Note Taking Skills

 I finally got around to uploading a note taking skills lesson for grades 3-5, with different topics for research and note taking.  This is the perfect wrap up to the reference unit which you can find HERE.

This is a freebie.  I hope you find it helpful!

Online Research

Some of my favorite information literacy skills lessons to teach are about online research.  It's an important skill to develop and it's never too early to start.  I cover online research with third, fourth and fifth graders beginning in October because October is Cyber Safety month and it fits nicely in that arena. This year, I broke it up into three different lessons:  1) Surfing the 'Net for Information 2) Evaluating and Citing Your Sources and 3) Note Taking.

 Here are some of the PowerPoints I used for those lessons:

Click HERE to download this PowerPoint freebie.

Click HERE to download this PowerPoint freebie.

Click HERE to download this PowerPoint freebie.

I also handout an information sheet that contains website address and information on evaluating websites to go along with our lessons.  I encourage students to keep these at home near their computer to refer to.    If you download a free copy of the handout by clicking HERE or on the picture above.

To help students practice evaluating websites, we take a look at a couple of different hoax websites and go through the process of evaluating the AUTHOR, AUDIENCE, CONTENT, and CURRENCY.  There are tons of hoax websites out there; some are really hilarious and some are very realistic.  Here are some of my favorites:

All About Explorers   http://allaboutexplorers.com/

Help Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

Dihydrogen Monoxide  http://www.dhmo.org/

Do you have any fun ideas for teaching online research to elementary students?

Animal Research

Researching is a skill that even the very young can learn.  When I taught first grade, I had my firsties complete a short research project on animals at the end of our animal unit.  Animals are a great topic to cover with young kiddos because it's something they enjoy and you can find tons of information about animals.

Throughout our animal unit, we studied the different animal groups: mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, insects, and invertebrates.

By the end of the unit, they had a several graphic organizers full of information as well as a unit summary book that they could use for their research.

For their final project, they had to present some information about an animal of their choice following  a rubric.  I provided them with plenty of print resources from my classroom library and school library and even gave them links to websites where they could find information.

You can get a copy of  the animal research packet I used for free!   Just click HERE or on the picture above.  Happy researching!

Research Lessons

In the last month or so, I have taugth several research lessons to both upper and lower grades.  Thought I'd share them with you.

Last week I taught a simple lesson on reference books to first grade.  I covered atlas, dictionary, glossary and encyopedia.  I made a PowerPoint for this lesson.

You can download it here or by clicking on the picture above.

I have also been teaching a research lesson to third, fourth, and fifth grades.  In the lesson I cover what books to use in the Media Center for research (reference books and non-fiction books) as well as online reference sources to use including kid-friendly search engines, the online catalog, reference sites and fact sites.  I also cover how to decide if a website is good to use or not by evaluating it, and why it is important to evaluate a website.  I addressed animal research for third grade and biographies of civil war heroes for fourth grade.

You can download the third grade research PowerPoint here.  

You can download the fourth and fifth grades research PowerPoint here.

Note:  Several of the slides included in these PowerPoints included pictures from my Media Center.  Please feel free to insert pictures of your own Media Center if you end up using these lessons.

Here is a handout that I also gave out to the third, fourth, and fifth grade classes

 that included information and websites covered in the research lessons. 

Hope you can use some of these.  =)

Research

Last week a teacher asked to reserve a few time slots in the Media Center this week to send in small groups of students to research for a Science project.   I immediately responded with a "YES!" because I am always encouraging teachers to collaborate with me on what they are doing in class.  Looking back now, I realize I should have asked a few questions like what types of things will they be looking for?  Will they need access to Reference materials?  Will they know what they should write down about the books they are using?  Knowing these things would have helped me to better help those students.  I could even have had a few books pulled out and ready to be searched through.  Hindsight.  Even though this is my fourteenth year of teaching, this is my first year as a Media Specialist and sometimes I feel like such a newbie.   *sigh*  Now that one group of students has been in, I realize that most of them were completely unaware of what they needed to be doing in order to conduct their research (future lesson idea stored away), so I made up a quick sheet to help guide them through the process as well as have one place to write down all of the information they found.  Feel free to download it and use it yourself if you think it might be helpful. Just click on the picture below.   =)