Lesson 3 Proquest

First I looked up a favorite topic: Quilting. At first, I was totally frustrated--there were no articles specifically on a technique called: paper-piecing when I entered "quilting & paperpiecing." Then I removed "paper-piecing," and got 10 articles on quilting, 8 by the same author and a lot on books for sale.
Later, using a different method, I started with "quilting," clicked on "full text,"and I got 69 articles. Some were funny stories; for example, one was about a man who was a truck driver and a quilter. I also found how-to's and information on patterns and various techniques. Next I added "history" and got a lot of journals that had articles on historical quilting techniques and stories on quilting and history, so I will save those for my Revolutionary War and Civil War units. That was sometimes how women helped in the cause, and so many war stories concern men and boys.

My next search I did on the "Revolutionary War & U.S. History;" there was a ton of information on specific events, battles, and people, and founders, which will come in very handy in one of the first units I will teach this fall. If I went down the list a ways, I found Patty Hearst; don't ask me how she ended up there, but I imagine that there was a reference to the revolutionary War in the article.

In searching for an article in my field of study, I searched for "The Reading Teacher" and "Literacy Coach." I could find journals from way back, and I could search for specifics such as "comprehension techniques" or "research and instruction." Then I could obtain RSS feeds from various areas of interest, which will be helpful during the school year when I don't have time to do another complete search. I could see that as being especially helpful if I wanted to add more about women or Native Americans to my history units to supplement textbooks, which sometimes don't tell the entire story. Additionally, I'm finding ways to show my students how to do similar searches and receive their own RSS feeds.