Mini-Lesson on Searching the Internet
Time Needed: 30 Minutes

Instructional Steps:
  1. I will place the students in pairs.  I will share that we are going to the computer lab to search for information and pictures about our favorite animals.  I will share that each pair must decide on one animal to research. 
  2. We will go to the computer lab; each student will get their own computer.  I will instruct them to open Internet Explorer (or whatever internet engine the school uses) and ask them to go to www.google.com.
  3. I will then instruct the children to type in the name of the animal they are researching in the search bar and to hit enter.
  4. I will explain that each word underlined in blue is a website about whatever they searched for, and they can enter that site by clicking on the name.  I will allow enough time for each child to visit several websites.
  5. I will then share that I want each group to find seven facts about their animal.  I will instruct one student in each pair to open up a Microsoft Word Document and to type their seven facts in Word (we have already spent much time working with this program).
  6. I will talk about stealing information off the internet and reference the word plagiarizing.  I will ask each child to make a list at the bottom of their Word document of each website from which they gathered information.  We will call this "citing," and we will return to this subject in a later minilesson.
  7. I will also ask each pair to find one picture of their animal that they really like.  I will instruct them to right click the image and to save the image to their disk.  We will then upload the image to the Word document.
  8. If time allows, after we return to the classroom, I will ask each group to share two interesting facts and their picture with the class.
Assessment:
This was an instructional lesson, so I am more concerned about how the students handled the instruction than with the information gathered.  I will be monitoring all students as they work so I will easily be able to identify and help confused students.  I will assess their animal documents mostly be seeing that they have seven facts, a picture, and most importantly, websites listed as their sources.
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