If you have ever taught the research process, you know that it is challenging for students.TeacherVision advisory board member, Mikaela, created a comprehensive set of graphic organizers to support students during each step of the research process.
Teaching Research Is Challenging
Teaching your students how to write a research paper can be challenging. Before students can write the paper, they need to know how to conduct research, how to analyze that research, how to cite that research, and how to synthesize their findings into a cohesive outline. It is a time-consuming process, but an essential one.
Finding resources that support students to practice and develop strong research skills can be challenging. You may find a great outline, but then realize you don’t have a system for supporting students to analyze their evidence.
A System For Teaching Research
TeacherVision advisory board member, Mikaela, created a comprehensive set of graphic organizers that walk students through the research process in order to prepare them to write a research paper. You can use these resources individually as you are teaching writing or as a set to ensure that you are teaching students all the parts of the research process. Here are the organizers, so you can download and print:
- Citing My Sources Graphic Organizer
- Paraphrasing Sources Graphic Organizer
- What's The "Gist"? Graphic Organizer
- Analyzing Sources Graphic Organizer
- Research Paper Outline Graphic Organizer
Essential Research Skills
There are five graphic organizers that are designed to be used in chronological order, so that students are practicing these essential research skills:
- Accessing information
- Understanding information
- Organizing information
- Evaluating information
Teaching Tip
Before students begin conducting research, teach a series of mini-lessons to help them best practices for finding and reading sources on the web. You can use, Student Guide To Web Research: Learning To Read On The Web, Guide To Citing Online Sources, and Student Guide to Web Research to make sure that students feel confident beginning this process.
Teaching Tip
Model the research process for students as much as possible. This process almost always ends up taking more time than you plan. Know that you might need to slow down the process in order for students to complete each step.
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Mikaela Prego is an elementary educator from Massachusetts. She spent the last 3 years teaching 4th grade in Colorado, and now she is back teaching in Massachusetts.
