Name: Maria Dieguez

A. Format of the Information Literacy Unit Plan

Academic Subject(s): Science and Writing
Topic(s) of Unit: Nonfiction facts about bears
Grade Level(s): Kindergarten
Standards Integrated into the Unit Plan (not information literacy standards):
Student Content Standards (e.g., national, state, or district)
2.0A.1.a. Listen to nonfiction materials (Maryland State Department of
Education, 2011)
4.0A.2.d Dictate, draw, or write to inform (Maryland State Department of
Education, 2011)
7.0A.2.a Speak in a variety of situations to inform and/or relate
experiences, such as retelling stories and/or state an opinion (Maryland
State Department of Education, 2011)
Learning Objectives for 5-Day Unit: Students will be able to collect and record facts
learned about a specific bear. Students will write and illustrate their facts on a flipchart
using the Promethean board, which will be our class book.
Information Literacy Objectives: Students will be able to navigate the resource
PebbleGo and locate the information that is needed for them to answer questions about
the bear they are researching. Students will be able to record the facts they found about
bears on their Fact Sheet. Students will be able to write and illustrate a fact they learned
about their bear and specific topic of their bear. Students will record their sentence to
incorporate audio on their page of the flipchart. Students will cite the source of where the
information was found on their Fact Sheet and on the Resource page of the flipchart.
Prerequisite Student Skills:
Knowledge of how to log-in to a computer using their computer log-in numbers
Ability to use a computer and a computer mouse
Ability to use a Promethean board (selecting items, writing words, illustrating, etc)
Definition of Nonfiction text
Understanding of vocabulary of animals and their environments such as (body,
habitat, food, life cycle, camouflage, etc)
Materials:
Promethean board or interactive whiteboard
Class set of computers (one per student for lesson on Day 2)
PebbleGo Animals resource
(http://www.pebblego.com/content/animals/pgo_player.php)
Fact Sheet worksheet

All About Bears flipchart

White boards
Dry erase markers
Digital recorder
Comparing Bears T-chart
Printer
Binder

Brief Overview of Unit (two-to-four sentences): This unit should take 5 sessions (30-45
minute per session) to complete. This unit is to be implemented after students have
learned what nonfiction books are and after students have learned about the life cycles of
different animals and their environments. After learning basic features of animals, students
have opportunity to implement basic knowledge of animals into a class research project.
Students will compare facts about different types of bears and their environments.
Throughout this unit, students will collect facts on different types of bears and record their
facts. After students have collected their facts, students will write one fact they learned
about bears on the All About Bears flipchart.
Teacher To Teacher:
If computers are not available for each student to use at the same time, this lesson
can be modified to use as a center where students rotate through using the
computers that are available or this lesson could be completed whole class.
Students who are researching the same bear can be grouped together into groups
of five students. Students can be grouped by those students who have a higher
reading level with those students who need more support with reading. The higher
leveled student could read text that is not recorded on the PebbleGo website.
The teacher will need to provide support to navigate students to the PebbleGo
website and how to use information found.
Procedures/Daily Activities
Day 1
Have the students sit in front of the Promethean board and remind the students
what a nonfiction text is. Once the students have defined that nonfiction text is
fact or true information, tell them that since we have been learning about animals
life cycles and habitats, we will create a class research project on bears and the
characteristics of bears.
Tell the students that we will collect facts using information we find on the
computer and write our own fact about a specific bear. The different bears we will
learn about are black bears, giant pandas, grizzly bears, and polar bears. They will
work in a group with other students to collect information on a bear the teacher
selects for them. We will learn about each bears body, habitat, food, life cycle,
and any other fun facts.
To begin our project, we will need to learn how to use the information on the
computer to learn facts about our bear. Let the students know that sometimes,
people will use the computer to find out information that they do not know much
about. We will use the website PebbleGo, which can read us the information it has
written on the page.
Go to the PebbleGo website that has the information on bears. It is listed under
Mammals Bears link. Select Black Bears and show the students that there
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is a speaker next to the text on the page. If you click on the speaker, it will read
the information to you. Demonstrate this for the class.
Have the students think about a fact they learned about black bears from that text
that was read. Have them share their information with a partner. Let them know
you will call on a student when are ready to share a fact. Once students have
shared a fact, discuss how they read information for a bear on the website, selected
a fact from the text, and identified a specific fact.
Show the students that at the bottom of the page there are different tabs for each
characteristic of bears (body, habitat, food, life cycle, and fun facts.) Tell the
students that there is usually a speaker next to the words on the page you are
reading. Explain how they will use this information as you explore the information
on black bears with the whole class. Have different students come up and
manipulate the website themselves so they can get practice and have a better
understanding of what they will do for the project.
Let the students know that whenever there is a word that is purple that means they
can click on it and it will tell them what that word means.
Show the students where it says Cite This Article on the left side of the screen in
a purple oval. Select this and explain to the students that when we cite
information, it lets the reader know that we are borrowing someone elses facts
they found. Since we are using facts from other sources, we need to cite the
website PebbleGo so our readers know where we found our information.
Tell the students that today we were exploring how to use the website PebbleGo to
collect information. Tomorrow they will begin to collect their own information on
their bear and write two facts they learned.

Day 2
Remind students that yesterday we learned how to use the website PebbleGo.
Today we will be going to the computer lab to explore information for our class
research project and we will be recording the information on a Fact Sheet.
In the computer lab, assign groups of 5 so students know who they will be
working with to complete their assignment. Put one student who has a higher
reading level in every group. Have the students who are in the same group, sit at
computers that are next to each other so they can communicate about the different
facts they found on that bear while their working throughout the lesson.
Have the students log-in to the computers using their computer number. Once the
computers have loaded, walk them through the step by step progress of how to
access the website PebbleGo and information on bears.
Have the students sit in front of the Promethean board again so you can model
how to complete the Fact Sheet. First write the name of the animal (black bear,
giant panda, grizzly bear, or polar bear) you are researching. Then, write the name
of the website where you will find out all your information. After, they will need to
write the citation of the article, which is under the Cite This Article information
so we know where our information came from.
Check for understanding: Ask students to give you a thumps up, if they know
what they need to do on their computer to find information. Clarify any questions
the students may have.
Assign groups a specific bear to research with their group. Before they go to the
computers to begin their research, have the students decide in their group who will
research what characteristic (body, habitat, food, life cycle, fun facts) of the bear.
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Each student should research a different characteristic than someone else in their
group.
Once the students have decided what part they will research, they can go back to
their computer with a Fact Sheet and begin their research.
Circulate the room and provide support for students when needed to make sure
they are able to successfully conducting the research.
When students have completed, collect their Fact Sheet. If students finish earlier
than others, have him/her provide support to someone else in their group. If no
one needs help, have them explore information on different animals on the
PebbleGo website to receive more practice with research.
When all students have completed, have the students come back together whole
group and let them know that tomorrow we will be writing their facts and
illustrating detailed pictures of their facts on the Promethean board.

Day 3
Remind students that yesterday they completed research on bears and recorded
two facts they found. Tell the students that today we will begin organizing our
research into a class project on the computer. Today we will record the black bear
and giant panda facts we learned.
Have the students read the facts to you so you can add them to the All About
Bears flipchart on the Promethean board.
Have some students pass out white boards and dry erase markers. Have the
students participate in an interactive writing activity to write these facts.
The first bear that is presented on the flipchart is black bears. The first question is
What do they look like? Have the student who researched a black bears body
share their fact to the class. As they share their fact, record the students sentences
with a digital recorder so that you can insert an audio file next to the text on the
flipchart. Anyone who views the chart will be able to listen to the text being read
to them instead.
As the teacher you should write the facts on the Promethean board and the
students will be working to write the facts on their white boards. In order to
complete an interactive writing activity, the teacher and student should be working
to sound out all words unless there are word wall words. A word wall word is
a word that the students should know how to spell quickly without sounding it
out. Any word wall words that are in the facts, have that student who
researched those facts come up to the Promethean board to write the word wall
words.
When you are finished writing the facts, have all students erase the facts from their
boards and move to the next page in the flipchart.
Ask the question that is at the top of the page. Have that student share his/her
research. Continue this process until all facts have been written about black bears
and giant pandas.
Once youre all finished, have the students clean up their white boards and dry
erase markers and remind the students that tomorrow we will continue to record
our facts on bears. We will complete our class project by writing the facts we
learned about grizzly bears and polar bears.
While the students are completing center work for the day, call them over to the
Promethean board one at a time to illustrate a detailed picture of their facts.
Day 4
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Remind the students that we will be recording our facts on our class project today.
We will write the grizzly bear and polar bear facts.
Continue the same process as Day 3.
Ask the students if they remember where they found the information about who
wrote the facts on the website, the Cite This Article. Have students show you
for each type of bear.
The teacher will model how to take the citation found on the website and type it
under the resources page of the flipchart.
Let the students know that we will view our class project tomorrow to see all of
the research and wonderful writing we did.

To prepare for Day 5: The teacher needs to insert all the audio files into the flipchart so it
is ready for the Day 5 lesson.
Day 5
The students and teachers will view the flipchart that was created and compare the
similarities and differences between all the bears we learned about.
Record information on the class Comparing Bears T-chart.
Once this has been completed, the teacher may print the class project flipchart and
put the pages into a binder to make a class book.
Students may take turns taking the book home to share with their families.
Student Assessment and Evaluation

Research
__/3 points

Writing
__/3 points

Presentation
__/3 points

3
Student was able to
locate and record
data from website
with ease.

2
1
Student was able to
Student was able to
locate and record
locate and record
data from website
data from website
with ease with a little with much support.
support.
Student was able to
Student was able to
write most of the
write some of the
following: animal,
following: animal,
characteristic, or
characteristic, or
name of website.
name of website.
Student was able to
Student was able to
copy the citation of
copy the citation of
the article with a few the article with many
mistakes. Student
mistakes. Student did
wrote one fact about
not write one
their animal.
complete fact.

Student was able to

write all of the
following: the animal,
characteristic, and
name of website.
Student was able to
copy the citation of
the article. Student
wrote two facts about
their animal.
Student was able to
share two of his/her
facts with the class.
Student was able to
illustrate a detailed
picture of his/her
facts.

Student was able to

share one of his/her
fact with the class.
Student was able to
illustrate a picture of
his/her facts but
picture lacked details.

Student was not able

to share his/her facts
with the class.
Student illustrated a
picture of something
other than their facts.

B. Analysis of Information Literacy Lesson Plan

Rationale for Activities:
I selected these activities to achieve my goals for a few reasons. I knew I wanted
to create a unit that was engaging and of interest to the students. Many students are
interested in animals, so I thought it would be good to introduce how to research on the
website PebbleGo which is very interactive for young students. PebbleGo provides audio
of the text for those students who cannot read yet. It gives those students the chance to
do research and learn new facts about different Science topics. Also, my students love to
use the Promethean board in my classrooms I knew I wanted to incorporate the use of the
Promethean board into the unit. By creating a research class project, the students were
able to get the basic understanding of how they would go about completing their own
research project. Since this would be one of their first experiences with doing research, I
wanted to provide as much support and explanation throughout the process so much of
the unit is completed whole group.
Students will master each of the information literacy standards throughout this
unit. They will be searching for facts for their specific characteristics of bears and
recording their findings on the facts worksheet. By narrowing the search a bit for my
students, I think they will have a better idea of what it means to locate information from a
given text to find their answers. I think this is appropriate for them not having much
background knowledge or experience with information literacy activities. The students
will also present their information to the class, which helps them to evaluate what
information is the most important to share.
In Kindergarten, my students learn about the life cycle of animals and animals and
their habitats. This unit fits well into the curriculum because students will have the basic
background knowledge of animals and their habitats and life cycles. I think learning more
about animals and selecting a specific animal to discuss helps keep us focused on learning
the information literacy skills, instead of being worried about who is going to write about
what animal. The teacher can focus on how to do research for the specific animal since
everyone is doing the same animal just different types of that animal. Also, my students
learn to write in Kindergarten. By creating an interactive writing opportunity for the
students to practice writing helps to build their writing skills. The interactive writing is
done with the teacher sounding out words and having the students tell him/her the sounds
they hear in the words. This is important to the curriculum because it teaches students
about the process of sounding out words and gives them a visual of what it would look
like.
There are 20 students in my class. It is a very diverse population. Their
developmental levels range anywhere from not knowing any letter sounds to reading
chapter books. Some students do not have access to computers at home or their parents
are busy working so when they get home from work, it is too late to take them to the
library to access the computer there. This unit is appropriate for my students because it
provides a lot of teacher directed activities, but also provides some independent tasks that
I know all students could complete. I knew I would need to provide support to some
students and some do not have any background knowledge on how to use a computer
before they began in Kindergarten. Providing a lesson that introduces information literacy
helps those students get a strong foundation of how to best use the computer effectively.
Explanation of the Information Literacy Component:
These activities I selected promote information literacy because the students will
be more interested in learning about different animals. I think teaching students where and
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how to find new information will make them curious about other topics of interest to
them. Students love to learn new things and if they can be the ones in control of their
learning with teacher support, they will be engaged throughout the learning process. It
advances student learning because the students will just want to continue to learn more
about a variety of topics.
C. Reflection on Unit Lesson Plan
Your Learning about Information Literacy:
All of the information literacy components in my unit were new to me. I have
never used computers or the internet to conduct research with my class before. I have
used nonfiction books and the students would need to write a fact they learned after
reading the nonfiction book. I have used the Promethean board before for lessons;
however, I have never used it to the extent of creating a class flipchart with audio
recordings of the text. I have never used PebbleGo before. Taking 20 students to the
computer lab to have them all complete research and record their findings seems a bit
much. I am willing to try it and see if it works with the proper support. If directions to
the students are clear, I believe it would be successful. As I prepared this unit, I learned
that students need clear directions in order for them to succeed. The teacher needs to
know exactly what s/he is doing and the product should be shared with the students at the
beginning of the lesson so the students are aware of what the expectation is.
My philosophy of education is reflected in this lesson. I believe that all students
have the ability to learn. By giving all the students in my class the opportunity to try to
succeed at this assignment, they will build their own confidence. All students and teachers
can learn from one another as well. I create a welcoming environment where students can
come share their thoughts with respect of one another. I believe this is very important
because the students have all different types of learning styles. There are students who are
visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. Presenting the information in a variety of ways is
important for all the students in the class to understand and succeed. I also believe that
instruction should be developmentally appropriate for the students in my class. Creating a
lesson plan that used research that was being read to them was important because most
Kindergarten students do not know how to read. Also, creating the class project instead
of individual projects was great to help students understand the idea of researching before
they go more in depth.
Future Explorations:
Next time I may want to have students select their own animals within small
groups and try to complete a research activity in a small group instead of it being teacherdirected. I would also try to implement any kind of research activity to gets students
interested in a topic and to make it more engaging. I also may consider having students
complete the activity independently with the more practice they have with research.
I may also want to try to conduct this lesson if I have help from another teacher.
Many students may need me to provide support or explain something more clearly, so I
may possibly see if another teacher could come and help implement this lesson.
Annotated Citations:
Maryland State Department of Education. (2011). Using the State Curriculum:
Reading/ELA, Grade K. Retrieved from
http://mdk12.org/instruction/curriculum/index.html
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PebbleGo. (2011). PebbleGo Animals. Retrieved from

http://www.pebblego.com/content/animals/pgo_player.php
D. Reflection on the Semester
There were many important ideas and skills I learned this semester. I enjoyed
learning about information literacy and the many aspects of it. The different weekly
discussions that we had on project-based learning, Web 2.0 tools, lesson plans,
WebQuests, and different resources online that I could implement in the classroom. I can
see myself implementing or exploring a lot of these resources. The project-based learning
was the most influential because it relates well to Kindergarten. The students learn
through interactions instead of just absorbing the information when a teacher is talking.
The more handson experiences the students have, the more likely they will learn the
information. The more interactions they have with other students, the easier it will be for
them to interact with others. My Kindergarten students love special projects. If I were to
give them an assignment that they could complete, they would make connections to the
academics they have learned as well as the real world connections. I think project-based
learning really helps the students make those everyday connections. Knowing that my
Kindergarten students enjoy projects, I will probably try to create more hands-on projects
for different academic concepts so that I can get the students engaged in their learning. I
also enjoyed learning about the Web 2.0 tools. I had never heard of all the Web 2.0 tools.
I try my best to incorporate Web 2.0 tools into the lessons. There were so many online
resources that I read and I think a lot of them would benefit or could be modified to meet
the needs of all the students.
My goal in the near future to promote information literacy in my classroom is to
create as many opportunities as possible to teach the basics of research and why people do
it. I think it is important for students to develop these skills at an early age, so when they
grow older and are required to complete research assignments on their own, they will have
a better understanding of what it is and how to successfully research topics. Not only do I
want to encourage my students to do this, I will be encouraging myself to implement more
lesson plans that have the opportunity for research. I will also speak to the Media
Specialist at my school and see how she teaches information literacy to the Kindergarten
students. She may have some helpful tips that I may use and share with the rest of the
staff.