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 Anne Pemberton on March 23, 2009 at 11:24pm

Irene,

Teach the children to use google, and how to make good choices of what to view by reading the full IP address on the choices provided. The younger children may need to include the word picture or image to their search words, and then show them how to identify the picture sources. I'm not really sure that much can be really done until students can read the research sources they are provided. But, you can certainly show the kids how to left click on a desired picture, save it on the harddrive and pull it up in an application. You can certainly show the older kids how to copy and paste the answer to a question - just be sure you also teach them to copy and paste the link they are on in the browser, so they can cite their source. Impress on the kids that doing one half the cut and paste is only doing half the job -- citing is important.

High school teachers may object to teachig cut and paste because their students use it when they are too lazy to write their own papers. It may be useful to show the 5th grader how to type in a sentence or so from a passage, and find where it came from .... just so they know their teachers in the future will not be "tricky".

Permalink Reply by Erin Borino on April 17, 2009 at 10:00pm

Hi Irene,

I use resources from the CyberSmart curriculum to help teach internet research skills. http://www.cybersmartcurriculum.org/ There are also some good letters to print out and send home to parents. I teach grades 1-5 and I never have younger students do a Google search. They can't even begin to go through thousands of website to find appropriate information. I always show them the difference between a Yahoo search and a Yahoo Kids search and how kid specific search engines are more education oriented and usually produce better results. I just came across a Google powered kids search engine the other day. www.kidrex.org You could show them the difference between that and using Google when doing something simple like an animal report.

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 18, 2009 at 4:45am

Thanks for the link to KidRex. I've added it to my page on Research: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/language/index-Research.html On that page you will also find a link to Primary Access, which may be useful to your older students making reports in social studies.

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on April 18, 2009 at 12:30pm

My students do research all the time--here are a few tips.

1. The temptation is to have kids research stuff that has been researched to death--penguins, pandas, etc. I tell my kids that's not research--been done!! Make sure the students pick topics they know nothing about.
2. The best way to keep kids from plagiarizing is to give them projects they can't plagiarize. Give them authentic tasks to accomplish.
3. A little trick---read the passage on the website (or book) and minimize the website before taking your notes.
4. We don't do this but used to---take notes on color coded notecards---with dots of different colors for different topics. (Most kids use Word now. We've also used note taking tools online). Then sort the cards by color and paragraphs begin to form. Also be sure there is a card (or Word document) for each citiation. We use Son of Citiation Machine to do bibliographies. Good Luck, N.

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on April 21, 2009 at 12:21pm

When I saw this title, my eyes lit up. Research! As I read the messages, I saw that the intent was what we used to call "library research". The Web sure makes it a lot easier.

I asked myself the question, what is the purpose of the teaching the students to do research and saw two important objectives: to find information and to organize that information. Anne Pemberton suggested the students write a sentence about what is in the link. I would suggest something further. Make sure students can explain the order of the links and how each one fits. Ultimately that will mature into writing a report. If I am stating the obvious, you will have to excuse this old academic who taught college and grad students for 35 years and has no experience in the trenches of K-12.

My main reason for writing, however, was not to talk about "library research" but to ask what to ask what is done about teaching research design and analysis. I have some ideas of how the scientific method, experimental design, data analysis and interpretation can be taught at the earliest levels.

What is done now? At what levels?

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 21, 2009 at 12:48pm

Bob,

You can find some answers to your questions on what is to be taught at the K-12 levels from the Virginia SOLs: (note they are listed in a new place on the site, but the old links still work

For English Research 9-12: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/prof/curric/SOL-ENG-Research9-1...

For Elementary Math Probabilities and Statistics K-8: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/prof/curric/SOL-MATH-ProbStatK8...

For Science Investigation and Research K-5: http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/prof/curric/SOL-SCI-Investigate...

There are also lessons that provide learning for some research skills:

Classify Classmates (students note, count, enter in spreadsheet, and analyze the variety of eye colors and hair colors in their class. They can also broaden the activity to include all students in their grade in the school, or all students in the school, or all of the people in their families. The starter spreadsheets are provided.) see it at:
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/mrsp/zman/Classify.html (A Zman the Alien activity).

There is also a lesson that lets the students vote for their favorite edition of a picture, and tally and sum their votes. The lesson plan is at http://www.educationalsynthesis.org/prof/lessons/MATH-ClassSpreadsh...

Anne

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on April 21, 2009 at 1:15pm

I like your spreadsheet approach, a great way to combine a lot of skills in one project.

Here is something akin to your hair and eye color. Hand and Eye Dominance and Torque

There are 3 questions. What is your dominant hand? This will be familiar to everyone and you will probably find about 90% right handed.
What is your eye dominance.
Eye dominance is less known. Let them research what eye dominance is. To test it: Take a four inch (or so) piece of paper and tear about a 1 hole in the middle. With both eyes open, sight some object through the hole with the paper held at arms length. Now bring the paper to the eye keeping the object in the hole. Now do it again and bring it to the other eye. If you have not done this before it is quite eye opening (pun intended). I think the kids will get a real kick out of it.

The third question is what is your torque?
Torque arises from the simple task of drawing a circle. Do you do it clockwise or counterclockwise.

Get the data from the whole class and let the students get data from family and friends and add it to the database in a spreadsheet.

So now you have 3 variables, handedness, eyedness, and torque. You can now ask 3 interesting questions. Are eyedness and handedness related? Are torque and handedness related? Are torque and eyedness related?

This could be combined into a lesson on the nature of a database and how to analyze the data in the database using simple spreadsheet commands.

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 21, 2009 at 2:05pm

Great additions to Classify Classmates!

What got me to make the above spreadsheet was viewing the choice and graph projects hanging on the hall walls outside the Kindergarten classrooms. They had apples or pepper of various colors. The teacher cut them up, and each child had to decide which color they liked the taste of. The students "voted" by pasting a construction paper apple of the chosen color on a posterboard in the right column. I don't know how much analysis the did in the classes.

With Classify Classmates, the speadsheet automatically adds the graphs on the page, and the kids can scroll down below the count and see how each addition affects the graphs.

At one time the curator of the History Pavilion on Virginia's PEN ran a weekly scavenger hunt to find a location in Virginia based on clues. Not sure if someone is still doing that, althought the electric coop in their monthly mag, prints a picture of a place in Virginia and invites readers to identify it.

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on April 21, 2009 at 12:34pm

Just remembered something. Has anyone done a web scavenger hunt lately?

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on April 21, 2009 at 12:55pm

The original hunts used to be for kids to get used to searching the internet and scanning for answers to trivia questions. I think a well written hunt could teach the kids a lot--author, source, company, how current the info is and so on.

Permalink Reply by Bob Zenhausern on April 21, 2009 at 1:21pm

A carefully chosen lists of objects could be organized by the kids in various ways to tell different stories. Not only find information but the specific information that will advance the story or essay. Not sure at what level we can expect students to do that.

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 21, 2009 at 2:07pm

Nancy,

That would be a nice way to get kids to notice the sources of their information and the details about the website. A really good idea!