Scarsdale Public Schools

Middle School Library Research and Information Fluency

Inquiry is an essential component of teaching and learning that empowers students to follow their sense of wonder into new discoveries and insights. The empowered learner calls upon information/inquiry skills to connect with what he or she knows, to ask intriguing questions about what is not known, to investigate the answers, to construct new understandings, and to communicate those understandings with others

A collaborative approach by the librarian and the classroom teacher is the most effective way to teach information fluency skills and strategies; students need to use the skills of inquiry to learn essential content and to construct new meaning. Instruction, designed around an inquiry framework, generates active learning and the formation of new understandings.

The information fluency skills required for independent and lifelong learning must follow a coherent developmentally appropriate continuum of instruction and practice throughout grades K-12 and beyond to enable all of our children to succeed in our fast-paced, information glutted world.

Middle School Library Curriculum

The information-fluent student in Grade 6 is developing the following skills:
- Awareness of the variety of library resources
- Uses library resources with assistance
- Identifies and pursues interests in a variety of literary genre
- Reads both fiction and non-fictionPerceives the distinctions between subscription databases and websites
- Perseveres to explore more than one source when seeking information
- Distinguishes between main ideas and supporting details
- Recognizes the structure and purpose of the Dewey Decimal system
- Generates keywords prior and during research
- Takes notes in a systematic way
- Cites print and online resources
- Pursues information based on personal interest and curiosity
The information-fluent student in Grade 7 is developing the following skills:
- Locates and uses print and non-print library resources
- Identifies and pursues interests in a variety of literary genre
- Reads both fiction and non-fiction
- Employs advanced Google search strategies
- Uses advanced search tool in online databases
- Generates keywords prior and during research
- Takes notes in a systematic way
- Creates proper works cited pages and in-text citations
- Pursues information based on personal interest and curiosity
- Perseveres to explore more than one source when seeking information
- Distinguishes between main ideas and supporting details
- Paraphrases from notes/reading
- Practices the rule of “putting things in your own words” with help from teacher or librarian
The information –fluent student in Grade 8 is developing the following skills:
- Locates and uses print and non-print library resources
- Identifies and pursues interests in a variety of literary genre
- Reads both fiction and non-fiction
- Employs advanced Google search strategies
- Uses advanced search tools in online databases
- Generates keywords prior to and during research
- Takes notes in a systematic way
- Creates proper works cited pages and in-text citations
- Pursues information based on personal interest and curiosity
- Perseveres to explore more than one source when seeking information
- Distinguishes between main ideas and supporting details
- Paraphrases from notes/reading
- Practices the rule of “putting things in your own words” with help from teacher or librarian
- Creates a personal learning network of go-to websites and subscription databases
- Asks questions during research process and revises them along the way
- Reads a daily newspaper