Info Tasks for Successful Learning: Building Skills in Reading, Writing, and Research

Luke Lawson is a teacher and administrator in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Students and teachers today are bombarded with various sources of
information and data. How to tackle this information in a systematic way
is an even greater challenge. This book, for the most part, is a useful
guide that gives teachers lesson plans to be used in the classroom.

Students need a process to assist them in engaging in the processing
skills related to information, and Koechlin tries to provide this. In
her book, each chapter follows a sequence through four stages: (i)
evaluating information for relevance and validity; (ii) sorting
information to make connections; (iii) working with information and
testing ideas; and (iv) analyzing and synthesizing findings and drawing
conclusions. Each chapter also includes useful lesson plans to get the
teacher thinking about the type of activity that would be appropriate in
the classroom. The final third of the book comprises a collection of
worksheets that can be reproduced and used in the classroom.

What the book lacks, however, is a detailed discussion and analysis of
the Internet, which has become a major tool for most students in
gathering information. And, while the lesson plans and worksheets are
useful, Koechlin comes up short on details about present-day information
and its significance in current educational circles.