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5th grade · English Language Arts · Unit 10 of 13

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.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 5.13(A); 5.13(D); 5.13(G) · 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 Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 10 of 13 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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    What do you need to cite a book?

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

  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

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

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

  4. Question 4

    Why do researchers ask new questions as they read?

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

  5. Question 5

    A website about healthy snacks is run by a candy company. What should you think?

    • it might be one-sided
    • it is a fairy tale
    • it must be a science site
    • it is always fair

  6. Question 6

    Which is a secondary source about the Moon landing?

    • a photo taken by an astronaut
    • a recording from mission control
    • an astronaut's own notes
    • a book written years later about it

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