Information Fluency

HCPS Staff Development

Essential Questions

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: What skills do students and teachers need to effectively find information on the Internet?
When you or your students begin an Internet search you usually begin with a question to be answered.

  • Where can I get x the cheapest?
  • What are my friends doing this weekend?
  • What’s playing at the movies?
  • Where do I want to go out to dinner?
  • What information do I need for my research paper?
  • What information do I need to prepare for class next week?
Inquiry-based learning is comprised of 3 parts:

  1. an investigative (essential)  question
  2. research to find factual information
  3. learning that comes from answering that original question.

1. Investigative Questions- “What is x?” licenses students to copy information from point A and pasting it in point B. Essential questions should require students to make a decision and plan a course of action.

  • Example-Lower Order Thinking question (LOT)- What are the essential components of a persuasive speech (essay or argument)??
  • Higher Order Thinking question (HOT) Imagine you are a consultant for speech writers.  Select a speech on a currently controversial topic.  Based on your understanding of persuasion, make five recommendations to the speaker that would strengthen his/her argument.
  • From the essential question, students should derive their own set of supporting questions (What do I need to know to answer the essential question?) from which they will devise a plan for their research.
  • Supporting questions are “What is…” questions whose answers provide a factual foundation for the Essential Question.

2. Research

  • Create supporting, “What if?” questions and answer them (If this is an assigned research project, teachers may want to check those answers before research begins) These “What if?” questions will provide the facts you need to answer the essential question.
  • From the “What if?” questions, select keywords. These keywords will increase the likelihood of finding useful information.

3. Search- Using Google Advanced Search.

Google Advanced Search is a great tool to use for effective searching. You may want to consider having your students bookmark the advanced search instead of Google but it can also be reached from the Google homepage. Google Advanced Search provides lots of delineators to help you refine your search. Most search engines have an advanced search feature but since Google is the search engine most of your students use, we will focus on it for training purposes. Continue on to Google Advanced Search to learn to use Google Advanced Search.

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