Teaching Search to First and Second Graders

After hearing about these search lessons on thethinkingstick.com, I had to try it. I have been meaning to write a reflection on my experience for a while now; better late than never.

I was excited to see what my students knew about a search engine. After seeing how proficient some kindergartners were with an iPad, flipping around and finding pictures with ease, I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised by my own class.

Something I did not anticipate however, was that our school network blocked the ads from Google (at least that's what I assume was happening since no ads showed up). So, I modified the lesson a little bit.

I started by showing them the different aspects of a search results page. Since I am teaching grade 1-2, I focused on the "Images" tab and how to find images. The above picture is a search I did today, and this did not happen last time, but if I was doing the lesson today, I would also talk about the information to the right of the results. (I would also talk about the good and bad of Google changing things weekly.)

To find ads, I went to Pitara Biographies for Kids. There are lots of ads on this site.

At another time we were talking about the continents, and I asked the kids to draw the continents. They used the school's iPads, and mostly focused on using Google's Image Search.

The earlier students can become familiar with how to search, the