Guide to Research: Choosing good sources - you be the judge!

Once you have a topic and some questions to ask and answer, you need to find sources of information. Researchers use sources to learn more. Sometimes researchers also conduct experiments or surveys to help them learn.

When you want to answer your questions, you can:
read a book
read a magazine
read an encyclopedia
look at a photograph
look at a piece of art
look at a graph
look at a map
look at a historical document
look at an artifact
visit a museum, zoo, or aquarium
visit the site where something happened
visit a website
watch a video or television show
ask an expert
conduct an experiment
make a model
try something out
take a survey

There are lots of ways to learn about your topic!

A note about sources
When you choose sources, you have a big job. An important job. A job you need to take seriously as a researcher.

You need to evaluate your sources.

Evaluate is a big word, and you might not have ever heard it before. You might not even know how to say it. Break it up like this: eee  -  val  -  you  -  ate . Now, say it faster.

Some sources of information are really good. The person who wrote the book knows a lot about their topic. You can trust what they are saying. The information they are giving you is true.

But some sources of information are not good. The person who you think is an expert might be making things up from their imagination. They might not know anything about the topic. The information they are giving you might not be true. What they say might just be confusing. The book might have been written at a time when people had wrong ideas about how the world works.

Your big job when you evaluate sources is to decide if your source is a good source or a bad source. You need to be a judge, and decide “Is this information true or not true?”

How do you know?
You might be thinking, “I’m just a kid! How am I supposed to know if my source is good or bad?”

Is it a book? You can trust the information in almost every non-fiction book you find in a library. Books are very reliable sources because there are so many steps to publishing them, and many people check to make sure they are true.

Is it a website? Websites can be tricky. Some websites have lots of good, true information that will help your research. But some websites do not have true information.
It is very easy to make a website. This is good, because it means that lots of people around the world can easily share lots of information. But it also means that you have to be a careful judge. Ask a couple of questions:
- Who made this website? Does this person, group, or company know a lot about the topic?
- Is the website information, or just someone’s opinion?
- Does the author of the website explain their sources?
- Does the information on the website seem real?
- Does the information on the website agree with what you read in a book about your topic?

Remember, anybody in the whole wide world can make a website, even my little brother!

If you have any questions about evaluating a source...

Ask for help! Adults can help you evaluate your sources. Go up to a librarian/family member/teacher/museum adult and say: “Hi. I’m doing research on ________. Is this a good source of information? How do you know the information is true?” and the adult will tell you. (Unless, of course, you do it as your dad is stirring the pasta sauce, taking the cookies out of the oven, and trying to calm down your screaming brother at the same time. Don’t ask them then, they won’t be very helpful.)

Good luck!

Guide to Research: Asking Good Questions

Research starts with a topic and a question. Once you have a topic, you need to ask some questions. Questions will guide your research. Questions will make your project more interesting to you, and help you when you are stuck.

In the research project you are working on, what questions do you have? What do you wonder? Why did you choose this topic to research? At the beginning of a project, you want to think of lots of questions!

When we talked in class, we came up with lots of questions we could ask about the meaningful Americans we are studying. We broke those questions up into two categories: fact questions and thinking questions.

Fact questions are questions that you could answer by finding the exact piece of information that will answer the question. Sometimes you can think of a fact question that you can't answer! (For example, you might ask "What was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s favorite kind of ice cream?" and not be able to answer it is not information you can find in a biography of him.)
Some examples of fact questions:
- When was this person born?
- Where did this person live?
- Did this person get married?
- Did this person have any brothers or sisters?
- Where did this person go to school?
- Why did this person decide to become a ________?

Thinking questions are questions that you have to think about for yourself. To answer a thinking question, you need to decide on your opinion and support it with evidence. Your opinion is what you believe. Evidence is the reasons why you believe, the "because..." that support your argument with.
- What was the most important moment in this person's life?
- Did this person have a good childhood?
- Why was this person meaningful/important/famous?
- Is this person someone we can learn a lesson from?
- What is this person most known for doing?

It is good to balance fact questions with thinking questions. If you answer too many fact questions in your research, your report might not be very interesting!

Guide to Research: How to take notes

Taking notes can help you remember the information you learn. Taking notes also helps you organize information. Taking notes is a good research skill!

It can be hard to take notes, though. Sometimes it is hard to decide what the most important information is. Sometimes it is hard to know how to take notes without just copying what the author said. Learning how to take notes takes time. That's why you are practicing it in second grade.

The first thing we learned about taking notes is that notes can be quick. You do not need to write full sentences in your notes. You might not need to use capitals at the beginning (unless you are writing a name) or punctuation at the end. 

The second thing we learned about taking notes is that notes need to be written in your own words, not the words the author wrote. When you write sentence notes, you take the information you read and change it so that it is your own writing. If you copy what an author said, you put quotation marks " " around the words to show that someone else said it.

We also learned two forms for taking notes - with bullets and with a "mind map."

Bullet form example:

Mind map examples:

Biography Research Project

During the second half of the year in second grade, we begin to have research projects as a part of our homework. Our first research project is a biography research project. We are going to be studying meaningful Americans who have made a difference in the world. We met with Ms. Steim, our school librarian, who helped us think about biographies, research, and sources. We each chose a biography from the school library.

We will be doing a lot of research! We need to read the book from Ms. Steim, and find a second source of information about our meaningful American. 

For more information about this project, please read the letter to families we have posted on the Lowell Second Grade website.

If you have lost the note form, or any of the other documents we give out during this project, look on the Second Grade website.

We will have a "Guide to Doing Research" posted on our class webpage very soon!

The Halfway Bandit

Today is th 90th day of school, which means that we are halfway through the school year.

None of us, however, could have predicted the actions of The Halfway Bandit, who struck our classroom in the wee hours of the morning, before anyone was at school. How he evaded our school's nighttime alarm remains a mystery.

Upon our arrival at school, we began to notice that a number of things were missing from our classroom. Half of the morning message was gone, erased clean off the whiteboard. Half of the schedule was missing, half the days on our calendar, half of the clock, half of WYDWYD, half of our book boxes, half of the ropes we use to indicate who is in the bathroom, half of the "because" cards on our board, and half of the B b D d were all gone. He even changed the short date to "1/2/7" instead of "2/4/14"! 

We wouldn't have known what had happened if Yeti and Sasquatch hadn't told us.

Luckily, Mr. MacLellan had a book all about the bandit, and we were able to get back some of our things throughout the day. We had to make half badges, a piece of paper half one color and half another. We had to fix the morning message. We had to sing the half day song, and even dance the halfway dance.

Legend has it that The Halfway Bandit was someone who loved to share, but other people didn't share with him, and he has haunted the halfway day at schools ever since. We hope things are returns to normal tomorrow!

Studying Matter

Our science research has shifted from a study of islands, rocks, and the Earth to a study of the structure and properties of matter. Matter is the "stuff" that everything is made of, and second graders spend a lot of time testing out different materials to determine their properties. In the future, we will be applying our understanding of various properties to design a couple of inventions. For now, however, we will be working on designing experiments to test a few different materials.

Our initial experiment compared water and a wooden block. These two different materials underwent the same tests. Scientists always need to make sure they are doing fair tests - comparing results of the same experiment with only one variable changed. 

We put a block and water through a funnel. We put each into a cup. We put a foam block on top of each one. Finally, we put our fingers on top of each material. Mr. MacLellan tested them with two other experiments, as well. He poured each material onto his hand. He hit each material with a hammer. We made sure we were always doing a fair test by making sure that the test happened exactly the same way with each new material.

Materials we want to test in the future include:

Banana

Metal

Obsidian

The earth

Air

Curvy metal

Smoke

Ice

Water

Ink

A pin

Wood

A basketball

A racket

Mac and cheese

Hair

Pizza

Rubber

A can

Slime

A hard covered book

A bean bag

A light bulb

A rock

Cardboard

A crayon

Plastic

We might now test all of those, and we might test others that aren't on this list!

We also came up with a list of ways to test materials:

Hammer

Try to break with our hands

Put ice on it

Put into a tank of water

Try to cut it

Put mentos on it

We will definitely conduct some of these tests, conduct some that aren't on this list, and not conduct some from here. We are very excited for this unit!

Sewing Project

The students of room 204 have been working on a sewing project. We started by working with a material called "plastic canvas", where we practiced the whip stitch and the running stitch. Then, we worked on making bean bags with felt and yarn. Our last project is to make our own stuffed animals! We are very excited.