This study examines how eight-year-old students engage in teacher-guided digital online reading during internetsearches for specific information. The research focuses on the students’ digital literacy and their ability toevaluate sources and decode complex text. We have used Luke and Freebody’s four resources model and theconcept of sourcing as theoretical underpinning. The study had a descriptive and exploratory approach. Thestudy involved 17 eight-year-old students from a school with a one-to-one tablet policy. The students weredivided into small groups to encourage interaction. Data were collected through audio and screen recordings andwere multimodally transcribed to provide a detailed account of the children’s internet search interactions. Thestudy reveals that while students demonstrated proficiency in using digital tools and navigating the internet, theyoften struggled to assess source credibility and critically interpret the information they encountered. Further-more, the study highlights the importance of guiding young students in navigating the complex media landscape,emphasizing the need to enhance their knowledge of different types of sources and the categories of individualsproducing content. The researchers found that students’ prior knowledge, such as familiarity with printed books,played a role in how they approached online reading, sometimes leading to difficulties in adapting their stra-tegies for digital formats. In conclusion, this research underscores the need for explicit instruction and collab-orative efforts in the classroom to develop students’ digital reading skills and their ability to critically assessonline sources, thus bridging the gap between technological proficiency and effective digital literacy. Thefindings offer insights for educators in preparing young readers for digital literacy and effective online infor-mation evaluation.

Given young children's frequent use of the internet and the expectations formulated in policy documents such as the Swedish national curriculum, teachers need to promote critical awareness about information found online, even in the earliest years of schooling. Responding to the need for more information about how first-graders understand the internet, we report on findings from focus group interviews concerning what students in Grade 1 think the internet is and what kind of experiences and linguistic resources they draw upon to express their understanding. Based on thematic and systemic-functional linguistic analysis, the results show that the children mostly express an understanding of the internet as something concrete, such as an app, as something encapsulated in apps or hardware and, more generally, as an enabler for the use of different apps. Students connections to using YouTube and games are prevalent, and their understanding of the internet is shaped by experiences of screen interactions when using these apps. On rare occasions, students hesitantly tried to formulate abstract perspectives concerning what the internet is or what it means. Possible directions for promoting and researching a more abstract understanding in pedagogical practice are discussed.