Theory into Practice: Using the PLUS Model to Teach Information Skills and Support the Curriculum in a Secondary School

This paper examines the use of PLUS, a four-step model of information skills, in a secondary school in England with 28 Year 8 pupils doing a physics project. The pupils completed a questionnaire relating to their use of the PLUS model and their attitudes to brainstorming, keyword selection, evaluating resources, reading for information, taking notes, and writing. The teacher and librarian were interviewed. Findings showed that pupils responded favourably to using the PLUS model in all areas and that the teacher and school librarian noted improvement in the pupils' learning, writing, and information skills as a result of using the model.

Sources and citizens: An essay in applied epistemology

How should pupils use the internet to learn? This essay sets up two modes of using online sources, reading for information and reading for evidence, and evaluates their value for schools. The former is well known; pupils decide whether the source is telling the truth or not. The latter is more familiar in advanced historical investigation, namely deciding what this source’s utterance means for the question in hand. One of these simply hands pupils information. The other requires them to understand what they are reading. It is argued that an education that only involves one of these cultivates passive pupils who are unable to adjust their own attention or listen to minority reports in science. Only when pupils also investigate primary sources will they experience developing their own knowledge, and believe in education.

An Investigation of the Reading Habits among Pakistani University Students

Reading is an essential skill, which further paves the way for excellence in life both academically and non-academically. Reading habit does not necessarily include the reading of academic texts, but it also includes reading for pleasure, reading for information, reading for knowledge etc. It can also be a valuable essence to constructively progress the academic achievements of the students. The present study investigated the reading habits of Pakistani university students. The sample of the study was 600 university pupils from various disciplines of 6 universities. The quantitative survey showed that students were not inclined towards reading habits other than their course books.

Learning to Read Big Books: Dante, Spenser, Milton

The interpretive challenges posed by dense and lengthy poems such as Dante’s Inferno, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and Milton’s Paradise Lost can prove daunting for the average undergraduate reader whose experience of texts has been circumscribed by pedagogical mandates focused on reading for information. While information-retrieval based reading certainly has its place, the experience of reading these longer, more allegorical and symbolic poems can create in the attentive reader a far more valuable kind of learning, understood by Dante and his heirs, all working from Homeric and Virgilian models, as understanding. Each of these long poems pay very close attention to acts of interpretation, foregrounding the experiences of their characters to illustrate the proper way to move from sense, past speculation, to true understanding. Those who heed these lessons, and embrace the experience offered by the poet, find that the daunting task has been outlined as the necessary step to true knowledge rather than mere information.

Book Review: Nonfiction in Motion: Connecting Preschoolers with Nonfiction Books through Movement

Nonfiction in Motion: Connecting Preschoolers with Nonfiction Books through Movement by Julie Dietzel-Glair is the author’s companion volume to Books in Motion: Connecting Preschoolers with Books through Art, Games, Movement, Music, Playacting, and Props (ALA 2013). Dietzel-Glair has given librarians everywhere a unique and important storytime resource. With the increase of the use of nonfiction or information reading in the Common Core and other curriculum standards, it is important that librarians develop storytime customers’ love for this type of material as well as for literature. Michael Sullivan has been reminding us for more than a decade that boys approach reading differently from girls, and this includes reading for information. Now it is time for us to use this knowledge to serve all the children in our storytimes. Nonfiction in Motion is the tool to get you started.