Another Approach to Creating Search Challenges for Students

Yesterday afternoon I shared one of my approaches to creating search practice activities for students. That strategy involves using pictures to tell as story and have students answer some questions based on the story and picture. Another approach that I use is to have students ask the questions that they want to know the answers to. To that end I keep a Google Slides presentation that contains some interesting pictures intended to get students to ask questions that they’ll answer by using a variety of search strategies.

The pictures below are ones that I’ve used for many years to prompt students to ask questions that they then have to search to find the answers to.

Some of the questions that students often ask about these pictures include:

• How big is it?
• What is it used for?
• Can I drive it?
• How big is the wheel?
• What’s the gas mileage?

All of these questions can be answered once students determine where the truck is located (fairly obvious if they look at the second picture). Once the location is determined students can use Google Maps or Earth to view the truck in Street View and see its make and model. With the make and model information is obtained the answers to the other questions should fall into place.