Research Skills: Find Trustworthy Sources

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For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Research Skills: Find Trustworthy Sources" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "Start with a question, not a topic".

What the lesson teaches:
- A topic is broad ("social media"). A research question is specific: "How does phone use before bed affect teenagers' sleep?"
- Good questions start with how, why, what effect, compare, and can't be answered with just yes or no.
- Pull out keywords from your question: phone use, bedtime, teenagers, sleep. Then list synonyms: screen time, smartphone, adolescents, sleep quality.
- Background first: an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia is useful for a quick overview. Wikipedia's own guidance calls any encyclopedia "a starting point for research, not an ending point", says citing Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, and advises looking up the sources it lists yourself before citing them.

The exercise I'm working on:
Pick a topic you care about. Write one research question, five keywords, and two synonyms for each keyword. Read one encyclopedia article and list two sources from its references that you'll check.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.

I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "Start with a question, not a topic" from the course "Research Skills: Find Trustworthy Sources".

Here's what the lesson says:
Research is like a treasure hunt. If you know exactly what treasure you're looking for, you find it faster and don't get lost.

The activity:
Pick a topic you care about. Write one research question, five keywords, and two synonyms for each keyword. Read one encyclopedia article and list two sources from its references that you'll check.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.