Integrating Research Projects with Focused Writing Instruction

Mary McMackin
Barbara Siegel

Introduction

Imagine that you are working with fifth graders who are undertaking research projects. Through these projects, students develop higher order thinking skills and learn to write reports that are exciting, have voice, and don’t sound like articles from the encyclopedia. Isn’t that what good researching and reporting are all about?

Last year we attempted to turn this imagining into reality. It was then that Barbara, a fifth-grade teacher in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA, approached Mary, an associate professor at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a request for ideas and approaches that would help students develop research and writing skills. Together, we spent part of the fall coteaching the fifth graders. With the students, we explored a variety of methods for collecting data, organizing information, and composing meaningful, engaging, and well written reports. Once each week during the 4-month period of this research project, Mary, who was working in the school through grant funding, taught in Barbara’s class for 90 minutes, and Barbara followed up on subsequent days.

Here we describe the results of that project. Specifically, we explain how we helped the children begin to differentiate between “big” and “little” research questions and to understand the value of each; describe how data charts were used to organize information; and provide minilessons on strategies for transitioning from paragraph to paragraph, writing effective leads, developing strong conclusions, and creating titles that hook the reader.

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Helping Students Identify a Research Question

To begin the process, the fifth graders in Barbara’s class were asked to choose their own research topics. Most chose animals, but a few decided to investigate new avenues, including composers and computers. We decided to model the process of researching and report writing together and chose wolves as our research topic. First, to acquire background information, we read Stephen Swinburne's 1999 book, Once a Wolf: How Wildlife Biologists Fought to Bring Back the Gray Wolf, a fascinating description of why and how scientists are working to increase the number of wolves in the United States. We then asked our students to build background knowledge in their areas of interest by doing some general reading of their own.

For the next step in the process, we created a chart with columns headed “What I Know” and “What I Want to Find Out” (Ogle, 1986). Using a think-aloud process, we brainstormed what we knew about wolves and what we wanted to learn, and we then filled in our chart in front of the class. Next, we converted the entries in the “What I Want to Find Out” column into a list of possible research questions.

Now we tried to explain to our students the difference between “little” and “big” research questions. This proved to be a much more complex undertaking than we had anticipated, and we found that we had to spend several teaching sessions just on this. We began by stating that little questions could be answered after minimal research and in a few words or sentences, while big questions required more research and synthesizing of ideas. We then identified several little questions about our own topic, drawn from the “What I Want to Find Out” column of our chart:

• What are baby wolves called?
• What do wolves eat?
• How big do wolves grow?
• How fast can a wolf run?
• Can people kill wolves they see?

Next we asked the students to brainstorm little questions about their own topics and share them in small groups. As part of a subsequent whole-class discussion, the students demonstrated that they understood what we meant by little, or factual, questions.

Although answers to little questions often provide interesting details for a research report, we wanted the students to focus on big questions, and it was there that we next turned our attention. As Keene and Zimmermann (1997) note, higher level thinking skills may be enhanced when children learn how to ask inquiry-based questions. By focusing on big questions, we hoped students would acquire substantive content knowledge and an understanding of the research process that could be transferred to other situations.

First we modeled several big questions about wolves:

• What are reasons for and against increasing the number of wolves in the United States?
• In what ways do wolf packs function like a human family and how do these two structures differ?
• Are wolves depicted accurately in children's literature? Explain.
• What actions have contributed to the fact that wolves are now on the endangered species list?

Through think-alouds we explained that finding answers to these big questions would require significant research. The process began when we modeled how we decided on our own big questions. Students then created what they believed to be big questions for their topics and shared these in small groups. For several days, time was given for peers to give one another feedback and for students to revise their questions in their groups.

For this project, all questions then needed teacher approval. Finally, we asked each student to share her or his big questions with the class -- and to offer a possible answer. This, we hoped, would help the children understand that these questions could not be answered quickly in one sentence. Table 1 offers some samples of initial questions students asked, along with the big questions that evolved from them.

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Creating Data Charts

As models for our fifth graders, we used think-alouds to analyze what we would need to find out in order to answer one of our own big questions, “What are reasons for and against increasing the number of wolves in this country?” We decided that we would need to research the following:

• What is meant by “restoration” of wolves?
• Why do some people oppose restoration efforts?
• Why do other people favor restoration efforts?

These subquestions became headings for our data chart (Clemmons & Laase, 1995), along with a fourth heading for “Interesting Facts.” The chart, shown in Table 2, served to organize the information we gained from our research. We showed students how to note, in abbreviated form, the source of information; these notations appear in parentheses in the chart below. This was a prelude to a more detailed lesson on bibliographies planned for later in the school year.

The children then completed this process for the big questions they had chosen to research. For example, Kevin realized that in order to answer his question -- “How does an African elephant adapt to its environment?” -- he would need to find out about that environment and identify the elephant’s unique features the enable it to live in this habitat. Again, the students used one another as resources in determining their subquestions and creating their corresponding data charts. In addition, students had the example of our wolves data chart, along with copies of the lessons we had done when completing it.

As part of each night’s homework, students were expected to collect data on their topics. To conduct their research, they used classroom reference materials and resources from the school library, town library, and interlibrary loan, and consulted with people who were knowledgeable about their topics (pet store owner, computer engineer, etc.). Although they worked independently on the reports, they received in-class support from the two of us and from a Title I teacher, a learning center assistant, a student teacher, and one another. We modeled every part of the research and reporting process, including how to record the data on the appropriate part of the chart and, as explained below, how to convert data on the charts into paragraphs and to check off boxes once the data had been incorporated into the report.

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Moving from Data Chart to First Draft

When all students (and teachers) had researched their topics sufficiently well to answer their subquestions thoroughly, we were ready to begin the writing process. We suggested that students consider first creating a working title for their reports (later we discuss how these titles were revised), recognizing that doing so gives some writers a sense of security -- they no longer have a blank page -- and focus. Some of our students were not ready to commit even to a temporary title, however, and we respected their preferences.

Next, thinking aloud and working with an overhead projector, we drafted an introductory paragraph for our report on wolves. This paragraph contained our research question and some details from the “Interesting Facts” column of our data chart. Our objective at this point, we explained, was to complete a first, rough draft -- revision would come later.

We then converted the heading of each column on the wolves data chart into the topic sentence for each new paragraph. Items listed under each column became the corresponding paragraph’s supporting details. We demonstrated to the students how we checked off information from our data chart as we wrote our first draft.

The students followed the same process, using their own data charts and notes gathered during the research process. The structure of the data chart made it fairly easy for most students to write cohesive paragraphs that focused on a single topic.

Once the first drafts were completed, we faced our next challenge: how to ensure that the paragraphs in each report were logically connected. In other words, how to make transitions that created coherence.

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Making Transitions

According to Fleckenstein (1992), textual coherence “is as much a reader-based phenomenon as it is a writer-based creation” (p. 81). Fleckenstein explains that the message does not come solely from the text; rather, both the writer and the reader construct the meaning. Each participant in this interchange plays a pivotal role. It is the writer’s responsibility to supply the reader with linguistic cues and to set up logical expectations within the piece. It is the reader’s responsibility to use background knowledge and experience to recognize relationships among ideas and develop a sense of unity.

Ploeger (2000) notes that authors use transition words and phrases to help the reader understand what they are about to do. For example, in a transition, an author may

• signal a sequence (in time, between events, or from one step to the next in a procedure);
• make comparisons;
• show contrasts;
• extend ideas or add examples;
• indicate a dramatic shift in thinking; or
• conclude or summarize.

Students in the upper elementary grades know that writing needs to connect logically, but they often lack strategies to make that happen. In preparation for teaching students strategies for making transitions, the two of us spent quite a bit of time analyzing what published writers do to connect ideas from one paragraph to the next. We chose expository articles from the popular children’s magazines Boys’ Life, Cobblestone, and Sports Illustrated for Kids. We collected samples of transitions from these texts and gave each type of transition a name, sharing these with the class. This gave students a common set of labels and language to use when reflecting on how and why ideas are connected in a broader conceptual framework; further, it enabled us to suggest a specific strategy by name during our revision conferences with the students. As Lane (1993) explains, although writers use different procedures, “a shared language helps writers and readers to gain control” (p. 6). His strategies for narrative writing serve as tools. Once writers have a set of tools, they can decide which one to use in each situation.

We then moved beyond simple introduction of a list of transition words, asking students to think about the underlying relationships that these words signal. The students themselves came up with “bridges” as a word to describe these connections.

Along with the use of signal words or phrases that denote transitions, authors often rely on particular strategies or techniques to connect ideas. For example, in one such strategy, which we called “Repeat a Word,” the author uses a word in the last sentence of one paragraph and again in the first sentence of the next. In one of the magazine articles we shared as a class, “Rough Rider” from the March 2000 issue of Boys' Life, author Tamara Andrews uses this strategy, repeating the word power from one paragraph to the next:

The [Light Armored Vehicle-25] is more than five and a half feet longer, two feet taller, a foot wider, and more than 17,000 pounds heavier than a Humvee. The new vehicle was built to get people to battle quicker and give them more power.

And power this vehicle has: a 25-millimeter chain gun, one machine gun and another free-hand machine gun on top for the commander....

As part of our instruction, we provided students with folders to keep handouts that described the various strategies we taught. In addition, we frequently asked students to read parts of their evolving research reports aloud. Then other students commented and named the strategies that their classmates used. In this way, these skills were used often, and we hoped they would be reinforced so they could be transferred to other writing projects.

Kevin, for example, decided to use Repeat a Word in his report about African elephants, ending his first paragraph with “The water hole is where they meet” and beginning his second with “When they are at the water hole, they suck up the water and spray themselves so they can wash themselves.” Here he used water hole to transition from his lead paragraph into a description of the ways African elephants use their trunks.

Our analysis of how published writers make transitions in nonfiction texts led to identification of three strategies that the fifth graders could use for their transitions, in addition to Repeat a Word. Though the list below, with its links to examples and discussions, is not exhaustive, we hope that it may provide ideas for readers who might wish to engage in a similar type of activity with their own students.

• Ask a Question
• Provide Summary and Contrast Sentences
• Move from Whole to Pieces

Here, as with our introduction of any new skill to the class, we focused on only one or two strategies at a time to ensure that students would feel comfortable using them and to avoid their feeling overwhelmed. Often we encouraged them to try out several different strategies. As students worked to revise their writing, they always had descriptions of the strategy in front of them.

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Writing Leads

A strong lead is an important component of any good piece of writing. But how do we explain to young writers what is meant by a “strong lead”? How do we make this abstract concept more concrete and real? Our goal was to provide children with strategies they could use to move beyond the ubiquitous “I am going to tell you about...” and “My report is about...” that characterize research papers by this age group.

We decided to use the same approach with leads as we had used with transitions. We culled examples of different leads from published nonfiction articles, analyzed the strategies the authors had used to invite readers into their pieces, gave each strategy a name, and discussed these strategies with the students. For example, in one of the strategies, “Imagine,” the author “hooks” the reader by drawing him or her directly into a scene in which another time, place, or situation is evoked. We shared a use of this strategy from “Sodbusters,” published in the August 1999 issue of Kids Discover:

The pioneers who crossed the Appalachian Mountains depended on trees and forests for food and shelter. Imagine starting over in a place with almost no trees. Add to that, blizzards in the winter and swarms of grasshoppers in the summer. For some pioneers, the hardest part of life was getting to their new home. But for the settlers of the Great Plains, known as sodbusters, getting there was easy compared to what came next.