Learning About Animals
Now tell students that you are going to use what you’ve learned to find out more about dogs.
Start by projecting the Structure Strip in the student chapter Learning About Animals, distribute the handout, or draw a K/W/L chart on the board.
Ask students what they already know about dogs. Record student answers. If no students mention it, ask if they have heard that dogs can only see in black-and-white. Record it in the “What I Know” section.
Next, ask students what else they might like to know about dogs.
Prompting questions:
Do you want to know about different dog breeds?
Do you want to know about what dogs should eat?
Do you want to know about how to look after a dog?
Do you want to know how dogs are like or unlike their relatives, like foxes and wolves?
Do you want to know how dogs get along with other animals?
Record student answers in the “What I Want to Know” section.
Now ask students how you can use the tools you demonstrated earlier to answer those questions:
Are there articles from websites we know are reliable that we can browse to get general information?
Display the National Geographic Animals site and navigate to the page on dogs.
Ask: What do you already need to know to be able to find this article? Is there another way to find it?
Prompting questions: How did we find the article? What path did we follow?
Because of the way the site is organized, to find it by browsing you have to already know that dogs are mammals.
Tell students that many websites have their own search engines, that only search that site.
Scroll up to the top of the page and point out the word “Search” and the magnifying glass at the top right. Click on it, then type the word “Dogs” when the search page appears.
As you browse the article together, record answers to students’ questions in the “What I Learned” section.
Point out that if you just want to learn about a broad topic, like “dogs,” it’s often easier to use a book than the internet. Tell students that a teacher or librarian can tell them if a book is a reliable source.
Now ask:
Did we learn everything we wanted to?
Tell students that when you have a specific question, it’s usually faster to use a search engine.
How could we use safe search engines to answer our specific questions about dogs?
Demonstrate using one of the safe search engines from the chapter Search Engines how to search queries like:
- dogs foxes related
- dogs cats get along
- what should dogs eat
Record and new answers in the “What I Learned” space.
Now tell students that sometimes, we many not really know what we think we know.
Ask: How could we use safe search engines to find out if dogs really can only see black and white? (You can introduce the term “colour blind.”)
Demonstrate using the different search engines to search for the queries
- dogs see black and white
- dogs colour blind
Make sure to open relevant results in new tabs and to browse the article for the answer, instead of just looking at the snippets in the search results.
Ask students if they have ever done a similar exercise, in class or elsewhere. If so, ask them to reflect on what has changed since the last time they did.
