perspectives in Education and Deafness

Conducting Research

When the End is the Means

Research Reading and Writing

Project-related writing demonstrates comprehension of nonfiction books. Students work as in individuals or in groups. They may use K-W-L (Know-Want-to-Know-Learn) process to identify concepts that need to be investigated, and report using the writing process.

	ABOVE: Research projects can be accomplished by students of all ages and ability levels.

Proudly Jeffrey showed me his notes. With a checkered history of moving and school placements, Jeffrey had arrived in our high school classroom with limited reading skills. Nevertheless, like the other students, he was required to do formal papers. He had written his notes in preparation.

"A beautiful job!" I told him.

He truly deserved the praise. Each note was carefully written on index cards, color-coded in a system of his own invention, to reflect the source from which he had attained his information. In conformance to the requirements, Jeffrey had used several different references and only one encyclopedia. The information he had culled from the Web was clearly marked as such.

When the paper came together it was wonderful, an interesting and pleasurable experience for the reader and a real breakthrough for the young writer.

Still I could see a potential problem. Often when students like Jeffrey begin to write, they write down all of their information from one source and then start over again from the beginning with the facts from their next source, even if it means repeating information that they found in successive sources. It is not so much that synthesis is difficult; they simply don't understand that they are expected to do it.

I suggested to Jeffrey that before he write, he organize his note cards.

ABOVE: Students can reserach alone or in teams.

"Put them together by category," I told him. As he was doing a biography of a sports figure, the categories arranged themselves in a natural chronological order. This meant putting into separate piles information about the athlete's birth, information about his family, information about his initial involvement with sports, and information about the individual's break into fame.

Jeffrey placed himself on the floor and began to do exactly that, the colors of his notes mixing cheerfully as he changed his reference-based order to a thematic-based one.

When the paper came together it was wonderful, an interesting and pleasurable experience for the reader and a real breakthrough for the young writer.

Too often we ignore students such as Jeffrey. We regard the research project as the result of an education in reading and writing. Instead we should regard it as part of reading and writing development, an important early stepping stone to literacy. If a teacher meets this challenge by resorting to worksheets—where students just fill in blanks in teachers' generated materials—we are doing children a disservice. Research is not just a product, it is also a tool. As such, it can be used at the very beginning of literacy development, with very young children and beginning readers of all ages, and repeated often as students attain deeper levels of understanding and skill.

For Beginners
Research Means Projects

Research is not only for the best readers and writers, or only for older students, and it does not have to lead to formal papers (Harvey, 1998; Duthie, 1996). There are a variety of non-traditional presentations that equally probe students' use of references and analytical skills.

ABOVE: Students use the Internet as they used to use encyclopedias and they need to know how to evaluate the information they find there.

In the classroom of a colleague, a first grader excitedly told his class about his new pet miniature dachshund. Not knowing the breed of the dog, he described it as best as he could. Building on the curiosity of the class, the teacher guided the students to books in search of dachshund pictures. Not only did the children discover the breed of the new pet, they also found names and pictures of many other kinds of dogs as well. They took their information and made a poster showing different dogs, complete with their breed names. The teacher reported that as a result of this research project, children began to identify dog types in read-aloud books and as they read alone to themselves. A few children even used specific breed names in their original stories, which they dictated to their teacher.

K-W-L Approach for a Variety of Projects

One way we approach research topics is through the K-W-L ("Know-Want to Know-Learn") system. In the first meeting, students list what they know and what they want to learn about a given topic. Their final project becomes what they have learned.

This year, as we moved into approaching learning through thematic units, our students have produced a wide variety of projects. When we studied the American Civil War, our students produced soap for chemistry class, followed Civil War recipes to cook up long forgotten dishes in social studies, and made Civil War newspapers.

The newspapers were important because their production required that students of all skill levels work together, research information for articles, and develop and express a point of view—either that of the North or the South. Some students did editorials and others did editorial cartoons. One student, reflecting the criticisms of the Northern general George McClellan who raised a huge army and then seemed slow to use it, drew a caricature of McClellan's head and placed it on the body of a turtle. Another student did a comparison of the famous ships Monitor and Merrimac. Still another student made a graph of the casualties, working in math class to produce sophisticated results.

ABOVE: Newspapers crafted by student editors required researching information about civil war battles, politics, and opinions. evaluate the information they find there.

We started our year with all students contributing to a timeline that spanned the years from 1850 to 2000. This poster, three feet in height, encircled the entire classroom. Before they began work, students evaluated the timeline from the year before, deciding which features they wanted to preserve and which they preferred to change. Then they crafted their own. This time they emphasized the history of deaf people and growth in technology. They also added more color and decided on a standard size and style for the text so that it would appear more welcoming to readers.

The ripple effects or side benefits of doing projects are as important as the final projects. Students learn to question, analyze, categorize, and synthesize information. They learn new and different places to find information. They learn about time management and meeting deadlines. These are skills that will last them a lifetime. Furthermore, conducting research builds self-confidence. Whether they end up with 15 pages or one, whether a poster, collage, model, story quilt, or diorama in a shoebox, it is their project—and their victory.