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5th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 10 of 11

Research Ready

Questions, sources, notes and credit

What your child practices

Children practice narrowing a research question, searching with keywords, judging sources, telling sponsored content from information, taking notes, paraphrasing and citing sources instead of copying.

Maine Learning Results learning standard: Writing 1 · research questions, judging sources, taking notes and listing sources

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Narrow your question and search with keywords.
  2. Judge a source: who wrote it, what do they know, is it an ad?
  3. Take notes in your own words. Use quotation marks for exact words, and cite your sources. Copying is plagiarism.

Example: When should you use quotation marks in a report? Your own words don’t need them. Someone else’s exact words do. Answer: when you use a source’s exact words

Research Ready in Maine

In the Maine Learning Results, this is unit 10 of 11 in 5th grade English Language Arts, after Create With Words, Pictures and Sound and before Spelling Smarts.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Maine Department of Education

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    A post has thousands of likes. Does that make it true?

    • yes, if it is short
    • no, likes show popularity, not accuracy
    • yes, if it has a picture
    • yes, many people agree

  2. Question 2

    Which is a primary source about life on a farm 100 years ago?

    • a cartoon made last year
    • a textbook summary
    • a diary written by a farmer at that time
    • an ad for farm toys

  3. Question 3

    Why do researchers ask new questions as they read?

    • learning more often leads to new things to find out
    • they forgot the old question
    • to avoid reading
    • to make the report shorter

  4. Question 4

    What is a works cited list?

    • a list of spelling words
    • a list of your friends
    • a list of the sources you used
    • a table of contents

  5. Question 5

    Which statement from a website is an opinion?

    • Paper is made from wood fibers.
    • Recycling is the most important thing anyone can do.
    • Many cities collect recycling each week.
    • Aluminum cans can be recycled.

  6. Question 6

    A chatbot gives you a fact for your report. What should you do?

    • copy it without checking
    • share it right away
    • check it in a reliable source
    • trust it because a computer said it

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