Session 4: What do you want to know?

We came up with lots of ways we could get ourselves and students to ponder what they want to find out about a topic. These include listing, fulfilling each of the question word prompts (who, what, where, when, how, why...), drawing a scene, schematic or map. Another idea was to make a web that contained a question in the center of each and then resources coming off of it. The resources could then be linked sometimes (for example, you might interview the same person for 3 of your questions, but not use the same piece of literature). Let us know what questions you came up with and what process you used to gather them.

Here is Rob's

Here is Ellen's

Session 4: What do you know?

After generally deciding on what topics we wanted to pursue, we thought we should narrow down our questions and figure out some resources for researching. However, it seemed important to perhaps first think, write, draw, etc. about what we already know, allowing us to get deeper and better questions to follow. We agreed this would be important for students as well. We also thought you could do a sorting activity after students brainstormed what they already knew. This would involve them/us putting our "what we know" into categories of something like "for sure" and "assumptions." It is often true that what we think we know is not always accurate or fully realized and it would be valuable for people to be aware of this. Let's hear what you already know about your topics!

Session 3: Objectivity and Subjectivity

We have 2 issues to write about in this session.
The first is what did you think of chapter 13 “objectivity and subjectivity” from Ken Macrorie’s book The I Search Paper?

A Topic Choosing You

The second is to begin to collect some writing around subjects that are interesting enough for us to potentially pursue as writers to a finished piece. We are in the collecting stage of the process where students brainstorm/draft/collect some writing in the form of lists, webs, prose, etc. so that they may have some material from which to make their decision. Some call it the prewriting stage, though you are indeed writing. So do some writing around at least 3 of your possible research items and chose one to post on the blog in the comment box.

Session 2: Reading Like Writers

In this session, we checked out some samples of research writing.  I brought in some I Search papers.  This is a different kind of research writing, where the researcher puts themselves and their process in the writing.  See links for session 2 to read about the style and some samples of your own.  In my opinion, it is a far more authentic way of investigating a subject, although it can be jarring in comparison to the research papers we may be used to.  Some points in the discussion against this kind of writing were "Is it actually a research paper?" and "It doesn't sound like nonfiction."  Other folks supported the style stating that "It is a way to get students away from just copying or paraphrasing."  Take a look at the pieces and let me know what you think.

Session 1: Research Writing

At the start of the year, some teachers at KF got together to study writing.  We began by looking at the writing process in its fullness.  Check out the link at the right to see some basics on the parts of the process.   Upon discussing the various stages that pieces of writing go through to get to publishing and sharing or celebrating, we talked about some of the genres of writing that we know and/or work with.  These included poetry, news articles, realistic fiction, historic fiction, fairy tales, recipes and research writing.  The group decided to focus on researching research writing through the year.  We wrapped up the sessions by cracking open brand new writer's notebooks and taking a few minutes to just write steadily as we might ask our students to do in order to flex their writing muscles and gain stamina.  Homework included reading a chapter from Katie Wood Ray's book Wondrous Words.  Check out the link from ncte to learn more about this book.  The chapter discusses Reading like a Writer, the first step in getting to know a genre.  The other part of homework was for teachers to find examples of research writing to share with their group next session.