Lesson Plan

• Unit Topic or Theme: An introduction to more effective use of the Internet

• Grade: 3-6

************************************************************************

• Lesson Topic or Theme: Introduction to Search

• Lesson Objectives: Students, after participating in this lesson, will be able to:

  1. Understand that different wordings, for a query, give different results;
  2. Understand that results are better when good documents occur in higher ranking; and
  3. Understand document rankings.

• Instructional Technique: Demonstration, question and answer, student directed Internet use, group activity, discussion.

• Instructional Materials: Computers with Internet access, and student record sheets.

  Note: If the school has sufficient computers, but not sufficient Internet access, this lesson can be conducted from a CD-ROM.

• Procedure:

  1. Introductory Activity

     The teacher asks the student what they remember about the computer matching lesson. Students should be reminded that computers do not understand language so they look for exact word matches. A person may need to ask your question in several different ways, using different words, to get the information you desired.

     The teacher calls up a Search Engine and demonstrates typing questions into the search box. Query is run and results are discussed. Students are encouraged to suggest alternate ways of expressing the question as a query. Queries suggested by the students are run and the results are examined to see how they change.

     Discuss how to determine which results better fit informational needs.

     After the discussion, students are given a set of questions. Students create 3 queries for each question, test them with the search engine, and note how well each query performs.

  2. Step-by-step

     Students work at the computer in groups of 2 running the queries they created.

  3. Closure

     A discussion focusing on searching for information on the Internet; ways to make it easier and interpreting results. Students should be encouraged to discuss their findings, what was difficult and what was easy. Discuss cases where all the words match but the document found wasn't any good. Stress the "computers are dumb- they only match words" message.

     Remind students that if their first search is unsuccessful, simply changing the wording may bring better results.

  4. Adaptations for different learners

     Extra time should be spent with students having difficulty. Go back over the computer matching/ word matching concept. Help student to think of different ways to express the same question.

• Evaluation:

  If students indicate on their worksheets that some queries are more effective than others, they have mastered the first skill.

  If students identify the best queries as the ones that give the highest rankings to a good document, they have mastered the second and third skills.

Materials

• Student worksheet (Microsoft Word, HTML)
• Lesson Plan (Microsoft Word, HTML )