GabriellaLibraryBlog: Three reference tools that students love!

A Fact Book

When I ask students if they like fact books, they usually stare at me and some of them would say: "Yes, I read nonfiction", while some of them would state: "Fiction is more fun.", but in general, I don't see a lot of excitement. Then I tell them that there is a fact book that gets published every year and it's so popular, all copies are flying off the shelves of the library. "Probably all of you looked at it before." It takes a while for them to realize that I am talking about the Guinness Book of Records, and their eyes light up.

It's was very much desired and sought after when it first got published in Hungary in 1990, when I received it for the first time. I couldn't stop reading about the weirdest accomplishments! It looked like this:

That's the Hungarian edition I had. I found this page posted on a used book website,

https://www.antikvarium.hu/konyv/guinness-rekordok-konyve-1990-287043-0

Nowadays, it attracts students with a shiny cover and stunning visuals:

Photo:G.D.

A Geographical Source

In the online WORLD BOOK Kids edition (recommended to grade 3-9, available on FocusEd) students can choose two places (continents, countries, provinces, states, even dependencies) and compare them. They really enjoy discovering trivia about places that they have been to, or studying about. The information is curated, current and interactive.

Screenshots from FocusEd BC Digital Classroom, World Book Kids

A Dictionary

I remember how excited my high school classmates (whose English was much higher level than mine) became when the first Hungarian/English Slang Dictionary got published. At that time speaking English and knowing slang words meant being cool, having insider knowledge and elevating to a higher status. But we soon noticed that plenty of those Hungarian terms in the book were already dated, they sounded like phrases that our parents used to say when they were teenagers. It made us suspicious: is it possible that the English slang words in the dictionary would be dated, too? What if we try to show off in front of our foreign friends, and talk about the cat's pyjamas, or call something swell - would they laugh at us?

Slang changes so quickly that using an online dictionary is strongly advised - unless we want to study how time changes and people talked in ancient times, like 5 years ago... An excellent online resource is https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/ with interesting (and fun!) word lists, featured popular terms, and even visuals, like memes, symbols or emojis.

Using a slang dictionary requires preparation and supervision: a teacher has to make sure their students won't use their allotted time to indulge in looking up inappropriate terms and phrases. (When I was a high school student, one of the main attractions of the slang dictionary was to be able to freely look up and practice words that we would never find in our textbooks...I am talking about my immature classmates, of course.)

It can easily suck you in: I quickly wanted to look up three terms I picked up from my teenage kids and their friends (yeet, cringey, big Chungus), but I ended up learning new ones (cheugy, hickster, moots). If you don't happen to know these words, here are some visual clues:

Cheugy