Doing Research

In Searching is a Thinking Skill from Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrne states,

“Researching is a thinking skill. It requires that the student first state what it is he or she is trying to determine. Without a clear purpose for the research, students will simply click around the web hoping to find “something useful.””

I have a friend who is a genius at researching! I love that she can think outside the box and give me advice on what to look for. She got her library science degree so I guess she learned a lot about researching from that.

But I don’t want my students to have to wait until after they get out of school in order to learn how to research a topic. I want them to learn how to do it while I can help them now.

I think a great activity would be to have students brainstorm keywords for different topics. Students can go in any direction and there are no wrong answers. I would start a word map with the topic in a circle in the middle of the board. Then each keyword would come off of that topic. There may be keywords that come off of the first keyword.

When students are given the freedom to go off on a tangent, it might actually help them look at the bigger picture. The more they practice this, the easier it will be for them. Eventually, they won’t need a group to help them do this kind of activity and can do it on their own.

The more research that students can do, the more successful they will be at finding information about their chosen topic.

How do you encourage students to learn how to do research? Please share.

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