Turning Research Inside Out

Research has turned upside down in my room this year! It was time to turn research on it's side and try something new.  For the past year, honestly, I have been thinking about how to change it so that it involved higher level thinking, allowed students better choices (not just their favorite baseball player or roller coaster) and most important integrate more reading into their project.

The picture above is the perfect introduction to this year's research project.  I gave my students choice to either write a business letter, take a "field trip" or an interview of a professional in their area. Three boys took their field trip to the zoo after school this past Thursday.   The four areas of research are listed below:

As you can see, I used the Ohio newly released Science standards and allowed students to choose their area and then they had to choose 3 indicators to focus their research on for 2 weeks.  Finally if they chose A, B, or C their final project is to present their research in a poetry book (poems they would write) or write a literary non-fiction story.  Six students chose "Thinking as a Scientist" and they are following our science book for procedures (#1-#5) and their final project will be 3 fold board and their lab report explaining their experiment. We are right in the middle of the project, and I will be grading their research this weekend. That was also important to me breaking the project into smaller parts, so I could check in with them more often.  Check back in two weeks to see their final projects. Turning research up side down is exciting for my students, but I think even more exciting for me.

See their note cards-ready to research at the zoo.