Getting Your Research Organized

It is always interesting teaching research skills.  It is something both Ms. Kehe and myself love about our jobs as school librarians. Right now things are in an upswing for research at ISB.  Students in Grades 6, 11, and 12 are all receiving instruction in research.  Research instruction always begins with a process.  At ISB, not only do we have a process, but we also have standards.  Inside these standards are individual skill sets that we directly instruct students to attain. Another amazing thing about teaching research is that we can break it down into smaller chunks and we can give students many opportunities to attain these skills.  The last thing is that we can also use the same process, just different language for all ages of students.  

In our recent work, we have been focusing on the skills of Collecting and Organizing our research. This is part of the second step in the process called ‘Exploration’.  In this step, students are asked to go ‘exploring’ their topics.  ES students might ask questions.  For MS students they might conduct some focused Google Searches, and begin using the databases. For HS students this means all of that plus looking at Academic and Peer Reviewed Journals for information.  

However, that is only half the step in the process.  The other half is collecting this information in a meaningful and usable manner.  As we go up the age level we get less and less specific about what tool they should use to collect this information.  That being said, the MS and HS students are all receiving a link to create their notes in something we call the ‘ISB eNotes’.  We developed this note-taking system last year.  The idea was to create a single place where students could collect evidence and source information as well as the notes, quotes, graphs, and charts that they will need to create their projects or papers.  

 

GET YOUR OWN COPY OF THE ISB eNOTES HERE

As you can see from the first slide, the links to the Library Website, Databases, Citation Tool, and Research Guides are all there for easy access.  Then each subsequent slide is meant for a single piece of evidence, and the students can create as many as they need. Their Topic, Source Citation, and Source Evaluation are all on the top line and critical elements.  The second set of boxes is for collecting Direct Quotes, Paraphrases, Graphs, and Charts.  

While there are lots of ways to take notes and collect research sources when researching we think this is a pretty good tool for students to learn and also take with them when they go off to college.  Take a look and try it out for yourself.  The link will force you to create a copy for yourself.  Use it the next time you need to research or buy something that needs some researching and let us know what you think. 

Happy Researching!

The Main Library Staff