Juli Kendall's Weekly
Reading/Writing Workshop Journal
A MiddleWeb Listserv Project
Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested teachers
are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop and other ideas about
supporting young adolescent writers and readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing
teacher/coach in Long Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion.
Juli also posts a weekly journal entry from her reading/writing classroom.
This year, Juli will focus on her efforts to integrate subject matter into
her reading and writing workshop approach. In her first
journal of the year, she explains the rationale behind this move and
some of her thinking about how she hopes to accomplish this goal.
Find out more about our project at our Reading/Writing
Workshop homepage. You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues are embedded
in these journals. Most often, when you click on them, a PDF file will begin
to download. You'll find a list of the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's Journals,
find out how here.
2003-04 Reading/Writing
Workshop Journal
Week #27
Research and Plagiarism
In a perfect world, kids would know how to pick their own topics, do research,
take notes, write an expository piece about their topic, and give an informative
presentation to a group. But it just doesn't seem to always work out that
way.
One teacher expressed frustration this way: "I am just about to wind
up our research paper with the GT class. They absolutely HATED it, and now
they HATE me for making them do such horrible work."
Yikes! It seems research can be troublesome for everyone involved. So what
is it that makes it so hard to teach kids how to do research?
--The Directions
Problems I have teaching research skills to kids always seem to revolve
around "the directions." Questions like "What do I do now?
" and "What's next?" always indicate to me that I haven't
spent enough time at the beginning to scaffold the research process. Several
years ago, I had a teaching colleague who would frequently say, "I
can't teach that. The directions will take too long."
If the kids don't clearly understand what to do and how to do it, there
will be confusion, disorganization, and the opportunity for chaos to
reign supreme. As a teacher, you have to spend enough time explaining
research so that they understand it. I find that if I model what I want
the kids to do by doing it with them first myself, they always seem to have
a better understanding of the task. That's what I did in Journal
#26, "New Unit: Independent Nonfiction Inquiry Projects."
--Time
Another issue about kids and research is time. Every time I try to speed
things up and cut corners, it turns out to be a mistake. For example, in
Nonfiction Matters, Stephanie Harvey suggests 10 weeks for a research
project. 10 weeks! Other years, I've tried to do it in less time, and I've
discovered that's what it takes to teach kids how to do research and then
conduct a successful research project. If you allow less time, your results
just won't be as good.
To economize on time and beat the "but look at all I have to cover
this year" mentality, try integrating content with another subject.
This year everything I'm teaching in literacy is integrated with science
content. Because of the time constraints, this integration of content makes
it possible to get more "coverage."
--Topics
There's always the issue of whether the teacher assigns the research
topic or the students come up with their own topics. What works best for
me is to give kids an umbrella topic, one that matches the standards and
is big enough for kids to generate their own questions. A big part of differentiating
instruction is giving kids choice. This system allows us to use the standards
as a part of our research projects and still give the kids a choice about
what they research.
--The Materials
Getting kids organized to gather their research materials is a big job.
Often the questions that they choose to research need to be revised as they
work to find resources. This happens when they run into a dead end while
searching for material. Time spent with a small group revising questions
before starting research simplifies the process. We've found that asking,
"Where can you look to find that information?" prompts them to
think about what resources might be available before they start looking.
--Taking Notes
Notes can provide a great resource for writing, but they can also be
problematic. It seems as though how kids take notes really makes a difference
in their success with research. There are a number of different ways to
teach kids about note taking -- no matter which way you choose, it has to
be carefully taught. Kids also need lots of guided practice in determining
importance in their reading to decide what makes good notes and what doesn't.
What I've found that helps is to think aloud about note taking as I model
for the kids how I take notes.
--The Writing
The importance of models for writing cannot be underrated. Ellen Berg,
a member of the MiddleWeb Reading/Writing listserv, had this to say about
getting kids to write after doing research.
In terms of, "I don't know what to say," this is where
mini-lessons to teach expository writing come in. Read LOTS of models of
writing. We exhausted Time for Kids and Discovery Kids online
as we looked at how people communicated and documented their findings. Once
I added that piece in, the complaints all but disappeared and their writing
improved.
--Copying (Plagiarism)
Copying from research material presents a particularly difficult dilemma.
I like the "peer pressure" approach. By including criteria for
evaluating plagiarism as part of the evaluation rubric, kids know up front
that, for everyone who reads the piece, one important aspect will be whether
or not writing was copied. When kids give each other feedback about copying,
they tend to be honest and not gullible. Getting kids involved in the process
of identifying plagiarism also teaches them a skill that will serve them
well as they move through middle school and high school and into college.
I found criteria for "Citing Sources" in a rubric developed for
a series of lessons for a PBS series, "A Source More Powerful, A Century
of Nonviolent Conflict."
The lesson
http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/classroom/
The rubric
http://www.pbs.org/weta/forcemorepowerful/classroom/lesson1/scoring_writing.html
Here's what the rubric says about citing sources:
Citing Sources Criteria
Score of 6
--The writing demonstrates exceptionally strong commitment to the quality
and significance of research and the accuracy of the written document.
--Documentation is used to avoid plagiarism.
Score of 5
--The writing demonstrates a strong commitment to the quality and significance
of research and the accuracy of the written document.
--Documentation is used to avoid plagiarism.
--Errors are so few and so minor that the reader can easily skim right over.
Score of 4
--The writing demonstrates a commitment to the quality and the significance
of research and the accuracy of the written document.
--Documentation is used to avoid plagiarism.
--Minor errors do not blatantly violate the rules of documentation.
Score of 3
--The writing demonstrates a limited commitment to the quality and significance
of research and the accuracy of the written document.
--Documentation is sometimes used to avoid plagiarism.
--Errors begin to violate the rules of documentation.
Score of 2
--The writing demonstrates little commitment to the quality and significance
of research and the accuracy of the written document.
--Frequent errors in documentation result in some plagiarism and often do
not enable the reader to check the source.
Score of 1
--The writing demonstrates disregard for the conventions of research writing.
--Lack of proper documentation results in plagiarism and does not enable
the reader to check the source.
*To
see the 6 Traits Rubric for Citing Sources, go to page 7 of the Oregon Department
of Education, "Official Scoring Guide, Writing 2003-2004."
(large page with lots of graphics)
--Seeing ourselves as "inquirers"
As we move through the second week of our unit of study about independent
Nonfiction Inquiry Projects, the "Timeline" from Nonfiction
Matters, p. 194-195, continues to guide us.
Week 2-"Teacher builds background knowledge by reading
out loud and conducting focus lessons on determining text importance, highlighting,
and using general reading strategies. Students immerse themselves in possible
topics, reading anything of interest and narrowing their choice."
Slowly but surely, I am coming to the realization that the way to help kids
do inquiry is for me, the teacher, to see myself as an inquirer. I'm learning
to model what it means to ask questions, develop conjectures and hypotheses,
revise and expand my thinking, and, ultimately, come to new understandings.
Teachers as inquirers-I like that!
SEE Juli's Curriculum Map for Research
Projects - Unit 5
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Read last week's journal
Read Juli's backgrounder about her work
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