1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Alice Keeler is a mother of 5 and a teacher in Fresno, California. She has her B.A in Mathematics, M.S. in Educational Media Design and Technology and is currently working on a doctorate in Educational Technology with an emphasis in games and simulations. EdTech speaker, blogger, and presenter. Founder of coffeeEDU, a 1 hour conference event for educators. New Media Consortium Horizon report advisory panel member. High school math teacher for 14 years. Currently teaching pre-service teachers curriculum, instruction and technology at California State University Fresno. Teaches online for Fresno Pacific University in the Masters in Educational Technology. Passionate that kids are not failures, researches gamification in education to increase student motivation.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: English Language Arts
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W A Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W B Develop the topic thoroughly by selecting the most significant and relevant facts, extended definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples appropriate to the audience's knowledge of the topic.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

2. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.
© Christoph Bosch/Alamy
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.
Don’t try hooting in the woods at dusk in hopes of hearing a response from a barn owl. This pale bird emits an eerie sort of shrieking sound that might inspire thoughts of the supernatural. Combine that with the bird’s nearly silent flight (ideal for swooping down into a meadow to snatch up a vole) and its pale, ghostly appearance, and it’s no wonder that some cultures have traditionally considered the barn owl a sinister omen and a harbinger of death.
But the barn owl’s no mythical beast. With a habitat distribution bigger than most other owls, this skilled hunter does a great job of keeping the population of small rodents under control. And yes, it will build a nest for laying eggs and raising young in the rafters of a barn, or similar human construction. In fact, some farmers have taken advantage of this by purposely cutting a hole near the roof of their barns, expressly to attract roosting barn owls. It beats calling an exterminator.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.1
Web Search
Use define ornithologists in a Bing search to determine what an ornithologist is. 2
What information about owls will you need to research? 3
How might you include the owl being an omen or the “harbinger of death” in your story? 4
How will the owl create tension in your story? 5
Purdue OWL provides writing tips for research papers. How will you use this resource for your story? How will you exclude this resource from your searches when needed?
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.1
Web Search
Use define ornithologists in a Bing search to determine what an ornithologist is. 2
What information about owls will you need to research? 3
How might you include the owl being an omen or the “harbinger of death” in your story? 4
How will the owl create tension in your story? 5
Purdue OWL provides writing tips for research papers. How will you use this resource for your story? How will you exclude this resource from your searches when needed?
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.1
Web Search
Use define ornithologists in a Bing search to determine what an ornithologist is.
(Possible Search Queries: define ornithologists)
The scientific study of birds

8. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.2
Web Search
What information about owls will you need to research?
(Possible Search Queries: barn owls, barn owl omen)
Sources
Wikipedia:
Owl Pages:
Student answers will vary. To write a story where the barn owl is an essential element of the story they will need to know descriptions of the owl. Habits. Mythology around owls. How and why they are encouraged by farmers. How they are seen as an omen.

9. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.3
Web Search
How might you include the owl being an omen or the “harbinger of death” in your story?
(Possible Search Queries: harbinger of death, “harbinger of death”,"harbinger of death" owl)
Sources
Owl Pages:
Suffolk Wildlife Trust:
Student answers will vary. After researching ways that the owl has been used as a harbinger of death students would consider how that applies to their storyline.

10. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.4
Web Search
How will the owl create tension in your story?
(Possible Search Queries: create tension story writing)
Sources
Now Novel:
Writers Digest:
Writers College:
Including the owl as an omen can help to create tension. The presence of the owl can signal that something is not right.

11. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.5
Web Search
Purdue OWL provides writing tips for research papers. How will you use this resource for your story? How will you exclude this resource from your searches when needed?
(Possible Search Queries: writing tips purdue owl, bing advanced search techniques)
Sources
Purdue Owl:
Microsoft:
When searching you can exclude terms in your search by placing a minus in front of the key word.
For example: owl -purdue
This will return search results about owls, but not ones by the Purdue writing center.

12. Write a story with a barn owl as an essential element of the story.
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.