Title: How to find information effectively?

Lesson plan elaborated by: Katarzyna Maciejak

Topic:

How to find information effectively?

Target group:

1st‑grade students of a high school.

Core curriculum

IV. Self‑study. Student:

1. develops the ability of independent work, inter alia, by preparing various forms of presenting their own position;

2. organises information into the problematic whole by valuing it; synthesizes the learned content around the problem, topic, issue and uses it in your statements;

3. uses scientific or popular science literature;

4. prepares a bibliography and bibliographic footnotes, including electronic sources;

8) makes a critical selection of sources;

9) uses general Polish dictionaries and specialist dictionaries (eg etymological, phraseological, abbreviations, dialect), also in the on‑line version;

10) uses multimedia sources of information and makes their critical evaluation;

11) collects and processes information, prepares a database;

12) uses multimedia resources, eg from: libraries, on‑line dictionaries, e‑book publications, original websites; selects web sources, taking into account the criterion of material correctness and critically evaluates their content.

General aim of education

Students practice quick and effective information retrieval. They also realize how important it is to verify sources

Key competences

• communication in foreign languages;

• digital competence;

• learning to learn.

Learning outcomes

Student:

• recognises and characterizes various sources of information;

• skilfully uses various sources of information, including digital resources;

• processes and hierarchizes information;

• reads information and explicit and hidden messages;

• organises information into a problematic whole by valuing it.

Methods/techniques

• expository

  • talk.

• activating

  • didactic game;

  • mind map.

• programmed

  • with computer;

  • with e‑textbook.

• practical

  • exercices concerned.

Forms of work

• individual activity;

• activity in pairs;

• activity in groups;

• collective activity.

Teaching aids

• e‑textbook;

• interactive whiteboard, tablets/computers.

Lesson plan overview

Before classes

1. Try to see how many times you have looked for the information you need, what information it was and what sources you used. Write down the conclusions.

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the purpose of the lesson: the students will talk about ways to obtain information. Together with students, sets the criteria for success.

2. Students are happy to share lessons learned before the lesson: they tell how many times during the day they sought information, where they were looking for them and for what purpose and how they made their selection. The teacher asks what would change if the students did not have the opportunity to use the Internet.

Realization

1. Students perform exercises 1 and 2 in abstract, thanks to which they will reflect their own style of searching and selecting information.

2. Students, working in groups, create a mind map presenting the stages of seeking information. They add their tips and notes to each stage (interactive task No. 2).

3. The students perform tasks checking the ability to search for information - they determine which books of any Nike Award winner can be borrowed at the nearest city library; which volumes of poems by the Polish Nobel Prize winner can be bought in the bookstore closest to their home; they wonder what information should be sought to prepare a presentation for a geography lesson on „National Parks in Poland”, a lecture on a history lesson on Sarmatian culture, essay on „Is Polish language to be protected?”, Antigone's defense for a Polish language lesson; indicate what sources should be used when you want to sign up for sports, watch an interesting movie, find accommodation in Masuria or take a train to Szczecin. After the appointed time, the teacher asks students about their assessment of the search process of the information they need: were they satisfied with the pace of their activities, which information was easy to find and which difficult, and what information channels could recommend to others?.

4. The teacher encourages you to take part in the game „Who will find the needed information first.” He/she reads the next questions (example given in Exercise 7 in abstract), after each of them can reward the winner with a plus. Students can use any sources.

Summary

1. The teacher displays the criteria for success and asks the students to assess their skills acquired during the classes.

2. The teacher asks the students questions:
   - What should be guided by selecting information?
   - Is the objectivity of the information source always important? When can we rely on subjective sources?.

Homework

1. Make a list of information gained in the last week, which enriched your knowledge of humanities, nature and art.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

How to search for the information effectively?

During one day, try to observe how many times you were searching for necessary information, what information it was, and what sources you used. Note your conclusions.

We face the need to search for information every day – we want to find out what the office hours of a municipal library or an office, have to urgently visit are; we want to know in which shop we can buy a necessary product for the best price, and using what means of transport we can get there most easily and the fasted; we also try to find the weather forecast for the next day.

We can get information for various purposes: professional, scientific, entertainment, associated with our everyday life or hobbies. Contemporary man uses numerous sources of information: both through the visual (in the form of handwritten, printed of electronic information) and auditory channel.

Before we start to search for information, we should become aware what we are looking for and what we already know about the given topic. Next it is worth to prepare a list of sources we can use. It is important to be able to assess the suitability of different texts from this set of information to particular circumstances, and to be able to differentiate the descriptions of facts from their interpretation, i.e. from opinions.

The thoughts map is a special type of noting, in which slogan words (keywords) inducing associations with certain issues are used, as well as numbers and graphical symbols. Thoughts maps use many colours with special attention paid to the spatial plan of the text, the variety of styles and the font size.

The most important word (the subject of the given thoughts map) is placed in the centre, from which go radial lines to words associated with such word (one word per one line). Hence, we use here the “from general to particular” scheme. Thoughts maps use various abbreviations and symbols. It is important to ensure that they are clear and comprehensible for their authors also after the elapse of some time. Thoughts maps help pupils, students, teachers, lecturers, businessmen, politicians, designers, design engineers and the representatives of many other professions.

There are several exercises verifying your ability to search for information from appropriate sources ahead of you.