Cover lesson · Humanities · Year 5 · Intermediate
DCF: Producing → Sourcing, searching and planning digital content
Name: Class: Date:
What this practises: planning a research task and searching for information well: choosing strong keywords, sorting search results, and deciding whether a website can be trusted. The history topic is the Romans in Wales, at the fortress of Caerleon. It is also a reading lesson: pupils skim pages for the main idea, scan for facts using titles, captions, fact boxes and tables, and write a short fact file in their own words.
Print: this sheet, one per pupil, and the stimulus sheet “Roman Caerleon: pretend search results and web pages”, one between two. No computers are needed. The search screen and web pages are pretend and printed on paper.
Run: 10 min read “What you are doing” together and do Step 1 · 8 min Step 2 · 8 min Step 3 · 14 min Step 4 · 8 min Step 5 · 10 min Step 6. Total 58 minutes.
Collect: this sheet. Quick checks: Step 3: Result 1 is an advert, Result 2 is check it, Result 4 is not useful, Results 3, 5 and 6 are useful. Step 4 facts: Isca; around AD 90; up to 6,000 people; about 5,000 soldiers; the museum is free. Step 5: “Julius Caesar built Caerleon” is wrong, “King Arthur was crowned at Caerleon” is a legend, and the 50,000 stone seats claim is wrong. Steps 4 to 6 are the literacy evidence: skimming for the main idea and scanning for facts (Step 4), judging what is reliable (Step 5), and the fact file written in pupils’ own words with the pages listed (Step 6).
Nearly 2,000 years ago, Roman soldiers lived in a big fortress at Caerleon, in Wales. Your job today is to be a history researcher. You will plan your research, choose good search words, sort some search results, read 3 web pages to find facts, check which facts you can trust, and then write a short fact file.
Everything is on paper. The search screen and the web pages on your stimulus sheet are pretend, and some of them are wrong on purpose. Can you spot them?
Good researchers plan before they search. Fill in your research card.
Big question: What was Roman Caerleon like?
3 smaller questions I want to answer:
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 |
What I will make at the end: a fact file of 4 sentences about Roman Caerleon.
Success criteria for my research. Finish each sentence. Ideas to help: keywords, Caerleon, trust, 2 pages, check, own words, list my pages.
| I will search with | |
| I will only use | |
| I will check a fact by | |
| I will write |
A strong search uses a few exact words, so the results are about what you want. A weak search is too short or too general, so you get lots of results about other things.
For each question, rank the 3 searches: 1 = strongest, 3 = weakest.
| Question | Search | Rank (1, 2 or 3) |
|---|---|---|
| A. How many people could sit in the Caerleon amphitheatre? | caerleon romans | |
| romans | ||
| caerleon amphitheatre seats | ||
| B. Which legion was based at Caerleon? | caerleon roman legion | |
| soldiers | ||
| roman soldiers wales | ||
| C. Is the Roman museum in Caerleon free to visit? | museum | |
| caerleon roman museum free entry | ||
| caerleon museum |
(a) Why is romans a weak search?
(b) Write your own strong search for this question: Can you still visit the Roman baths at Caerleon?
Look at the 6 results on the pretend search screen. Read the title, the Who made it line and the short text. Put each result in one group and give a reason.
| Result | Group | My reason |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||
| 6 |
Bookmark it: on a real computer you can save a good page to find it again. Which 2 results would you bookmark? Write their numbers.
(a) Skim. Skimming means reading quickly to get the main idea. Look only at the title, the headings and the pictures of Pages A, B and C. Give yourself 1 minute for each page. Write one line about what each page is mostly about.
| Page | This page is mostly about… |
|---|---|
| A | |
| B | |
| C |
(b) Scan. Scanning means hunting for one exact fact, like a number or a name. Find each answer. Write which page you found it on and which feature helped you: title, heading, main text, caption, fact box or table.
| Question | Answer | Page | Feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. What did the Romans call their fortress at Caerleon? | |||
| 2. Around what year was the amphitheatre built? | |||
| 3. How many people could sit in the amphitheatre? | |||
| 4. About how many soldiers lived in the fortress? | |||
| 5. How much does it cost to visit the museum? |
A fact is true and we can check it. A claim is wrong if good pages say something different. A legend is an old story with no proof that it happened. Decide which each sentence is, and write the page that helped you check.
| Sentence | Found in | Fact, wrong or legend? | Which page helped me check? |
|---|---|---|---|
| a. Julius Caesar built Caerleon. | Result 2 | ||
| b. King Arthur was crowned at Caerleon. | Result 2 | ||
| c. The amphitheatre had stone seats for 50,000 people. | Result 2 | ||
| d. About 5,000 soldiers lived in the fortress. | Page A | ||
| e. The museum is free to visit. | Page A |
(f) Can you trust the forum post in Result 2? Give 2 reasons. Think about who made it and what the good pages say.
Write 4 sentences about Roman Caerleon in your own words. Only use facts you found on Pages A, B and C. Do not copy whole sentences. Ideas: when it began and its Roman name; who lived there; the amphitheatre; what you can visit today.
Fact file: Roman Caerleon
Pages I used. Good researchers always say where their facts came from.
| Page | Page title | Who made it |
|---|---|---|