The dreaded research paper – how do you tackle that assignment? Over my thirty-five years of assigning formal
research papers or papers that required research and proper documentation, I
have found a few things that made life easier.
Start teaching the basic MLA or proper style
format your school district uses from day one for:
Books; Internet sources; Magazines, and
newspapers. I created posters – had them
laminated and hung them around the room.
Each week, I had a quiz or test – students were asked to write an
imaginary bibliography for a source using the correct format. Even with the signs hanging in the room –
many still had errors, but practice does help improve their command of proper
documentation throughout the year and understand the plagiarism will not be
tolerated.
If you can – choose a broad umbrella topic.
One year I did: Medicine from the middle ages compared to modern medicine –
better in most cases? My students did
oral reports using visual aids with this one and although some of the
information was pretty ghastly – they loved it. Having an umbrella topic helps
you connect with the librarian, your very best friend in collecting sources and
getting a better handle on introductory and closing paragraphs.
Please teach outlining – do not let
students outline the opening or closing paragraphs. The purpose of the outline is to show the
structure of the research: main topics: sub topics; details and supporting
details. I finally started having my
students add the source (properly formatted) to the outline so that I could
really dig into the logic of their organization before I reviewed their first
drafts. When I came up with this bright
idea – it saved me a lot of time because I was able to catch mistakes of
organization in their writing. Having the source identified allowed me to see
if the student had made an honest effort to find relevant and/or up-to-date
material.
To get ideas for umbrella topics – look to
other content areas or non-fiction possibilities generated by the literary
pieces you teach. Try to find topics
that don’t exist on the Internet. When
my daughter was in high school – I am sad to say that she did not have one
research paper except for freshman year – that could not be found on the
Internet. What was her freshman year assignment?
Every freshman in her high school had to research
potential jobs that would exist ten years in the future, find out what it would
take to be eligible to be hired for the position, what the salary would be and
other data related to the job and possible pluses and minuses for the field of
employment. Because of that paper, my
daughter is a successful C.P.S today and knew exactly what moves she needed to
take to insure her future.
Yes, I know there are software programs to
catch plagiarism, but wouldn’t you rather build dynamic topic choices with your
students that didn’t create that problem to start with? Research papers can be a source of pain or
pleasure – I happen to think that handled properly – focusing on topic choice –
students can become consumers of information and understand how to use it to
their advantage. I have a really great
follow-up assignment mixing research with creating a children’s book. So look
forward to that.
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