Synthesizing - Help us order holiday books for the library!

Our focus in this activity is on synthesizing information. However, we still need to use other steps in the research cycle.

Our Question is - When we order new books for our library, which holiday should we focus on?

Planning - Choose at least three holidays. You will use Library Search to find out how many books we have in the library on each holiday. Collect your data in a table in Excel.

Gathering - Open Library Search. Search for each holiday by keyword. Keep track of the number of books you find

Sifting & Sorting - As you gather your information, glance through the list of books that are found for each holiday. Do they look like books that would be interesting to you?

Synthesizing - Think back over the information you gathered. What do you know about the number of books we have on each holiday? Which holiday would you suggest we focus on when ordering new books? WHY?

Evaluating - Do you think you have enough information to make this decision? If not, what could you do to gather more information?

Reporting - Explain to your class which holiday you have chosen as the focus for our next book order. Be sure to explain your reasoning.