internet research in grades 3-5

Hi All,

I want to redesign the way I teach internet research skills to my elementary students, and I'd like to know what you all do and what works for you.

There are so many variables, strategies, and potential pitfalls, that when they're doing their own independent research they often encounter obstacles that I haven't taught into yet. And when I try to prepare them for all the possibilities, my lessons often have so many teaching points that they don't get any of it. This has been increasingly problematic as the number of unreliable question-and-answer websites in the top search results has increased so dramatically.

I want my students to be able to independently and efficiently find useful, reliable, and readable information. Is that overly ambitious for 3-5? Here's the Internet Research Process I teach, along with questions I teach students to ask themselves when doing research. I'd like to combine them better into a single, easy-to-understand document--perhaps with different versions for each grade 3-5. 

As for my teaching methods, I've tried giving them lists of questions geared to specific skills (eg. "Which continent has no desert?" is geared to understanding that the date information was published is important, because there used to be no deserts in Europe and now there are, so kids find sites with conflicting information.) I've tried having them all do research around a common topic (tying into their current social studies unit) with their own subtopics, and I've tried just letting them choose their own topics (more motivating for them). Each has positives and negatives, but none leaves me feeling like we've adequately achieved our learning goals (being able to independently and efficiently find useful, reliable, and readable information).

Did I mention I have students once a week for 50 minutes? And that this is just one of many things I want them to learn while I have them?

So what do you all do? What works for you?