The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force issued new guidelines for mammograms in 2009. What does this mean for someone with a family history of breast cancer? Congress periodically votes on a piece of legislation called the Farm Bill. What does its current iteration mean for the safety of supermarket eggs? Understanding how the latest science affects real people patients, consumers, voters, and taxpayers is at the heart of science literacy. From Chapter 1 of Front-Page Science Like citizen journalists, your students can get to the heart of science literacy and challenging questions like these with the learn by doing methodology in this innovative book. Front-Page Science uses science journalism techniques to help students become better consumers of, and contributors to, a scientifically literate community. The book is divided into three parts: Background information and a rationale for using science journalism techniques Concrete advice about how to teach science literacy in this framework from helping students find story angles to teaching search strategies and interview techniques The process of putting together and writing a news story, including how to get students started, help them when they re stalled, and respond to their drafts A free website provides downloadable lesson plans, teacher suggestions, and a forum for exchanging ideas with others. Like Front-Page Science, the website is part of the National Science Foundation funded Science Literacy Through Science Journalism project. By making full use of these rich resources, you ll teach your students skills that will help them make sense of their world not just now, but also after graduation and for years to come.

What can we teach kids today that will have utility ten or fifteen years from now? Angela Kohnen and Wendy Saul propose an approach to information literacy that goes beyond the teaching of discreet, easily outdated skills. Instead they use activity to help students build identities as curious individuals empowered to ask their own questions and able to navigate their information-filled world in pursuit of credible answers. A generalist is curious, open-minded, skeptical, and persistent in their quest for information. Thinking Like a Generalist demonstrates what it means to take a generalist stance in instruction and provides a set of teaching tools to be able to pass those skills to students-skills that will transfer beyond the walls of the classroom. Inside you'll find the following: a thorough introduction to what it means to be a ""generalist"", and how to develop the practices and tools that help generalists navigate the world we live in a focus on the teacher becoming a generalist and tips for modeling those practices in the classroom detailed instructions on how to write a unit of study that emphasizes generalist literacy skills and includes an overview and examples of five different units how to use the authors' read-aloud-think-aloud strategy to orient students to generalist tools and practices The ideas, strategies, and examples in Thinking Like a Generalist will give you the tools to think like a generalist and then pass that knowledge on to your students, guiding them to become inquisitive, lifelong learners and preparing them for a future that we can't yet imagine.