Baltimore County Public Schools Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Concept
Unit Title / Explore an Issue or Problem / Lesson: 7b
“Determining Relevancy”
Theme Statement/
Enduring Understandings / ·  Researchers will conduct preliminary research in order to develop a content specific context within which to begin designing an original research topic while affording an opportunity to build significant background knowledge.
Essential Question(s) / ·  How can students conduct meaningful and efficient preliminary research connected to their chosen topic of study?
Suggested Timeframe / 60 minutes
Staff Teaching Responsibility / Teacher &/or Media Specialist
General Notes: / The purpose of the lesson is to help students understand the practice and value of evaluating information for relevancy, authority, and accuracy as they search for and gather sources.
·  Teacher Note: The relevancy portion of the lesson may be completed individually, in a small group, or as a jigsaw. The authority and accuracy portion may be done as a class or individually as you see fit. This is the second lesson of five lessons associated with evaluating an internet source.
o  Do your students think that they know everything about evaluating sources??? Tell them to search for the tree octopus online (a make believe animal). Ask the students to evaluate the results from their search and use this as a way to show that anyone can post anything on the internet and make it look accurate.
Learning preferences addressed: Active, Visual
The teacher should keep in mind that this lesson includes suggestions for meeting the stated objectives. The teacher should adjust the lesson based on the needs of his or her students; however, all objectives should be covered.
Objective: / Students will be able to evaluate a source for relevancy in order to determine its role in the research process.
Standards Alignment / 1.1.4 / Find, evaluate, and select appropriate sources to answer questions.
1.1.5 / Evaluate information found in selected sources on the basis of accuracy, validity, appropriateness for needs, importance, and social and cultural context.
1.1.7 / Make sense of information gathered from diverse sources by identifying misconceptions, main and supporting ideas, conflicting information, and point of view or bias.
Formative Assessment / Paragraph summaries of sources for relevancy.
Digital Content, Tools, and Resources / Books, Magazines, and Computers (or print out of webpages)
Choose 1-2 books, 1-2 magazines/journals, and 1-2 webpages about a subject of your choosing
http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/techcomm/content/cat_030/evaluatingsources/index.html
Relevance Scoring Reference
How Search Engines Rank Pages
Before Direct Instruction / ·  Be sure that students are comfortable with logging on to a computer and accessing the internet.
Suggested Activity Sequence: / ·  Pick a topic of your choosing to center your lesson around and inform students of the topic.
·  Pass out book, magazine/journal, and webpage resources to students. Ask the students to summarize the information presented in the source and decide whether it is relevant or not. Recommend or require that the students write a paragraph about each source as they review it.
·  After they have reviewed all of the books and the list of magazine articles, they must write down the elements or criteria they used to evaluate the item's relevancy.
·  Tell students that they must ultimately answer this question: "Do the sources and information I have gathered help me to answer my question?"
o  For Books: Some of the main criteria should include looking for keywords or synonyms in the title, table of contents, preface, index, etc. of the book.
o  For Articles: Some of the main criteria should include looking for keywords or synonyms in the article title, title of magazine, abstract or summary (if provided), author (if they know something about the author of the article).
o  For Books and Articles: Publication date and any pictures, illustrations or charts should be considered. At the end of the group exercise, ask the Recorder in each group to report on the books and magazine articles they thought most relevant and why.
o  For Webpages: The main criteria should include the title, subtitle, description and URL for the website. Also, if students are able to actually view the websites, they should note the keywords and synonyms as well as any images or graphics.
·  Ask the students to visit one webpage and book pertaining to their research and answer the above questions on a separate sheet of paper. Students should submit this sheet.
Differentiation Suggestions / Components / Curriculum Resources / Brief Description
Content / · 
Process / ·  / · 
Product / ·  / · 

Unit 2, Lesson 7b 1 Summer 2013