November 30, 2010

Bell-Ringer:  Students worked on fluency by reading "Ladies First" by Shel Silverstein.  They practiced individually, then read to each other in pairs, picked the best reader to go on in competition, gathered in fours to select the best out of the two previous winners, gathered in eights to further narrow the field.  Those best at reading fast (while remaining understandable) and those best at dramatic presentation competed for the class championships.

Sample PowerPoint for Celebrity Quest
Link to the Celebrity WebQuest Assignment:   http://afcelebritywebquest.blogspot.com/ 
Sample search and reading a site

http://rachelmcadams.org/ 
This site turns out to be a fan-made site, made by an 18 year old girl who goes by Lindsey, and who has been making fan sites since she was twelve.  There are a lot of photos available here, but all facts should be double-checked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_McAdams
How trustworthy is wikipedia?
There is lots of information here that would be useful for the celebrity project.  However, be aware that anyone can edit this.  Wikipedia has staff that checks it, and others check articles for accuracy.  On the other hand, someone could slip in untrue materials and you could read it before the errors are caught.
To see who has edited an article, see the "history" tab at the top of the page.  To find the date and time last edited, see the bottom of the page.  Also look at the References and External Links. 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1046097/bio 
How trustworthy is IMDb?
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_Needham
IMDb has useful information on Rachel McAdams, and many other movie stars, including short biographies, trivia, filmography, and quotes from the star.    This site is owned by Amazon.Com.  They purchased it from Col Needham who originated the database in 1990.  I googled him and was able to find out about him.

Works Cited -- Put it together with bibme.org
For articles from Sirs Discover, use the information given with the article to identify the source. 
For websites, click on the Website tab, and enter the URL for that site.

Example from Sirs Discover:  "Rick Riordan." biography for beginners Spring 2010: 63 - 75. Print.