Unit 3

Survivors!

Lesson 9

Assignment

Researchers at Work!

In this lesson, you will read pages 142 to 143 of Literacy in Action 4A.


These pages in Literacy in Action are about research. They describe parts of the process of research, and creating a way to share research.

You will be doing some research as the assignment for this lesson.

Research


The purpose of researching any topic is to find and document factual information about the topic.

If we could just press the search button to find out whatever we want to know, it would be very easy, but research doesn’t work that way.
We research information accurately by closely following the research process steps.

NOTE: Not everything you read on the internet is true. Be careful to complete the research process.

Before beginning this reading selection, become familiar with the steps in the research process as outlined in the Steps of Research tab below.
Take notes of the steps and save them to your documents file.  You will be referring to them often.




We do research in steps, and all the steps are important.


You start at Step 1 of course, but may find yourself going back to other steps occasionally to add something or make changes.

This lesson will guide you through the steps of researching a habitat. You may choose one of the habitats you have already read about, or you might be interested in researching a different habitat.

Let's review the steps


  1. Plan – You can do much of the early planning by using reading strategies. Asking questions and thinking about what you already know is a good start.
  2. Search – You can search for information in a lot of places (books, magazines, news, TV, video, Internet, other people, etc.).
  3. Write – You must write down the information you find. Then, you will organize it using your writing traits of summarizing and Ideas and Details.
  4. Check – We always stop and check at this point to be sure we aren't missing anything. Have you answered the questions you asked? You may find that you think of other questions as you are doing your research. If you did, have you answered those questions? Is what you have written down fact or opinion?
  5. Share – There are many ways to share what you know - written report, chart, slide show, graph, web, etc. Sometimes you decide what format you want to use, and other times your teacher will tell you what is expected.
Now go to the next page to get started!