Lesson Plan

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

• Grade: 3-6

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• Lesson Topic or Theme: Internet Scavenger Hunt Poster Lesson

• Information Literacy Objectives:

  1. Select the information source most likely to contain desired information;
  2. Locate desired information in moderately complex information sources; and
  3. Identify authority information (primarily author and date) in moderately complex documents.

• Theoretical Perspective: The Internet Scavenger Hunt is a sequence of three lessons that teach students to find information in Internet documents. Students are taught to locate answers to specific questions, and to locate information that indicates how reliable the answers might be.

  This lesson is the third in the sequence. It integrates skills taught earlier (finding and evaluating information) with new skills (organizing and utilizing information) to accomplish a familiar educational task.

  Students use the information sources and information literacy skills from earlier Scavenger Hunt lessons to create a poster on a subject of interest. Each poster must provide information about the subject and the Internet site that was the source of information. Teacher interaction is primarily in the form of answering questions as students perform the tasks.

  This lesson is the first step towards integrating information seeking with other information literacy skills. It is used to assess the effectiveness of earlier lessons that teach information seeking. It can also be used as a preassessment for later lessons on information use and organization, because those skills are used, but not taught, in this lesson.

• Learning Outcomes: Students, after participating in the Internet Scavenger Hunt Poster lesson, will be able to:

  1. Find and extract five pieces of information from a specified Internet site;
  2. Identify the source (organization, author, etc) and creation (publication, modification, copyright, etc) date of the Internet site; and
  3. Organize the information into an interesting poster that describes the subject and the information source to other students in the class.

• Instructional Technique: Student directed Internet use, student directed poster creation, question and answer (as needed).

• Instructional Materials: Computers with CD-ROM. Scavenger Hunt poster guidelines (see the Materials section, below). CD which includes web sites needed to answer the questions.

  Note: If the school has enough computers with Internet access, then the CD is unnecessary.

• Procedure:

  1. Introductory Activity

     The teacher begins by telling students that they will create posters using the skills learned in the first two Scavenger Hunt lessons. Each poster will be divided into two parts. One part teaches the reader about the subject, for example, interesting information about hippos. The second part teaches the reader about the Internet site that was the source of information for the poster, for example, it is a site created by the Phoenix Zoo in 1998.

     Each poster has two goals:

     • To teach the reader something about the subject (e.g., hippos), and
     • To teach the reader about the Internet site that provided the information (e.g., reliable and current, but hard to use).
     The teacher discusses the size, format, and other poster characteristics with the class, so that they have a clear idea of what they are to produce. These characteristics can be adapted to the skills of the students and the materials at hand.

     The teacher also leads a brief discussion about the first two Scavenger Hunt lessons, to remind students of the key points in those lessons.

     • Choose a link that looks like it might answer the question.

     • Find the section of the page that is most likely to contain the answer.

       • Scan the page, looking for titles, pictures or links that are related to the question.

     • Read the best section, to see if it answers your question.

       • If it doesn't answer your question, pick another section and try again.

     • Source and publication date are usually at the bottom of the page (but not always).

     It is important to resolve any questions or confusion remaining from the first two lessons, because students will accomplish their tasks in this third lesson with only minimal involvement from the teacher.

     Students can create posters individually, or in groups of two. If groups are used, it may be helpful for students to be in the same groups as they were in for the first two Scavenger Hunt lessons, but it is not necessaray.

     The teacher can assign students to different subjects, or can allow students to pick their own subjects. It is more interesting if a range of subjects is covered by the class (i.e., if they don't all do the same site), but it is not necessary.

     Worksheets containing containing guiding question are distributed to students.

  2. Step-by-step

     Students do research, individually or in groups, for their Posters. They use the worksheets to record interesting subject information, and to record information about the Internet web site. The work can be done in specific time slots, for example, in computer lab, or it can be done whenever students have sufficient time and access, for example, to a classroom computer. The research phase takes about an hour to an hour and a half of student time.

     Students may choose to use pictures found on the Internet sites in their posters. The simplest method is to print the Internet Web page, and then cut out the picture with scissors. Other approaches include software cut-and-paste, or saving the picture to a file and then importing it into a Word processing program. The exact method chosen depends upon the computer skills of the students, and the available computer hardware environment.

     After students have found the "raw material", they must organize it into a poster. This can be done in class, or as homework. The poster-creation phase takes about an hour to an hour and a half of student time.

  3. Closure

     When posters are complete, they can be presented to the class. The manner of presentation can be tailored to the classroom environment. Possibilities include 5-10 minute presentations by each author or group, displaying them on classroom walls or in the halls, and displaying them at open houses.

     The teacher reviews posters to determine students' ability to find different types of information. (See the Evaluation section, below.) If there is a particular area that the students appear to find difficult, the teacher leads a discussion identifying the problem and possible solutions.

     The teacher also leads a discussion in which the students compare the use of Internet information to the use of books or other materials that they have used in past projects. Discussion points include ability to find some information, ability to find thorough or complete information, quality of information, ability to copy interesting pictures easily, general ease of use, and situations in which each type of resource might be most appropriate. The goal is not to identify books or the Internet as "best", but to identify some of the advantages and disadvantages of each.

  4. Adaptations for different learners

     The Internet sites are likely to vary in degree of difficulty. For example, complex site organization or advanced reading levels may make some sites more difficult than others. Easier sites can be assigned to students that are expected to have more difficulty with the lesson.

     Extra time can also be spent with students having difficulty finding information. Certain students might want to work with other students who feel more comfortable finding information on the Internet.

• Evaluation:

  The primary goal is for students to use the skills learned in earlier Scavenger Hunt lessons to accomplish a common educational task. Success is measured in the ability of each student to extract the required amount of information from the chosen Internet site and to integrate it into a coherent project. For example, a student might only extract four (out of five requested) pieces of subject information, and only three (out of four requested) pieces of information about the Internet site. The lesson is considered successful if a student can provide at least 75% of the requested information in each of the two (subject and site) categories.

  Poster organization and presentation skills are not a factor in determining the success of this lesson. However, they may provide information about the effectiveness of other classroom lessons.

Materials

• Bookmarks for Scavenger Hunt sites. (Microsoft Word, HTML)
• Poster Guidelines (Microsoft Word, HTML).