Information Skills Lesson Ideas
Understanding Sources
When creating any assignment, you should think about what sort of sources your students should need to use. Are you requiring a book source or academic journal article because it fits the assignment or because you want students to know how to find a book or academic journal article. If it is so students can learn how to find a book in the library or an article in a database, please let the library know so we can help reinforce that skill.
- Use Noodletools to Create a Bibliography
- Annotated Bibliography
- Random Spot-Checks
- Website Evaluation Sheet
- Keywords
Use Noodletools to Create a Bibliography
Our district has a subscription to Noodletools that is available to all of our staff and students. We use Noodletools for several reasons: 1) cost, 2) the features it offers, and 3) how it reinforces the skill of sourcing information. Like other citation generators, Noodletools allows for copying and pasting of citations, but before a student can copy and paste a citation, the student must answer:
- Where is it from?
- What is it?
These two questions should help prompt students to think about their source. Also, because Noodletools does not generate a citation from a URL, students have to search a site for information to create the citation, which hopefully prompts students to think about the authorship and reliability of the website.
Annotated Bibliography
Random Spot-Checks
Website Evaluation Sheet
Ask students to complete an website evaluation sheet.
Keywords
Developing keywords is a step we frequently skip because searches are getting better at pulling out keywords from our sentences, but the difference between a good search and an ok search is often a person's keywords. Try the following exercise to get students thinking about keywords and how to search better.
Have students write their research topic on a piece of paper, then pass their paper to the right. The next person writes down words they associate with the topic. Keep passing the paper until it's made it's way around the room.