Supporting Student Research
Today’s students have access to a
vast amount of information when doing research. How can we help them filter the
information and do effective research? Here
are a few tips to use with your children to support them as they navigate
online research.
1.
TIME
Encourage
students to allow enough time to do proper research, so that they are not
stressed about completing an assignment in too short a time. Students learn to refine their research
skills the more they actually spend time researching and have adequate time to
research. They need time to be unsuccessful with a search as much as they do to
filter the information of a successful search. Refining search skills are
gained with both successful and the searches that do not provide results right away.
2. NOTES
Discuss with your student where they are going to put the
information they find before they begin the research. Have they allowed enough space to take
effective notes from multiple sources?
Remind them of some important aspects for taking notes in any note
taking style:
Space: Have you allowed enough space
to write the answers to the questions you find?
Readability: Will you be able to re-read your notes to
use later?
Connections/Summary: –Have you captured connections to your prior
knowledge in your notes?
Sources: –Did you write down your sources on the notes so you can go back
later?
Remind them to put notes in their own words. Notes are not moving exact
information from the source they are reading to their page of notes.
3. SOURCE
Once
students have a question they want to find the answer to or a topic they want
to find more information about, they need to think, “Where is the best place to go for their
information?” Is it a book, encyclopaedia, an online source or even a personal
interview? Help your student know where
they can go for information and to go to more than one source.
Our primary students are still learning how to evaluate a source
as reliable so it may be best to encourage your child to use the filtered sites
the school purchases.
If they are not using a school database then assist them to
evaluate the site. Is it current, relevant, does it have the authority to publish
the information?
Remind students when using Wikipedia, to look at it as a jumping
off point to research but not the only source of information. Look at the
sources that are listed on the Wikipedia site and go to those sources instead.
4. KEYWORDS
Ask your child “ What is the topic, keyword or search term you
will be using?” Have them underline keywords and think about secondary keywords.
Try a few search terms together and help them narrow or broaden as needed. Practice Skimming and Scanning research
finding in both print and online sources together.
Guiding examples:
If their question is: How
does a volcano explode?
They may know that two strong keywords are volcano and explode.
However together you may discuss that explode
is not a term used in association with volcano but rather, eruption. Trying refined
search terms they will discover more relevant information. They will still need
to read and infer from the materials they find, but they will be on the correct
path to good information.
Encourage them to be open to new sources and trying new routes to
get to an answer. Help them zccept that the answer may not jump off the page
but that they may need to read a variety of sources to find the needed
information as well as verify the information they find.
5. WORKS
CITED
Encourage them to put their sources on all the notes they take and
to keep an up to date Works cited
sheet. Ask if they are using copyright
free images if not direct them to safe copyright free sources:Poster on copyright free sources
Here are some resource you
may find helpful:
• DESTINY https://iszl.follettdestiny.com: The
Destiny Homepage is full of sources of information as well as having the added
feature of Webpath Express a filtered search engine.
• SWEET SEARCH 4 ME The SweetSearch Tutorial: SweetSearch
is an amazing search tool for kids, and they have some great resources here for
helping break down what research is and how to approach it.
Another
take on the research process from the Kentucky Virtual Library.
