South Dakota ELA 11-12.W.8.a

ELAGrades 11–12Writing

The Standard

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South Dakota English Language Arts Standards (2025)

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students turn a research question into focused search terms. They use exact phrases, site searches, and date or file filters to find sources that fit their needs.
What Mastery Looks Like: A student can write a query that finds a specific kind of source, such as a recent government report. When the results are too broad or too narrow, they change the query and explain why.
Common Misconceptions: Students may type a full question and assume the top result is the best match. They may put every word in quotation marks, which hides useful results, or use OR when they mean to narrow a search.
How to Assess It: Exit ticket: Find a Bureau of Labor Statistics report on youth employment published since 2020. Write your query, the report title and date, and one change you made to improve your results.

Lesson moves

On laptops, compare the first five results for youth employment and site:bls.gov "youth employment"; note which query finds an agency report.
Ask pairs to explain when searching "student debt" works better than student OR debt, using titles from their results.
Give pairs query cards marked too broad or too narrow; have them race to fix each with quotes, OR, a site limit, or a date filter.
Have students search site:usd.edu scholarships deadline, then record a current deadline and the page link for a scholarship they could apply for.

Free download

A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 11-12.W.8.a, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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