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From an early stage, in K-2, students should be equipped with the skills required for effective research:
to ask questions about a topic/subject as the focus for their research,
to gather and record information
to identify and compare relevant information.
Students should be taught how to organise their thoughts and focus their research by making a flow chart. They brainstorm ideas and enter them into a flow chart, branching out from the central idea or heading. Each of these entries become a question for their research.
An example of this is:
A guide to generic research questions
is here.
Use a variety of resources
Students should be taught to use a variety of information sources, gaining information from different types of data to make notes, and to then use their notes to write a report.
Their findings should be presented in a variety of ways. For example: chart or poster, booklet, diorama, Power Point or kid pix presentation, oral report, video/audio presentaton, photographic display, mobile, drama presentation, etc.
Using kidcyber
As one source of information for junior students, kidcyber.com.au provides text pages in accessible language for students in K-2.
Teachers and students should regard the Internet as just another research tool. Books, videos, CD ROM, magazines, and real people are all valid sources of information, and students should be helped to acquire the skills needed to extract information from them.
The same skills of locating, defining, notetaking and so on, are required when researching online. While the Internet provides previously unavailable information, it is not always accurate and the quality of the information is not guaranteed. Authorship may be hard to determine. Often the information presented is too difficult for students to understand, and their time online can be a waste of time.
To make effective use of the Internet, teachers should bookmark a list of relevant and suitable sites, appropriate to the needs and abilities of their students, thus enabling students to search efficiently.
Students should be taught to acknowledge correctly, their use of copyright information, by compiling bibliographies and correctly citing Internet resources, thus avoiding plagiarism.
A school bibliographic style should be established, and it should include citing Internet references.
Example
If author identified:
Thomas, Ron. Prime Ministers of Australia. [Online] www.kidcyber.com.au (2000)
If no author
identified:
Prime Ministers of Australia. [Online]www.kidcyber.com.au (2000)
All kidcyber.com.au pages include a suggested way of acknowledging the source.
For more help with research work go to http://www.kidcyber.com.au/researchguide.html
http://www.kidcyber.com.au/researchques.htm
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updated October 2008 © kidcyber