It all began with a warning. During the first week of school, the Religion teacher warned me that during early September, she would assign to the fifth and sixth graders a project on the life of a Saint. They would come en masse, she said, to check out the Saints books. Instead of just pulling the Saints books and making them readily available to the students, I decided that this was a great opportunity to "integrate the information literacy curriculum with content curriculum." I suggested to the teacher that we develop a set of lessons in which the students would learn information literacy skills, while learning about a Saint. Specifically, under my direction, each student developed a set of questions using the "W's Organizer" from Thinkport.org. I reviewed the questions and then passed them onto the Religion teacher so that she was also aware of the kind of information the students were preparing to research. I developed a list of potential websites for the students to evaluate. Using that list the students evaluated the websites. Although the younger students found the first web evaluation worksheet too complicated, I was able to find a second, simpler worksheet that they successfully used. Once the projects were completed and presented during Religion class, the students displayed them in the Media Center. What began with a warning ended when the Saints projects came "marching in"!
