Monday, 21 January 2013

Researching for Meaning

Good Morning Class!

We have been studying the Medieval Times for just over a week now, and it is time we develop some critical research skills as we move forward towards our final research project and group presentation. When we do research in Social Studies, we need to bring in our critical thinking skills that we have been developing in language arts. One of the questions we often asked ourselves in our discussions was "who wrote this story?". In social studies, we also need to ask ourselves this question.

When researching there are two different kinds of sources that we find information from. Primary sources offer first-hand accounts of events that occurred. This could be in the form of a diary, a photograph, an interview, etc. A secondary source, on the other hand, recounts information through research from other secondary sources, or from primary sources.

The following link takes us to an overview of these two different forms of sources. It also leads you through a tutorial of using these sources for research. Lastly, there is a brief quiz to test your knowledge on these forms of sources before we begin our research projects.

Research Skills




Parents
Being able to recognize the difference between primary and secondary sources, and use them appropriately to conduct research is a skill that we build upon within the Social Studies strand in grades 4, 5 and 6. Within the Inquiry/Research and Communication Skills section of this document students in grade 4 and 5 are asked to "use primary and secondary sources to locate information about medieval civilizations (early civilizations) (e.g., primary sources: artefacts, field trips; secondary sources: atlases, encyclopedias and other print materials, illustrations, videos, CD-ROMs, Internet sites)"(28, 30), where as students in grade 6 are asked to "select relevant resources and identify their point of view" (34). We will be building on these research skills in Social Studies, Language Arts, and Science and Technology throughout the year. 

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