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In May, we have an opportunity to celebrate Older Americans Month. Students in grades 3-8 usually have grandparents who are in their 60s and may be experiencing many of the signs and affects of aging. Students should and do want to know more about their grandparents and how they can understand and support their quality of their life.

The resources in SIRS Discoverer and WebFind provide an excellent teaching opportunity to get students to learn more about family health and the aging process. Click the Health & Human Body icon in the Browse Subject Tree. Then, click Aging in the Subtopics list. You will get a list of 60+ articles for students to use to write a report on aging.

Articles are coded by color to indicate editor-determined reading levels. A new tool for teachers and students is the Lexile reading score, which scientifically measures the reading difficulty of each article. Lexiles have become increasingly popular and many standardized tests, and many states have adopted this tool to help teachers customize learning resources for their students. Teachers should assign a color code or a Lexile score range for students to use for browsing these articles based on whether they're reading at, above or below grade level.

You may want to assign reports that focus on a variety of issues that are related to aging and are contained within these articles. Assign different students to limit their browsing of articles to these different issues: diseases affecting mostly older Americans, life expectancy, physical fitness activities, nutrition, medication, healthcare, etc. Students should be able to create a summary using two articles or Web sites.

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