In the last few days this week, we have begun doing online research for our projects. Here are a few key points from our lessons about researching smartly and safely online:

• Don’t use any old random Google search! It is not filtered for safety and some results might come up that are not appropriate for people your age. Use Sweet Search, Squirrel Net, or Find It VA (links from our blog on the right side of the page) instead.
• Wikipedia is not a trustworthy research tool: it’s fine to use in your personal life when you are looking for information, but it can be written by anyone with an account, so we don’t trust it as a resource for our academic research.
• Websites can appear legit and trustworthy and not be in actuality, so it is important that you use the three A’s to evaluate it: appearance, author, and accuracy. Ask your child about the process they go through when evaluating a website before using it! The attached photo shows our anchor chart for determining if a website is “AAA”.
• We MUST cite our sources using MLA format! We are writing a list of sources and each notecard is labeled with the source it came from.

Please chat with your child about how research is going, and encourage him or her to spend a few minutes this weekend gathering a few more notes from their book or online resources.  Have a great long weekend, and we will see you all on Tuesday!