Tap into JCU for Research Skills

Students on Study period, can sometimes have no new work to do, or assignments to complete. To make good use of this time, refine your personal tool kit of skills.
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Practice your Pre-Reading Skills, Effective Reading or Information skills. Find new tools to use. JCU have a variety of Learning Skills booklets to help you to develop your ability to locate information, scan and skim large quantities of information or comprehend and organize new information from a variety of sources.

Work through the plethora of tools offered by our local James Cook University.  Click here.    

Try this Pre-Reading Strategy for scanning Journal Articles.  This allows you to assess quickly whether an article will be useful for your assignment, without having to read every word.

1. Read title, authors and affiliations.

2. Read the first paragraph or abstract in full.

3. Read the topic sentence of every paragraph in the body of the article.

4. Read the last paragraph or conclusions in full.

5. If the article suits your thesis/purpose, go back and read the article carefully.

While there are always explicit strategies and tools you can use to improve your skills and set you up for success, did you know that wide reading is still the best preparation for any unseen test  AND  without even trying, a love of literature will extend your neural networks in a way that watching television does not. Reading will improve your literacy levels,  general knowledge, AND make you the person, your dog thinks you are.

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Book Week August 2014

2014 CBC Children’s Book Week Aug 16-22 – Connect to Reading

The theme of Book Week this year is “Connect to Reading” and our displays featured texts that connect us to:  other texts, the world, the self and the past.  Our competitions and activities aimed to connect us to others with students submitting alphabet biographies and playing scrabble and connect 4 in the lunch break. All patrons had an opportunity to experience a connection with a mystery novel.

Book Week Results

We connected to reading last month for Book Week and drew our competitions. Nicholas Elliot-Kit was the lucky borrower of the week.  Aaron Moran was our Scrabble champion and both Grace King and Laena Gorman won our My Life is an Alphabet competition.

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Of course, we will be showcasing the six Older Reader’s titles and the ineffable HONOUR BOOK, “My life is an Alphabet” by Barry Jonsberg from the Younger Reader section.

The official young adult selections this year are:

Wildlife by Fiona Wood ( Connect  to yourself and to nature)  BOOK OF THE YEAR

The First Third by Will Kostakis  (Connect to family)

Sky so Heavy  by Claire Zorn  ( Connect to a possible nuclear winter)   HONOUR BOOK

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The Incredible Here and Now by Felicity Castagna (Connect to the loss of a family member)

Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil  (Connect to your inner nerd)

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Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near (Connect to your dark side)  HONOUR BOOK

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By far the biggest hit was our giant Connect 4 game and everybody had at least one go.

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Trinity Bay Writer’s Festival Report

Smithfield State High School has always encouraged a great literary program, nurtured by its English department and the school library; so the opportunity to spend two days with successful authors from around the country on the 31st of July and 1st of August at Trinity Bay, was not missed. In a workshop with some of Australia’s best authors, students were able to hear a few great writing tips and learn more about how the authors came to be where they are today. Not only were they entertained and engaged by Brian Falkner’s expertise and charm, but motivated and assisted by professional author Christine Bongers and local writer Maggie Doonan. Students were also impressed by the wonderful artwork of David Legge, who made drawing seem easy. All who attended were also treated to a workshop with each of the authors and the illustrator on the following day, where they were able to practice, showcase and develop their literary and artistic skills. It was a great opportunity for all who attended, and it is definitely on the agenda for next year.   By Joshua  Pelach

Research Tips

  • Our online Information Portal has moved.  To search our school resources, websites and online databases in one search;  visit our new look school website – Select the Support and Resources tab – Student Resources – Library Search.  Or bookmark our Portal Page direct: http://smithfieldshs.cmeweb.libcode.com.au
  • Try out this handy automatic summarization tool – http://www.textcompactor.com/