A great article about doing internet research with elementary school students.
eaching research skills in third grade -- just at the time where my students' reading skills are such that they can feel successful and just at the time when they have mounds and mounds of natural curiosity. In the
Third grade seems to be the most common grade to start some authentic research skills. I know 2nd grade teachers that start with an animal project in a limited way to get students thinking about how to look at information.
Your parents said you can have any pet you want. What will you need to keep the pet?")
SweetSearch search engine, which weeds out the junk they usually find on Google or Bing and which highlights their keywords and pulls text from the website into the list of search results.
Good search engine to use with elementary students
My older students will be using EasyBib to organize their links and their notes. While my third graders will not be doing true citation yet, I will be teaching citation to my seventh graders and requiring all of their projects to be accompanied by a bibliography, which they will create in EasyBib.
Older students will use EasyBib to do citations, but 3rd grade will not.
The SweetSearch Tutorial: Not only is SweetSearch an amazing search tool for kids, but they have some great resources here for helping digest what research is and how to approach it. Copyright Confusion Wiki: A one-stop shop for all things copyright and fair use. How to Do Research Another take on the research process from the Kentucky Virtual Library. Diigo for Educators A robust social bookmarking tool through which students can bookmark sites, highlight right on the site, share bookmarks with their peers and take notes on webpages. Teachers can create student accounts without needing emails. SweetSearch A kid-friendly search engine. EasyBib A robust online citation and organizing tool. Flickr Find copyright-free images with Creative Commons licenses. Search Creative Commons Find Creative Commons content on popular sites.Filed Under
She and her mom were proud that she had done her own research. When she said that she got her information from Wikipedia, I suggested that she might wish to include her source on the project, but she did not want to. She did not know if she would be presenting the project to her classmates.
Research from a 3rd grader was done using only Wikipedia and that was not cited on her research project.
My concern was not just about the credibility of using Wikipedia for academic purposes. The reading level was too advanced for a typical third-grader. Researchers (Anderson, 2012) have found the overall readability of numerous Wikipedia articles too difficult for many readers.
Wikipedia is not written at a 3rd grade level, or for any elementary student for that matter.
How is the research process introduced to elementary students, particularly for using the internet? Are learners provided an age-appropriate online tutorial?
Is there a standards document indicating skills that students should be developing in elementary grades for using technology to conduct research?
What guidelines/templates are students provided for developing their projects?
Are they provided a checklist/rubric for how projects would be graded?
Who sees their projects?
How do you make parents aware that their children will be doing internet research and that their children’s “online safety” has been considered?
What are the guidelines for elementary school student research. These six questions were asked of teachers in two different states.
elementary learners can hop on the Research Rocket at the online portal Kentucky Virtual Library: How to Do Research and find an interactive and engaging tutorial designed just for them. Content might also benefit classroom lessons and discussions, particularly in K–2 when
School districts in Kentucky have a virtual library where students can learn about how to do research.
ibrary media specialists in the School District of New Berlin (WI) developed a series of research guides and templates, organized by grade-bands. Templates for grades 4 to 6 combine a checklist or rubric. Lankau, Parrish, Quillin and Schilling (2004) developed the Research Project Guide: A Handbook for Teachers and Studentsfor Humble Independent School District in Texas.
LMS staff in Wisconsin and Texas have organized templates, rubrics and checklists to help students with their research.
Symbaloo, a social bookmarking tool, for this purpose. The Elementary Research Guide focuses on the Super 3 and Big 6 research models for grades K–2 and 3 to 5, respectively. Presentations on the Super 3 and Big 6 models, posted on Slideshare.net, illustrate that educators value both models.