Skills for Research

By Allea Ohnesorge-Justis

How to Easily Gather Relevant Information

How to Easily Gather Relevant Information

The easiest way to find relevant info-


  • Go go the Lakeview Homepage
  • Scroll to "About our School"
  • Click on Media Center
  • Go to "Research"
  • Click on "General/Primary Resources"



There are two main cites you will use-



  • Ebsco Host
  • Mid-Continent




To find relevant information make sure that you have something that you need to ask. Make sure that this question isn't too broad to where you have to write a ton of things. Also make sure that it isn't too specific to where you can't write a full paragraph on it.


Use "treasure words". When you use treasure words you just take the answers you need. Don't write the whole sentence. For example if the question was "what do Lynx eat". You would search up Lynx, food, and eat. Say the source was running their mouth and kept going making it hard to find the answer. What you would do is just look for the food that they mention. For example "Canada lynx eat mice, squirrels, and birds, but prefer the snowshoe hare." You would take out the words squirrel, birds, and snowshoe hare. Those words are your treasure words.

How to use these resources




On Ebsco Host-


  • Go to Explora Middle School
  • Click on "Advanced Search"
  • Use the most important words for key words.



On Mid Continent-


  • Click on "Kids Homework Help"
  • Go to Encyclopedia Britannica for Kids
  • PIN NUMBER IS: 2000 500 114 9413 (no spaces)



I mainly just use Encyclopedia Britannica for Kids

CITE YOUR SOURCES!!!

Plagiarism (How to avoid it)

Plagiarism is when you take somebody else's work or ideas without giving credit, where credit is due. To avoid plagiarism make sure you cite your sources and put it in your bibliography at the end. Another thing you can do is quote somebody and make sure that you say who said it. Also, make sure that once you use a source you immediately write it down or copy and paste it into a document.


Examples of plagiarism and how to avoid it down below...

Follow this and research should be pretty easy!

Reliable Sources

TO find a reliable source make sure that you look at the url. Usually .com won't be super reliable but for example .gov is government and .edu is education. So the last two would be the most reliable out of all three.

MLA Citing

MLA- Modern Language Association


"A standardized ways to document the writer's source material"- Lakewood MD


MLA Works Cited Page- It's a separate page at the very end of your paper.


In Text Citations- You would take a quote and at the end have the Author's name and the page number that quote came from.

Key Words

When you are searching you want to use key words. Key words are the words that are most relevant in the question you have. For example if your question is "What do Lynx eat?"... what are the most relevant words? Most likely the relevant words would be Lynx, eat, and food. Using key words help narrow down sources you can find, making the sources you do get- easier and more reliable.

Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Quoting

Summarizing- A short story or paragraph mostly in your words summing up a full story.


Paraphrasing- Paraphrasing is when you take a quote and you change it into your own words. However since you are still using the idea that the person had you still need to give credit, so put in your bibliography or works cited page.


Quoting- Quoting is when you take somebody else's work and put it in your paper using quotations. At the end of the quot make sure you put the authors name and the page number.