Comments on: Research This.

By: J VanHaaften

J VanHaaften — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:17:03 +0000

Have you thought about teaching it from a current issues perspective? There are lots of things to argue about there…abortion, animal cruelty, etc. Sometimes that helps to fire them up. Also, I have found to avoid the “Wikipedia” paper, students are required to print out every source they use. Just a thought.:) I enjoy teaching the research paper to my 8th graders.

By: mz.w

mz.w — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:10:08 +0000

i LOVE teaching the research paper/project! i ran it out of lang arts the first two years b/c that was my team model, but last year i ran it out of soc. studies and it was much more productive. depending on the ability of the student, they got to do an “everything” paper or i made them have a thesis…for some of them, an everything paper was almost too much, even with tons of structure and support. what drives me nuts is having to teach literary analysis and grading those essays, especially the first two. by the third one there is usually some improvement/maturation of thought, but still…poorly written research is easier to stomach than the bizarre things seventh graders come up with in commentary for lit analysis.

By: mrC

mrC — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:43:59 +0000

I have said the same thing for years. Or at least a tie-in/crossover kind of thing. Thanks for the ideas to take to the SS people.

By: Gym334

Gym334 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:57:45 +0000

It really would be more effective if it were taught by the history department. When I taught American history to Juniors I had them do a research project each quarter. I assigned topics on aspects of the period I was covering that nine weeks that I did not feel I needed to focus my teaching time on. For example “Different major campaigns in the Civil War Down here we call it The War of Northern Aggression, or Major Political and Military Figures). I then used the last week or so to have different students present their papers while I graded others. The more research you do, the better you get at it. I did the same thing with sixth and eight graders