How to help kids develop pre-search strategies

1. Pre-search
Julia Leong
MSE MSD April 2014

2. Coming up with an essential
question
• Is it a Googleable or non Googleable question.
e.g. What elements make up water?
• Is there enough safe drinking water in the world?

3. Need to Know
• What do we need to know?
• In trying to find out what are the elements in
water, does a student know what an element is?

4. Understand the question
• Use synonyms, look up words, and define the
question.
• Students rewrite the question

5. Journal the pre-search
• It might include words, definitions, reflections,
and ”Need To Know” questions,

6. Defining the learning goal
• The pre-search journey is the goal, not the
answer

7. Defining the answer
• all questions may not have a Googleable answer.
Allow them to build knowledge
• the internet does not hold all answers.
• Compare/contrast with Diffen

8. Different ways to find
answers
• data bases do they have access to, what might
be in the library, are there are other search
engines, are there non-traditional research
sources such as interviews, museums,
transcripts, the hidden internet, or other
possibilities?

9. Wikipedia
• Reference desk
• Fix the wikipedia site

10. Wordle Key words
• pre-search strategy - placing an article on a
topic into Wordle… perhaps from Wikipedia,

11. Answer Garden
• Answer Garden

12. Mind map
• https://www.text2mindmap.com
• http://www.instagrok.com
• fishbone
• http://rwtinteractives.ncte.org/view_interactive.aspx?id

13. Research Underground city
• 1. Show students photos of different cities. 2.Develop
an essential question you are going to research
• 3. Wikipedia underground cities. Copy and paste
description into wordle.net. How does that help you to
think about your subject differently.
• 4. Look at the bottom of the wikipedia page.
Compare/contrast 2 different categories of
underground cities. diffen.com
• 5.Re-write your question