Brain Before the Bot: Cognitive AI Strategies for Elementary Learners

How do elementary students make sense of information when they shift from traditional search engines to AI-generated answers? This session introduces Building the Brain Before the Bot, an action-research framework designed to establish a vital cognitive hierarchy in the digital age. Explore how young learners navigate the differences between discovery-based searching and automated content generation, and how those behaviors differ between grades 2-3 and grades 4-5 and across language arts, humanities and STEM. Grounded in personalized, brain-based pedagogy, the session delivers actionable strategies for scaffolding inquiry literacy across disciplines. You will examine behavioral data, review classroom workflows and learn how to teach students to spot AI hallucinations and evaluate sources critically. You will leave with a turnkey implementation roadmap and a digital toolkit of age-differentiated student evaluation matrices, sample lesson plans and project-based rubrics you can embed in existing research units, plus a roadmap coaches can use to upskill faculty, so human curiosity remains the engine of technological discovery.