.  Isn’t it pretty?

The fifth graders already know how to use Searchasaurus, but they’re about to get some serious practice using it and other library databases to answer scavenger hunt questions.  Some of them may be posting comments on this blog entry in order to get credit for one of the scavenger hunt items. We’d be curious to hear what they have to say about Searchasaurus, and whether they think it is a useful tool.  (It’s okay to say no, guys.)

The sixth grade is also working on an online research project, but they will be using the internet, rather than just library databases.  Their task is to plan a fantasy vacation on a bare-bones budget.  In order to complete this project, they’ll need to rely heavily on the website evaluation skills they’ve developed this year.