Google search is like a language of its own that needs to be taught and practiced. The best way to ensure that students are learning to apply the skills that you teach them is to give them small, controlled opportunities to practice searching. This can happen with the smallest of time segments during the course of the school day or class period. Search tasks can be a warm up to the actual search they are about to encounter, or be the scaffolding to support them through larger, more complex tasks.
Search challenges are one way to get more practice. Teachers can design tasks related to what they are doing in class, such as “Find a pdf article about global warming published before 1990 and one pdf article after 2010,” or they can give basic practice tasks. See below for more options.
A Google a DayLinks to an external site. is an online game by Google where players use their Google search skills to locate the correct answer. A new puzzle is added every day!
SearchReSearch
Dan Russell has created a blog about "search, search skills, teaching search, learning how to search, learning how to use Google effectively, [and] learning how to do research." Explore SearchReSearchLinks to an external site. to find activities for your students!
Search Quest
Here are some more practice search activities (with answers!) for older students.