Research 101

After the students had each chosen a topic, I had them think of either 5 sub-topics or 5 questions that they had about their issue. I began with sub-topics but found that if they had to ask questions, they had to choose a topic that they didn't know too much about. Asking questions was a little more accessible to them (probably because questions are more concrete than "subtopics").

As they decided what 5 questions they wanted to ask, I circulated the room and had to talk to several students about a couple of issues, one being open-ended vs "yes or no"/"quick-answer" questions. In hindsight, I need to teach the difference between these types of questions before I have them brainstorm what they want to research. I may have to go back next week and do this if too many kids are too narrow in their research; I will have to assess as I go.

After they had their questions, they were to think of keywords. Again, I need to teach this more explicitly and will have to do a keyword mini-lesson on Wednesday of this week ("Work day Wednesday") so they are not searching, "What's the difference between....etc etc".

So, they have their topic and their 5 general areas of research. I taught them how to create a link to a new page that they were to title according to their chosen issue. I have directions up on a page called "research pages".

THINGS THAT WENT WELL:
- They are extremely interested in making their own page that looks like a wikipedia page
- They are all excited and very interested in their chosen topic
- In general, they were capable of following the directions I gave to create their wiki page with no trouble.

THINGS THAT DID NOT GO VERY WELL:

- I tried to have the first group create their link to their page in class. This did not go well because with 18 people editing the same page at the same time, some kids' work was getting deleted because the page was being saved at different times from different versions! NIGHTMARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Solution: Assign adding a link as homework so there are not so many kids editing the same page at once

- Some kids don't know exactly how their page is "supposed to look". By "supposed to look", I mean headings for each section, bolded topic words, consistency in size and font of words, etc. Solution: On "Work-day Wednesday", have a web-quest and comparison between a wikipedia site that I find/choose and a research page that I make up that is HURTING. I will develop some questions for them to respond to during the web-quest and have them draw conclusion about how mine measures up (or doesn't!) and what I would have to do to bring it up to par. After we discuss the improvements that my page needs, I will have them grade my page using the project rubric. They typically like this and they usually really get what I am looking for after working with the rubric that they will be graded with.

It's going to be a fun week!!