Pocket Research
Organizing Information for Report Writing (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 2: Consolidation / FluencyStage 3: Literacy for Growth
Ages:
7-10
Grade Range:
2nd 3rd 4thFood Groups:
Primary:
Writing Processes & Strategies
Transcript
Have you ever tried to teach research to grade two students? It can be a very difficult task. One of the ways we looked at it was to come up with a new strategy, and the strategy is called pocket research. This is the pocket, simple envelope from the back of a library book, and here are the cards that go in them.
The first thing the students do is decide upon a topic, and they're going to get the resources from many different areas. They might choose the Internet, they might use books from the library, but when they're doing their research, the first thing to do is to teach them how to do point form notes.
This part wasn't as bad as I thought. We modeled it in on chart paper first and then they went off with their books to look about the kinds of things they needed or their subtopics. Once they've collected all of their point form notes and put them into the pocket, the next thing to do is to write their first draft.
The first draft is a group of sentences or a paragraph about a specific topic. This is the part where we have a lot of fun because the students come and join the teacher and we conference about what they've written. We discuss it, we edit it, we decide what's missing, and what needs to be added.
The next step is to take all of this information and come up with the final product that we can share with our classroom.
Activity Objective
The goal of Pocket Research: Organizing Information for Report Writing (Virtual Tour) is to help students understand the various stages of the research process and provide students with an effective tool to help them organize information during the early stages of research.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- Guide students to select age-appropriate, non-fiction books from the library.
- Supervise the use of the Internet to gather information for research topics.
- Pre-teach the concept of writing point form notes, and categorizing information using sub-topics.
- Adjust the number of library pocket envelopes to match the number of sub-topics.
- Pocket research is a great approach to learning about the early stages of research and can be used in any subject area.
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