The fact that I’ll be spending a month of my student teaching experience teaching the old-school research paper loomed large in my mind as I read chapter five in the Dornan text. I must admit that I am conflicted—I appreciate the idea of the whole “write to learn” and “discovering meaning in experiences” idea, but I struggle because I have such little wiggle room in terms of how I must teach the paper. Notecards and all, I am forced to teach the research paper exactly the same way as I learned it in middle school, over a decade ago, ignoring the extent to which technology has changed the way students write.
On that note, I really appreciated that Dornan addressed the whole notecard issue. The text explains, “Given the Internet and the ease of downloading material, teachers may have to rethink the role of taking notes on index cards…Many students are finding it easier to highlight and label printouts and photocopied material. They become impatient copying material by hand…We would find alternatives to the note cards because they appear to be busy work for students” (Dornan 128). I understand that notecards help student organize large amounts of material and helps them be selective about what material they choose to quote, but they are certainly outdated. If someone asked me to write a research paper using notecards, I would have a negative attitude about it too, so I guess I’ll understand where my students are coming from when I face this issue in April. When I get my own classroom, though, the notecards are going out the window if I have a say in the matter.
With these issues in mind, however, I did find a few parts of the chapter particularly useful. Pages 129-132 walked readers through helpful tips for writing openings, bodies, and conclusions of papers. Though some of it was rather intuitive, such as “The goal of the paper’s introduction should be to capture reader interest,” I found some suggestions that I will definitely pass along to my students in a couple of months (Dornan 129). Since getting off to a strong start with a strong introduction is so important to the motivation levels of students throughout the research paper process (my experience is that many of them lose interest if they think they are not “good at it” right away), the seven bulleted ideas for how to “hook” the reader immediately, found on page 129, will be a great addition to my lesson plan. The tips for helping students find topics are equally relevant. I remember being shocked when my cooperating teacher said, “You’ll be amazed at how long it takes them to write this paper. Sometimes it takes them a week just to cement a topic idea in their minds.” Now I don’t know the exact schedule or calendar for how my student teaching is going to proceed yet, but I know for sure that I won’t be having these kids spend a week choosing a topic. I hope that the ideas in the Dornan text help speed up the process a bit…
Along the lines of the research paper I’ll be teaching, I must admit that I’m pretty disappointed that I cannot incorporate the whole multigenre approach. I love the Romano text (and multigenre papers were the subject of parts of the Dornan text for this week and some of our WebCT reading), and I almost wish that I hadn’t found out about multigenre papers until after I had my whole research paper unit planned out, because now I’ll be thinking, “Man, these would be so much more engaging for students and enjoyable for me to grade if they were multigenre.” Alas, however, that is not the case, so I’ll just have to wait until I have my own classroom. After all, I do still think that the students need to write the classic research paper at least once in their K-12 lives, so I understand that I have an important role in facilitating that process.
Finally, I was really glad to see that Dornan included a section on plagiarism. I had never really thought much about this topic in relation to teaching high schoolers, because I had to get out of the mindset that it is common sense not to plagiarize and to know what is considered plagiarism and what isn’t. I must remember that 10th graders might not know these boundaries, and even if they think they do, it is worth refreshing. I love that the authors give ideas for how to sidestep the plagiarism issue altogether (multigenre papers, anyone?), and they also stress the importance of being proactive as a teacher. The best way to deal with plagiarism is to prevent it in the first place. Until now I had not even given this topic a second thought in regard to my research paper unit I’ll be teaching, but now I see that I will have to give plagiarism some explicit attention early on in the process.
Well, my original plan was to discuss Romano’s top-notch multigenre paper book (after finishing Romano’s book I am so excited to teach the multigenre paper eventually), but I had some strong reactions to the whole research paper thing. The reason? I’ve been stressing about it hard core ever since I found out I’d be teaching it. If you guys have any tips or ideas about how to make the research paper interesting for students, talk to me or listserve them, because I think some other people are teaching the dreaded research paper as well.
Resource Link Time:
http://www.teachersnetwork.org/dcs/cyberenglish/researchlp.htm
Figuring out how to create a daily schedule for a huge project such as the research paper is a daunting task, and this website gives an example calendar and brief daily lesson plans for how to teach the classic research paper (notecards and all) over about a four week period. I am finding it pretty helpful.
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Great post! I can certainly identify with the tug-of-war between what you believe will work and what the standards believe is important. As for writing the research paper, I would imagine the most important thing for students would be that they pick topics they are actually interested in. In order to achieve this, I can actually see some of Romano's prewriting activities being some use. To inject a bit of energy into the process for some of the students, perhaps you could offer extra credit for providing a distilled version of their paper for a newspaper column or opinion page entry.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Awesome post O., you point out a few really interesting things that I'd like to comment on, as well as ask you a couple of questions and suggestions that I hope help you with your task.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you say that you have little "wiggle room" in the way you are expected to teach your research paper. Other than perhaps being expected to stick to the traditional "method" (using note cards and all of that wonderful stuff), I'm a little bit confused by what you mean by this. It might help you to identify (whether that translates into a list, paragraph reflection, or whatever), exactly what constraints that you feel that you have with teaching the research paper. Other than perhaps helping you as a planning device, I feel as though I'm sensing another more implicit question within your post: "Why is my cooperating teacher relying on these methods?" I feel that you could take these identified constraints to him/her and articulate your feelings about them. At worst, you will hopefully get a rationale as to why exactly they think it is important for you to teach things this way, and at best, you might be able to show them that you have a "better" method more informed by research and thus more engaging, fun, and enjoyable to teach for you. Either way, even if you are stuck teaching things the traditional way, perhaps having a concrete rational of why you are expected to do this will help you out, at least giving you some piece of mind. Overall, if you haven't already, I feel as though it would be healthy for you to share the concerns you mention with your cooperating teacher.
Second, you mention that you wish to "speed up" the research process as your cooperating teacher said that it can sometimes take kids a week just to pick a topic. Although I would agree with you, perhaps your cooperating teacher has a sound rational for this as well. After all, as discussed in the Atwell piece (I think it was Atwell), the 3 things she says writers need are time, ownership, and response. Although I would agree with you that an entire week just to pick out a topic is a long time, perhaps it actually isn't too much. What could some of the benefits be for taking an entire week to isolate a desired topic that is of actual interest, as well as researchable, to the student? What else could you accomplish in this week? How could you differentiate if some students pick topics right away, and some still need time? Could others start research?
Third, you mention how HS students literally don't know that they're plagiarizing something. I can't begin to tell you how many higher education students, from undergraduates to Phd students, catch some heat for accidentally plagiarizing. Typically, I see that this has both cultural origins, as well as not knowing proper citations. For example, some individuals come from cultures where all knowledge is considered "public," and therefore the need to give credit to the individual doesn't exist. More frequently, however, not understanding, or even knowing, proper citation styles gets students in trouble. This is a huge topic I could go on and on about.
I suppose that'll do O. Keep up the good work, and you're gonna rock the socks off of this research paper.
-Rick
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kDoyvibiZag/RaDy-j7pT8I/AAAAAAAAAN4/NCcuNFy4X-o/s320/Plagiarism.jpg
ReplyDeleteI tried to be all cool and embed this image in my comment, but I don't think that blogger has that capability. Anyways, a funny cartoon illustrating the whole cultural piece to the issue of plagiarism. Yeah I'm a nerd.
-Rick