2nd Graders Learn to Google Search - Not As Easy As It Looks Folks!!

I was really excited to begin this week.  I had planned some really great lessons for students at every grade level and I was ready to get started...or so I thought.  To be fair, all of the lessons did go really well, but my 2nd graders through me for a loop.  I began on Monday with the expectation that I would have 2nd graders search Google images for book covers of the books that they have fond memories of reading.  My plan was, and still is, to have each student create a reading timeline called My Life As A Reader. Sounds great, right?  (Look for 2nd grade timelines in a future blog post!)  I was expecting to cover the topic of copyright and acceptible use of images.  I knew that my second graders would need help with spelling but what I underestimated was that they would run into trouble performing their Google searches.  They didn't know how to get the search engine to do what they wanted it to do.  So I did what most teachers do with they miscalculate how much their students know...I quickly changed the lesson into a Google Search lesson!

Google Searching 101!

We covered...

- search terms and the need to put the word "book" behind each search.

- clicking on "Images" rather than clicking on web links.

- using the return key to perform the search after the search term was typed in.  

- looking for Google's attempt to correct spelling.

- looking for a thumbnail images versus the original.  How to return to the thumbnail search.

In addition, they learned how to create a desktop folder to organize the images that they would be finding.  

All in all it was very successful!  Once they understood how to perform their searches, they did a wonderful job.