Guided Steps for Writing Research paper:
1. Before beginning any inquiry activity, allow for a week of immersion into a topic that you will be teaching. This will give children some ideas of what else they want to find out about. So a week before, start reading about George Washington in picture books and start talking about what they know about this president.
2. When ready to begin this unit of study, chart what children already know about George Washington. There is an example below.
3. Then you will use a Kaagan strategy that will help students provide questions about what they want to find out and categorize their own questions into time periods.
(Ask each student to write a question about George Washington. This should
be something that they would like to know. When everyone is finished, you will
ask them to find a group (2 students or more) that have a similar question (stress
not same but similar). They are to share their category with the class, and
these categories are what the teacher uses for the note catcher. Their
categories will be similar to those on the example.)
4. Use these categories and their questions to come up with a note catcher for each time period that is inquired about. See examples below.
5. Students will then be taught how to research their topics using books, videos, primary sources provided, internet sites. Teacher will model note taking at beginning of each research time. (3-5 times) Teacher will also model recording resources that they get information from each time as well.
6. Students will choose which note catcher they want to work on, each team of students will work on the same note catcher, but everyone will have to fill their own. See finished examples of this in the note catcher examples. This encourages everyone to participate and practice getting information and writing it down with resource even if their peer found information.
7. When finished researching, it will be time to write sentences using their notes. In note catcher, there is lines at bottom for this. Teacher will again have to model this explicitly.
8. When students all used their notes to create sentences, it's time to put your research paper in order. Asking the students how we should organize this process is interesting. Guide them by having a child share what they researched about, and have them stand in a spot in the classroom. (you will need lots of room for this human timeline) When asking the next child what their research is about, you will then ask if they should be before or after the first child that shared. Eventually, you will see that children are understanding this timeline and make sure to include every child on the timeline.
9. The next activity is a shared writing one. The teacher can sit on a computer with the screen projected and start with the introduction paragraph and move on to include all sentences created by students in the paper. This may go on for several days until you finish paper. Everytime you open up document to add more information, have students read what has been written so far and make corrections along the way. Teacher then will have help with a conclusion and then print a copy of this research paper for each child. This is their final product. Have student's practice reading it and then sharing it with parents. We did this procedure with George Washington then Abraham Lincoln.
Below are examples of our charts that helped us get started with our inquiry.
2. When ready to begin this unit of study, chart what children already know about George Washington. There is an example below.
3. Then you will use a Kaagan strategy that will help students provide questions about what they want to find out and categorize their own questions into time periods.
(Ask each student to write a question about George Washington. This should
be something that they would like to know. When everyone is finished, you will
ask them to find a group (2 students or more) that have a similar question (stress
not same but similar). They are to share their category with the class, and
these categories are what the teacher uses for the note catcher. Their
categories will be similar to those on the example.)
4. Use these categories and their questions to come up with a note catcher for each time period that is inquired about. See examples below.
5. Students will then be taught how to research their topics using books, videos, primary sources provided, internet sites. Teacher will model note taking at beginning of each research time. (3-5 times) Teacher will also model recording resources that they get information from each time as well.
6. Students will choose which note catcher they want to work on, each team of students will work on the same note catcher, but everyone will have to fill their own. See finished examples of this in the note catcher examples. This encourages everyone to participate and practice getting information and writing it down with resource even if their peer found information.
7. When finished researching, it will be time to write sentences using their notes. In note catcher, there is lines at bottom for this. Teacher will again have to model this explicitly.
8. When students all used their notes to create sentences, it's time to put your research paper in order. Asking the students how we should organize this process is interesting. Guide them by having a child share what they researched about, and have them stand in a spot in the classroom. (you will need lots of room for this human timeline) When asking the next child what their research is about, you will then ask if they should be before or after the first child that shared. Eventually, you will see that children are understanding this timeline and make sure to include every child on the timeline.
9. The next activity is a shared writing one. The teacher can sit on a computer with the screen projected and start with the introduction paragraph and move on to include all sentences created by students in the paper. This may go on for several days until you finish paper. Everytime you open up document to add more information, have students read what has been written so far and make corrections along the way. Teacher then will have help with a conclusion and then print a copy of this research paper for each child. This is their final product. Have student's practice reading it and then sharing it with parents. We did this procedure with George Washington then Abraham Lincoln.
Below are examples of our charts that helped us get started with our inquiry.