Helping Your Child Learn How to Research

Helping Your Child Become A Skilled Researcher______As you explore both print and electronic sources, here are some helpful ways you can teach and guide your children to becoming skilled researchers. Use your judgment as to how in depth you can go according to your child’s development. They will eventually need to be skilled in all these areas. General Topics:  Help your child develop questions they have on their topic to which they want to find the answers. This will help focus their research.  Teach your child about copyright laws and plagiarism. Copyright : the legal protection given to the creator of an artwork, a piece of literature, a song, photographs, audio, video, text on the internet, or any work that conveys information or ideas. The punishment for breaking copyright law can be jail time, a fine of up to $250,000.00, or both. Plagiarism: To steal and use the writings or ideas of another as one’s own.  Teach your child how to read a paragraph, summarize it, and retell it in his/her own words. This is called paraphrasing.  Teach your child to evaluate sources to make sure they are relevant, appropriate, have enough detail for their topic, current, authoritative, and free of bias.

Print Sources:  Teach your child how to use tables of contents and indexes to help locate the information they are researching.  Find the author & copyright information and read it together. Make sure the information is current.  Show your child the Bibliography section and explain that the author had to research, too, and that many sources should be used to make sure information is accurate.

Computer Sources:  Teach your child how to do a search.  Use a search engine designed for children, like Yahooligans (http://kidsyahoo.com/)  Teach your child about the dangers on the internet (inappropriate content, online predators, keeping personal information private, etc.)  Teach your child how to read and navigate a website, especially how to locate the author, copyright information, and privacy policy to evaluate website/author credibility. Some questions you will want to ask about the website in general are: (1) is the information what you expected? Does it seem true? (2) Who wrote it? (3) Is the information up to date? (4) Where does it come from and is it presented in a professional way? Is there a Bibliography? (5) How in-depth is the information?  Teach your child that information on the internet is uncontrolled, unedited, and should be checked against another source to ensure accuracy.  Teach your child credible websites to use when searching, like the following you can add to your Favorites: The History Channel http://www.historychannel.com National Geographic http://www.nationalgeographic.com Smithsonian http://www.si.edu NASA http://www.nasa.gov Biography http://www.biography.com