Not every research activity will need to encompass all steps and end in a final project. There are simple ways to reinforce the individual skills within your daily curriculum. For suggestions on integrating gathering sources into your lessons, check out these mini-activities.
Present a question and have students brainstorm the keywords they might use to learn more. Show students how Wikipedia can help.
Provide a list of sources on a current topic. Have students choose the best quality sources.
Give students 1 minute to skim read a short article. Discuss what stood out to them. Headings? Words in bold or italics? Quotes? Then give students 5 minutes to read the same article. Discuss the difference between skimming and deep reading.
Assign a curation project. Instead of the final product being a paper or presentation, students create a collection of high-quality sources on a topic, using a curation tool like Destiny Collections. If you'd like more information about using Collections, your school librarian is happy to provide assistance.
Take the curation project one step further. Have students create an annotated bibliography of their sources.
Model annotation and note-taking strategies with your students. Open a website and demonstrate how you would choose which words are important to answer a research question.
Use bellringer activities to have students practice paraphrasing. Give students quotes from popular songs or media to put into their own words. Teach them that complete paraphrasing maintains the original meaning but uses different words and grammatical structures.
Do a 30-minute challenge. Have students draw a card with a random topic, research it, and and present. This sets the groundwork for productivity and opens up a discussion about how they used their time and what research techniques worked best.
Do a 5-minute challenge. Do a shorter version. For five minutes students read resources that are relevant to their current topic and take notes. In five additional minutes, they create a quick visual presentation. Students learn how much they can accomplish in a short amount of time.