Teaching Research Skills

I have been asked by parents to work on research skills so the kids can do projects by themselves. What is the best way to do this in a general way....so it can be used for any topic?
This would mostly be for grades 2-5, and still keep it interesting, motivating.....

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Permalink Reply by Irene Sweet on April 21, 2009 at 2:47pm

Thanks for all your ideas, I have already tried using kidrex.org and it was much simpler to use and yielded great results for elementary students. I'll also try implementing some of the other ideas. I appreciate everyone taking the time to answer.

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on April 21, 2009 at 5:44pm

Bob, Years ago we did a project call Guardians of Freedom (a year long study of WWII and students recorded oral histories of 54 WWII veterans) Each student did a 'Learn More About It" that was added to the website--students chose a topic of interest, came up with 10 questions on the topic then linked each question to a website where others would find the answer.

Eight years later some of the links are broken (a current student with a passion for history is going to redo the links) and the format is old school. If I did it again I'd have the students save 'worksheets' as pdf files and embed the link as a CLUE.

Funny story of aforementioned student-- he told me the other day that he was making a list of all of the most despicable rulers (I think his word was despots) in the world. He was trying to decide if Idi Amin should be 22 or 23 on his list.

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on April 25, 2009 at 6:08am

I have a companion site for Guardians of Freedom -- www.timewitnesses.org which gives first person accounts by people who lived through WW II from various countries on both sides. It grew out of the Memories project of Chatback, an organization founded in 1986 aimed at children in the UK with learning disabilities. It is a rich source of primary sources from the era.

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on April 25, 2009 at 10:22am

Bob, Thanks for the referral.

Permalink Reply by Margaret Stimson on April 21, 2009 at 2:29pm

Here are some suggestions
1. Start with a model for student research like some of those highlighted at this site http://virtualinquiry.com/inquiry/index.htm . These give you and your students a framework that provides for a plan for moving forward & a common "research" vocabulary. Some of the links there also lead to good strategies.
2. Use the proven work of others such as the webquests at http://webquest.org/index.php or the effort of these folks in Winnipeg, Canada http://www.retsd.mb.ca/site/lrc/resources/literacy_doc.pdf [Great pdf file]
3. Look at these bookmarks at Diigo http://www.diigo.com/list/schlib/information-literacy
4. Keep it simple ! Try this - One topic for all & then do a bring, browse, borrow, build - where each student shares a few important findings and then chooses several of the important findings of classmates to add to their own to construct a report or other product.
5. Consider using TUSC [Totally Unbelievable Speaking Club] which requires students to do individual research and then talk about it. Look at http://mmya.pbwiki.com . Role descriptions there are for middle years students, but they could be modified for younger students. They also incorporate some technology [optional]. There is a related protopage at http://www.protopage.com/speaking with more links.

This is a big topic. Have fun with your research.

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 21, 2009 at 2:40pm

Nancy,

If you make such a project and put it on your website, be sure to share the link so I can link to it. I added the link to your poetry unit to my poetry links last night... Get this stuff spreading as widely as possible.

Permalink Reply by Margaret Stimson on April 21, 2009 at 3:32pm

Have you ever tried making your own search engines at Google? It's pretty easy. You preselect the sites that are searched by Google thereby eliminating the possibility of a million hits for your students . The kids still have to make choices about keyword selection and about what "hits" are most suitable. There are some examples of customized search engines at http://www.pembinatrails.ca/infozone/search.htm

Related to that... You could teach about constructing a search string using a tool like http://ggl.to
In advance of the class, put some keywords into ggl.to. Do that over and over with slightly different sets of words. Give the kids the ggl.to links that it makes for each of your sets. Ask the kids to examine the resulting hits and decide which set of keywords was most successful. ( I hope that's clear for you. ) If you need some example search strings to get started, I could give you some.

Permalink Reply by Janet Barnstable on July 17, 2010 at 2:21pm

One of the best ways I can think of is with a really great project such as our Global Virtual Classroom. This is a real world situation in which kids collaborate with other kids around the world. Of course it's up to the teacher to teach them how to make good choices, but they will also need to do their best not to let their partners down (who, by the way, will likely be kids from another country!) It's great motivation! Check it out. http://www.virtualclassroom.org