LIBRARY MEDIA SKILLS OBJECTIVES

The student will:

-locate illustrations and information about fire fighters, fire trucks,and fire fighting equipment

-recreate a fire engine and display it with at least one fact found from sources

CURRICULUM OBJECTIVES

The student will study fire safety and fire fighters as community helpers

MOTIVATIONAL OBJECTIVES

The student will:

-become interested in the research process

-understand the value of information skills

-gain confidence in research ability and accomplishment 

INSTRUCTIONAL ROLES

This activity may be completed by the library media specialist or classroom teacher. Time for browsing and looking at materials should be arranged for at least two sessions in the library media center.

ACTIVITIES AND PROCEDURES FOR COMPLETION

-Introduce the topic of fire fighting and fire safety. Share a newspaper clipping or other current news source. As children view and listen to stories, ask them to think about what it takes to put out fires and to rescue people. Record students' answers on chart paper. Explain that children will look for information about the equipment and transportation that is used to help in fire fighting. Children will record ideas they find on a cut-out fire hydrant.
-Begin by sharing books that will help students get ideas. The library media specialist may booktalk the items and show interesting parts of the books that would be useful for gathering information

Examples:

1) Show children the Stephen Beisty cross-section of a fire engine or fireboat. Discuss how looking at details in the illustrations and reading caption or explanations help the reader to understand how a fire fighter uses different parts of th equipment.
2) Share a videocassette in which the fire engine is part of extinguishing a fire. Disusss how watching the sequence of action gives information about the different functions of the fire engine.
3) Share one of the picture books about fire engines and discuss how the text and pictures help the reader gather information

-Distribute paper cut-outs of fire hydrants or fire engines (diecut) and explain that children will read and browse through the materials first. As they look at the materials, they will get ideas about what fire engines do and how fire fighters use them. They will also learn about the equipment used to fight fires.
-After students have collected facts or information, they may share their facts (notes) during a class session. All contributions should be recorded on chart paper. Discuss how the ideas collected can help give us a better understanding of what happens. Distribute fire engines to color and cut out. Ask students to pay attention to the part of the fire engine that might be related to the information that they found. Ask students to write a one-fact sentence strip to be displayed by their fire engine.

FOLLOW-UP

-Invite a fire fighter to the library media center to share additional information.
-Watch a television news report to identify fire fighting equipment studied.