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Selecting Search Activity

Appreciate how results are selected

Age: 7-11 years

Type: Scratch, Internet

Curriculum Links to: English

The Selecting Search Activity has been rated 5 stars

RESOURCE OVERVIEW:

In this activity pupils learn about the basics of how search engines use web crawlers to index the world wide web (WWW). Pupils act like web crawlers themselves, indexing a very small portion of the WWW, and they then use this index to respond to search queries.

PUPIL OBJECTIVES:

  • I can explain how search engines select results.

TEACHING ASSESSMENT OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Informal teacher assessment of pupils during main task and plenary. Focus on key understanding of how a search engine’s select results, e.g:
    • Search engines have an index of the WWW. These are created by web crawlers.
    • Web crawlers move between web pages via links. They build up a search engine’s index by taking copies of the pages they visit.
    • When we make a search, a search engine looks up our keyword in its index to determine what pages to return in the results.
  • Assessment of pupils’ search engines’ indexes.

LESSON TIMING: 45 min

This lesson in your curriculum

England
Scotland
Northern Ireland
Wales

Computing

  • Use search technologies effectively, appreciate how results are selected.


English

  • Development of spoken language, including: Listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers


Wider curriculum links:

  • This activity could be adapted so pupils index web pages linking to their current topic. To make this change, simply provide pupils with a variety of links appropriate to your topic and alter the keywords in the ‘Search engine index’ resource.