Research Papers

Well, the assignment that your kids are probably going to ask you about right now is the Research paper.  We're working on that right now, and your kids will be working on this paper in groups for the next few weeks.  I'm using today's post to give you tips and tricks to help your child write a successful Research paper.

First off, what is a Research paper?

---The Research paper is a paper where the writer needs to research, or look up, information on a given topic.  They need to use a variety of sources to find facts; these facts will be used by the writer to inform their audience about the topic, the viewpoints, and the possible solutions.  The key here is, there is not a final answer that determines if their paper is right or wrong.  They are basing their solutions off of the facts and data that they retrieve.---


This is unlike any reports that they've written in the past.  The following site gives nice visualization as to the effort or work that the students need to put into this paper:

http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html

So, yes, there some work to be done.  So what can you do?

• Talk to your child-Try to get daily updates about their paper.  Ask specific questions-this forces them to really remember the facts that they're researching.  It also keeps them on pace.

• Make sure they have notes-Use the following list to see where notes can be obtained from:

Secondary Sources

Books

Magazine Articles

Newspaper Articles

Website Articles

Encyclopedia

Primary Sources

Interviews

Original Documents

Speeches

Letters

Diaries

It's good to try and pull out facts from both types of sources.  The Primary Sources are your most direct form of information.  The Secondary Sources are more frequent.


After all of the notes, it's time for writing.  This is where we're going to work and teach about plagarism.  Today, it's too easy to just copy and paste pieces of information into our writing.  It's also illegal.  The key here is, we can use all the information that we want; however, we need to give the credit where it's due.  This is something that our kids struggle with a lot; if possible, read what your kids write.  You'll know if your child wrote it, or if someone else did.

Well, I'd love to talk more about this, but it's probably best to add more later on.  Let's focus on this for now, and we'll update in a few weeks.

As always, leave any questions, comments, or concerns below.