Ragan

Information Literacy lesson


 * Credible or Non-Credible?**

=Pre-Assessment= At Gower Elementary, I was asked to teach the third graders how to do research using the Internet and find valuable websites for their research. Before allowing the students to access their computers, I wanted to know how much they knew of websites and how to evaluation them. First I explained five simple evaluation tips for websites: Who? Where? Why? When? And What? The “Who” is simply asking “Who is the author of the web page?” I used the comparison that books have an author and so do web sites. The “Where” is asking “where is the document published?” I told the students to notice if the web address ended in edu, gov, .com, .org, or contain country urls. They “Why” is simply asking “why was this web site created?” Is the website educational? is it entertainment? Etc. The “When” asks “when was the page produced or updated?” Like the “who” section I compared this to copyright dates of a book. If a website is old then they should avoid using it. Finally, the “What” asks “what does this site require?” Does it require a fee? A special software? Etc. The students reviewed these five steps and were able to recite them back to me the next day in class. For the second day I previewed a few sites and distributed them to the students in groups. For example, I gave one group the site [|www.factmonster.com] and asked them to use the five steps to evaluate it and decide whether it was a credible or non-credible site. By the end of the period, four of the five groups were able to evaluate their web page given to them.

First the third grade students will break up into five groups. Four groups will have four members and one will have three. Each group will have access to a computer and answer the following question: “Is this site______________ a credible web site? Remember to use your five questions to evaluate your site.” Team 1: “Is this site [|www.historychannel.com] a credible or non-credible web site?” Team 2: “Is this site [|www.wikipedia.com] a credible or non-credible web site?” Team 3: “Is this site [|www.factmonster.com] a credible or non-credible web site?” Team 4: “Is this site [|www.biography.com] a credible or non-credible web site?” Team 5: “Is this site [|www.physlink.com] a credible or non-credible web site?”
 * Instructional Objective/Sequence:**

I allowed the students twenty fifteen minutes to evaluate their site. If they would like, they could ask me questions or the teacher, or refer to their notes from the previous “5 tips” lesson. After the third graders finished evaluation their site, they were to leave the computer and have a seat on the carpet when they were finished and have written down the following: 1) whether the site was good or bad and 2) why the site was good or bad. If a group could tell me the answer to both these questions, they would receive full credit. If a group could only the one question but not the other then they would receive half credit. If they answered neither of the questions then they received no credit. Team 1, 3, 4, and 5 answered correctly but team 2 answered incorrectly. The teams that did answer correctly were able to tell why the site was credible or non-credible and Team two answered correctly but were unable to explain why their site was not credible.


 * Materials:**

· Computers with Internet access- for students and myself · Paper- for students to write down their evaluation · Projector- to go through each groups page and allow them to show me why they chose the answer that they did. · Board- for explaining the five steps to evaluate web sites.

The Internet can be used as a research tool, just like we use books in the library. But, did you know that there is false information on the Internet? You have learned that some books in the library or “Fiction (not true)” and some are “Non-Fiction (true)” Today we are going to learn the difference between web sites that are “true” and web sites that are “not true.”
 * Set Induction:**

After the students completed their tasks of evaluating their web sites, I made a handout that contained the five evaluation questions and a list of web sites that they could use for research. I also reminded the teachers to give a copy of this handout to the parents so that they could review this material with their child when they go home.
 * Closure:**

At Gower I had to teach this lesson four times. One group of third graders was ELL. This was a rather challenging class because they did not know all of the Internet terms that I used so I tried to break it down for them. For example, in choosing my five rules for evaluating web sites, I chose to phrase them in questions because I knew it would be simple for the kids to understand and also the ELL students would know words like “who, what, where?”
 * Adaptation and Extensions:**

I felt sure that the objectives were met because the students were able to recite the rules of evaluation to me the next day, 90% of the groups completed their task successfully and for those that did not we still reviewed the data in class, and the handout at the end served as a reminder. However, I wish I had known about these web sites and resources that we have gone over in class; especially [|www.snopes.com] that would have been very helpful.
 * Assessment:**