Media Center
Core Knowledge and Salem's Media Center
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Core Knowledge and Your Media Center
What Is Core Knowledge?
Core Knowledge is an idea for promoting academic excellence, greater fairness, and higher
literacy in elementary and middle schools by implementing a solid, specific, shared core
curriculum. Core Knowledge is designed to help children establish strong foundations of
knowledge, grade by grade. For more information on Core Knowledge, see
http://www.coreknowledge.org/.
How Does Core Knowledge Integrate With Media Skills?
Media skills promote information literacy, which means most students learn how to evaluate
information they encounter. With a solid background of shared knowledge, they will have a
specific bed of information from which they can compare and determine the validity of the
information. Students learn organization skills in the media center when they locate
resources in the online catalog and find books on the shelves. A principle of Core Knowledge is
that children learn knowledge by building on previous knowledge. Salem Elementary students
learn literature appreciation through learning sequenced age-appropriate media skills and literature.
Students are expected to
- know the parts of a book,
- evaluate the content and pictures in books,
- be familiar with award winning books,
- know how to use indexes,
- develop listening skills,
- develop questions,
- be familiar with a research model,
- be familiar with different types of genre and formats,
- cite sources, and
- determine if the information is good and from a reliable source.