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5th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 10 of 17

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.

New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 5W6; 5W7 · 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 New York

In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 10 of 17 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: New York State Education Department (NYSED)

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

    Copying someone's words and saying they are yours is called…

    • citing
    • paraphrasing
    • plagiarism
    • summarizing

  2. Question 2

    You use a photo from a website in your slideshow. What should you do?

    • give credit to who made it
    • say you took it
    • change the colors and keep it
    • hide where it came from

  3. Question 3

    What do you need to cite a book?

    • the price
    • the author, title and year
    • the number of pictures
    • the color of the cover

  4. Question 4

    What is a works cited list?

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

  5. Question 5

    When should you use quotation marks in a report?

    • for every sentence
    • only in titles
    • around your own ideas
    • when you use a source's exact words

  6. Question 6

    Why is a source written by a group that sells a product less reliable about that product?

    • it has fewer pages
    • it is always newer
    • the group may want to make it look good
    • groups cannot write

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