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We just finished our annual history extravaganza! For the past three years now, one very awesome 7th and 8th grade History teacher, Mr. Algie, and I have spent a week attacking a huge problem: how to get 175 teen-agers to write a decent research paper. Here’s how we do it.

Objective: Students will compose a research paper on one notable person in history, consisting of an essay and a works cited page. They will demonstrate application of these three processes:

     -reading in the content area and taking notes

     -using summarizing and paraphrasing to retell the information int heir own words

     -composing an appropriate essay, incorporating paragraph structure, grammar conventions, etc. 

Sounds like a challenge, and, yes, it is. I think Mr. Algie has a solid approach when teaching this content.

Pre-Teaching:

First, he backs way up, starts at the beginning and goes over what kinds of information (main ides) a research paper has in it, and how to connect details the kids find to those main ideas. Each kid gets a huge packet that has several examples, worksheets, and outlines included. They work on this in class extensively. 

A few days before they are scheduled to come to the library, I visit them to talk about plagiarism nd citing their sources. We have a quick “you have to say where you got your info” talk and practice writing a bibliography. This year we practiced by writing the citation for their history book. 

Library Time!

Day 1 and 2: Once we are all in the Library, we’re primed to start the reading and note taking process. Again, Mr. Algie has given them guiding questions in their packet to assist with this. I have a cart full of books and we dive right in. We model what reading the whole section then paraphrasing is looks like, and we circulate to help individuals or groups of students with their search. I find myself having to model using the index and tle of contents  for kids again and again. This lasts at least the whole first day and most of the second. 

Day 3: Some students are ready to begin writing their essays. Others are still reading (if they’re still not done with note taking, Mr. Algie and I will pay extra close attention to these guys today to get them going). A few kids who have lesser known people are using Internet sources to fill out their details. Here I briefly demonstrate searching strategies that will be more effective than just typing “Sacagawea” into Google. It is also very important to guide their note taking when kids are using the Internet; the temptation is to great to copy and paste their way to “Ms. G, I’m done!”  Directing them as to what they’re supposed to do with this screen full of nformation is key if we expect students to master using electronic sources appropriately. 

Back to the writing. Now, any teacher who knows anything about anything will tell you that teaching writing is a big confusing, messy  job. This is no exception. These students need tons of modeling and guidance, even if it is only the teacher saying  ”now write that down exactly like you just told it to me” for each detail. This is where having the two teachers and lots of space really comes in handy. We can differentiate this process for kids depending on how they’re doing with it: some may need a table where they can just write undistracted, and some may need to read theirs out loud to a friend to hear how the sentences go (or shouldn’t go) together. Some may need one-on-one time to get things moving. With both Mr. Algie and I there, we can handle these needs much better. 

Day 4 and 5: Thee are the wrap-it-up days, and are meant to add flexibility. Students are in varying stages of finishing (and having a teacher show them again where to revise) their work. A few may have been absent and are catching up. Some have moved on to typing their papers, or some may have finished completely and are reading independently. The entire packet, showing their note taking, works cited, outline, and rough draft are all turned in, preventing  students from successfully printing out someone else’s paper and turning it in. I think this is an important element: most of the credit for this assignment comes from the process, not the end product. 

A Note About Time: Some libraries would see five days as a HUGE amount of time to give one teacher, especially when we could probably hurry through this in only three days. Sure we could push the kids through, but the extra time allows a wider range of flexibility, room for re-teaching, and lots of face-to-face time with the students. I would argue that this is valuable piece to the learning process. 

Were We Successful?

The reports I saw were ones I would be proud of if these were my students. No, they were not perfect; there were plenty of selling errors, awkward sentences, and missing punctuation, but when I read them, I heard my student’s voices telling me back about Thomas Jefferson and Alexander the Great. I could tell immediately they they had lots of  new information running around in their  brains, and they got it  from all the reading and writing we did. Mr. Algie agrees with me here: real learning was demonstrated. I’d say we were successful.