All 10th grade students answered 25 questions about their approach to research and strategies.

1. Library & Research
Skills Proficiency: 1oth
Grade
Deeth Ellis & Lisa Rogers
Wilbury Crockett Library
Wellesley High School
May 24, 2013

2. Goals of Proficiency
O 100% of 10th graders participate.
O Identify larger trends in research abilities.
O Make recommendations for teaching and
instruction to improve skills.
O Identify students who might need
additional help.
O Present findings to
teachers/administrators to inform
instruction in 2013-2014.

3. Administering the Proficiency
O 250 out of 278 10th Grade Students
O Taken in April 2013 in 10th grade guidance
seminars
O Average time to complete 15-20 minutes.
O Average number of students who skipped
questions: 2.6
O Proficiency in Survey Monkey

4. Research

5. Research: Discoveries
O Students are familiar with library
resources and use databases and ebooks
for different purposes.
O Students rely extensively on Wikipedia.
O Student generated questions ranged from
simple to sufficiently complex.
O Students learn to use a range of
resources.
O eBooks and Databases for keywords,
breaking down topics, and subtopics.

6. Diabetes Questions
O Simple/fact finding
“What is diabetes? How do you get
diabetes?”
O More complex
“Am I going to focus on prevention, life with
diabetes, or the science behind diabetes?
Am I going to focus on diabetes in America
or around the world?”

7. Interpreting Information
O Half of the students understood common
knowledge.
O Most students understood what it means
to paraphrase.
O Broad, narrow or just right research
questions and thesis statements are hard
for many students.

8. 2. When given a topic to research the
first thing you need to do is:

9. 6. When given a broad topic to research, the
strategies you have used to begin narrowing
down your topic are:

10. 8. Taking everything you know about the culture of
Islam into consideration, what resource would you
use to begin your research if you were looking for
factual information on the religious and political
history of the culture.

11. 9. If you are assigned to write a persuasive paper on
the merits of the European Union, a topic with
which you are unfamiliar, which of the following is
the best starting point for basic background
information?

12. 17. What does it mean to
paraphrase?

13. Fiction

14. Finding Material in the Library
O Students struggle to find material on the
shelves using a call number.
O Students do not understand what a call
represents.
O Students rarely browse the library shelves
during initial research.

15. 3. How did you select which author to read
for author thesis this year? Check all that
apply

16. 26. If you are searching for novels by Sherman
Alexie, which title and call number indicate a work
that might be a novel? Select one.

17. Search

18. Search: Discoveries
O Many students (over 40%) do not use
advanced search techniques.
O Google results differ on search history.
O Students continue to choose to search
Google on topics such as Islam.

19. 5. Which of the following is a strategy
you have used to narrow your results
on a Google search?

20. 11. Check all the ways you would limit
search results to college or university
websites using a search engine?

21. Bias

22. Bias: Discoveries
O Most students understand the meaning of
biased information.
O Majority of students would turn to library
resources (databases) for “unbiased”
information.
O Many would still choose Google to
research Islam.

23. 10. If you are exploring the effect of the travel
and tourism industry on pollution in Alaska,
what unbiased source would you start with?

24. 12. When someone is presenting a biased
opinion, they are:

25. Primary Sources

26. Primary Sources: Discoveries
O Majority know what a primary source is.
O Students have weak strategies for locating
primary sources.
O Half of the students would seek an online
book to confirm a quote.

27. 13. What is a primary source?

28. 14. If you are researching the colonization of the Republic of
Congo, which of the following are good strategies for finding
credible and relevant primary sources related to that topic?

29. Source/Information
Selection Strategies

30. 15. When have you found
Wikipedia to be useful?

31. 25. Your teacher has asked you to make a list of important
keywords that relate to your topic, the Cuban Missile Crisis,
and to bring this list to class in the library the next day. Which
of the following resources would help you quickly create a
good list of terms to start your research?

32. 24. You are searching for current scholarly information
for a science research project. Which search strategy
best guarantees that you will find scholarly resources
that are not too difficult to read?

33. 22. When information appears in several sources and most people
know the information, it is considered common knowledge. You do
not need to cite common knowledge used in a research paper. From
the list of information examples below, choose the one that is NOT
considered common knowledge.

34. 16. Check all the TRUE
statements:

35. 18. To check to make sure a quotation you read on a website is correct
you need to find a second source confirming its accuracy. Which of
the following sources would be the best choice for confirming the
accuracy?

36. Copyright/Intellectu
al Property

37. Copyright/Intellectual
Property: Discoveries
O Students are confused by copyright laws.
O Students are unclear about what
constitutes intellectual property.
O Majority of students understand they give
up privacy rights on Facebook and that
privacy settings are important to set.

38. 21. Intellectual property is:
Select one.

39. 23. You are producing a program at your school television station.
The program covers student participation in a “Decades Day” project
and will be posted on your school’s website. It would be nice to use
music from the different decades, but how much of an artist’s
recording can you use as background music?

40. Opportunities and Next Steps
O Develop skills of generating questions during initial
stages of research (Research model?).
O Teach all students advanced search techniques.
O Work on best practices for locating and selecting
primary sources.
O Focus on search strategies separately from selection
strategies.
O Improve students’ understanding of copyright,
intellectual property, and privacy.
O Evaluate effectiveness of questions and proficiency
overall for measuring students’ skills.
O Identify students who might need extra help in 11th
grade.