Ms. Q: Research

The mini research project sounds interesting. I like the idea of incorporating the minority angle, but it doesn't really tie into Gatsby, but your overriding focus does--what choices did a person have at the time and why would s/he make the choices s/he did.

You mention, as a goal, having students synthesize the infromation into a written and visual product--how do you teach this? In small chunks? Give it to them all at once? Build slowly on all skills as the year progresses?

Looking at my planning for next year, I am trying to teach research skills across the year and culminate in a large scale project for the end of the year. So, for instance, as we cover primary source material throughout the year--I plan on having the students work on research skills slowly:

1. Summarizing--focus on finding the gist of the info being presented and incorporating this into their writing
2. Note Taking
3. Citing Sources--each time we use a source, we will practice citation writing
4. In Text Citing of sources

I am hoping the more of this we use over the course of a year, the better it will be when it comes to the end of the year.