[CALIBK12] Special Ed Research

[LL Blackwell]

Collective summertime wisdom!

I have a teacher who works with MR kids at my high school. Their reading
skills are around second grade, if that. She is extremely eager to do
research in the library with them, but at this point we don't really have
much in the collection that they can use.

For their first visit, we pulled out a few children's encyclopedias that we
have and tried looking up stuff about animals, but it was challenging given
each student's desire for a specific animal and the rather-limited
encyclopedia not having information consistent from animal to animal so they
could all fill out the same worksheet.

For their second visit, the teacher had actually gone to her local public
library and picked out books on animals at their level and I had worked with
her to develop questions for the worksheet, but they ended up doing the
project in their classroom because one of the adult TAs said the library
smells bad (I'll admit that it's a little weird right now, seeing as the
carpet got cleaned earlier in the week and it was pretty potent on Monday
morning).

She wants to make this a weekly thing. I'm trying to think of a common topic
they can all have but still each have a choice within it. Again, these kids
are pretty low (although some higher than others--maybe up to fourth grade),
so we can't do much in the way of critical thinking, I don't think. Of
course, I'm very new at this, so maybe I'm very wrong.

Thanks!
-Lisa Blackwell
Teacher-Librarian Coordinator
Polytechnic High School
Sun Valley

It's easy to be a super hero when you can't be hurt. -Darwyn Cooke
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