Doing Research the Right Way

Teaching students how to discern quality and trash information is a big challenge.  Recently, a 6th grade Science teacher asked me to do a mini lesson on searching for information on science careers and then how to give credit to the source.  In a nutshell, here is what I presented to them.

Google has some wonderful lesson plans and videos for educators to use to explain how an Internet search works to how to narrow your search to how to give credit.  Here is one of the videos that I showed to the students.

If you have a subscription to Brain Pop, I found the following video to be very effective in explaing why you have to be selective in the type of websites you use for research.  Brain Pop Video Online Resources

Here is another great resource from Google called theReliable Resource Check Sheet.  I passed this out to the students to use while they looked at the two following websites.  

These are two hoax websites that the students tested their skills at finding unreliable resources.

Burmese Mountain Dog

Mankato, MN

After searching for a hour or so, I found these three websites that were reliable for the students to do their research. 
Occupation Outlook Handbook

Science Buddies.org

Science Jobs Government Database

If you want to check out the Google resources for teachers, click on the Google Lesson Plans.

Before I let them get to the work at hand, I showed them this brief Plagiarism Presentation that also included some great questions to check for understanding of what plagiarism involves.

And last but not least, my favorite online citation maker from my home state of Oregon...OSLIS Citation Maker.  There is an elementary and secondary version with the ability to save the list of citations to a Word document or to Google docs.  Very slick!!

That's it folks!  Good luck in your quest to help inform students on the best way to be knowledgeable in the wide world of research.

Happy Teaching,

MRS. G-M