Lerning Tip

LearningTip

Children With Inquiring Minds
Need Report Writing Strategies

By Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D.
Middle School Instructional Specialist, President of KidBibs

Snakes are reptiles without eyelids or legs.  But it is important to remember that there are legless lizards as well.  There are many species of snake, and they live in most parts of the world, except in the polar regions.  The greatest number live in the tropics.  There are not snakes native to Hawaii, Ireland, or New Zealand.

How does that sound?  Pretty good.  Right?  Britannica thought so.  It's the first paragraph under the "Snake" heading of the Children's Britannica encyclopaedia.  But it shouldn't be the first paragraph of a child's report on snakes.  Unfortunately, when children don't know how to write a report, they often use someone else's "report." 

Teachers and parents can help children learn how to conduct research and write reports that yield real learning. This process takes considerably more time, but the benefits are enormous.  The child:

• learns the information that she is including in the report
• develops strategies for conducting research, recording information, and organizing the presentation/writing of this information

• develops strategies for using various types of references
• reads and writes in meaningful ways

• learns about the writing process
• develops strategies that lead to independent learning
• learns about his/her learning processes
• takes more pride in his/her work; it's theirs, not a book publisher's

Certainly there are many ways that students can report the findings of their inquiry.  They can write a traditional report of the information; alternatives to report writing include presenting to the class, making a videotape, communicating the information via a web page, etc.  Audiences for the information might include the students' classmates, other students in the child's grade, younger students, other students in other schools (via videotape of World Wide Web), etc.   No matter which presentation strategy is used, effective inquiry is essential to the construction of a meaningful experience for the student.

As mentioned previously, effective inquiry supports the learning of content and the learning of inquiry-centered processes which will support the child throughout his/her lifetime.  This instruction can be implemented with an individual student in a homeschooling or homework situation, or implemented with an entire class.   Depending on the amount of experience that the child has had conducting and reporting research, different types of support must be provided.  

The Ultimate Process Which Inquiring Students Should Engage In

Teaching Students How to Conduct Research and Write Reports

The Ultimate Process Which Inquiring Students Should Engage In

1. The child chooses his/her topic.  It is clear that students commit to their topics more and work harder if they choose the topic. 
2. The child writes down everything that s/he thinks she knows about the topic on separate index cards.
3. The child generates questions that s/he would like to have answered in relation to the topic.  For children who experience difficulty generating questions, the child should be reminded of question words such as who, when, what, how, why, etc. Each question should be written on the top of a separate index card or slip of paper.
4. The child brainstorms possible references which could be used to answer his/her questions.  Does she need to interview an expert?  Would the answers be in the encyclopedia?  Would other references such as atlases, almanacs, etc. provide answers to his/her questions?  To what extent would tradebooks support his/her answering of the questions?  Does s/he require more recent information which can only be obtained from magazines, newspapers, or the internet?  Etc.
5. The child gathers pertinent materials that can be used to answer his/her questions.    S/he begins reading the resources to locate answers to his/her questions.  When s/he finds an answer to a question, s/he records the answer on the index card which contains the question.  When s/he reads information which confirms what s/he already knew, s/he puts a check by it on the index card.  The child keeps reading to find the answers to his/her questions.  S/he records only the words which answer the question on the index card.
6. When a child is expected to cite references, she can write all of his/her references on a single sheet of paper; each reference is numbered.  Then when s/he puts information from a reference on an index card, s/he can simply record the number of the reference on the card.   This keeps him/her from writing the name of the reference on each card.  This list of references can be used for preparing the reference list of the final report.
7. After the child has found answers to his/her questions and recorded the answers on cards, s/he puts him/her index cards in categories/piles.  This involves putting cards together that relate to a single topic or subtopic.  Categories/piles related to snakes might include "the snake's body," "types of snakes," "the snake's habitat," etc.  These piles often resemble the categories of a semantic map.
8. The child develops a semantic map to reflect the categories/piles.  This semantic map includes the main topic in the center, subtopics in "bubbles" which surround the main topic (the category reflected by each pile), and details which spread out from the "bubbles" (that are included in the answers on the index cards).  In this way, the semantic map builds the information from the index cards into a plan for drafting a report.   Semantic maps will be explained in a LearningTips article in the near future.
9. Using the semantic map to guide his/her writing, the child drafts a paragraph describing each "bubble" on his/her semantic map.  A topic sentence provides a general statement about the information to be included in the paragraph.  The details which support the topic sentence follow.  At this time, the student is considering how s/he will be reporting the information which s/he has learned (i.e., formal report, videotape, web site, presentation to class, etc.).  The implementation of the next few steps may differ depending on which of these reporting strategies will be employed.
10. The student drafts an introductory paragraph and conclusion to his/her report.   
11. The student reads and revises the report.   S/he refines the introduction, revises the paragraphs to support effective communication of the information, uses appropriate language to help the paragraphs flow meaningfully, and refines his/her closing paragraph.  This process continues until the student is satisfied with his/her report.  Conferencing with the teacher and getting response from peers can help the student refine his/her writing.
12. The student edits the writing for spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, etc. to meet the needs of the audience that will be reading his/her report.

Teaching Students How to Conduct Research and Write Reports

The following strategies can be used to prepare students for report writing.

Strategy #1:  KWL.  The KWL is an excellent strategy for helping students ask questions and seek answers to those questions.  This strategy can be used to support meaningful silent reading of information in textbooks, tradebooks, etc. or it can be used to guide student inquiry.  A description of this strategy is explained in Learning Tip #21. 

Strategy #2:  Modeling parts of the process.  Any part of the report-writing process can be modeled with students.  From brainstorming many questions to guide research through writing and revising the report, teachers can use transparencies (and strips of transparencies) to model the processes for learners to engage in while conducting research.  Mini-lessons can focus on how to find a topic in a specific type of reference, how to take reading notes, how to use piles/categories to develop a semantic map, how to use signal words to help readers comprehend information, etc.

Strategy #3:  Writing a Class Report. Guide the students in writing a class report.  Have the students generate questions about the topic to be researched.  Write the questions on strips of transparency; leave room for the student to write the answer to the question when s/he finds it.  Discuss the resources which could be used to answer the questions.   Distribute the questions to the students individually, in pairs, or small groups.  Have the students read to locate the information which answers their question.   Have the student(s) record only the information which answers the question on the transparency strip.  Students can then share the information which they have found and the teacher can then guide the students in putting the transparency strips in categories.  The information on the strips can be organized in the form of a semantic map which will guide their writing.  Then small groups can each take one "bubble" of the semantic map and write about it on transparency strips.   The teacher can guide the students in putting the strips in a meaningful order, drafting an introductory paragraph, and drafting a closing paragraph.  Then the class can use their draft to write a cohesive final report of the information which can be presented in the form which they have chosen.

Strategy #4:  Small Group Reports.  Provide support for inquiry by involving the students in small group inquiry.  In relation to a unit topic or theme, the teacher might identify subtopics.  For example, a unit on ocean animals might include subtopics such as whales, sharks, seahorses, manta rays, etc.  Each group would get one of these subtopics to research.  For primary grade children, the teacher can provide the groups with a file of collected books, children's magazine articles, etc.  In this way, the focus is on having the children learn the process of asking questions, locating answers, recording information, drafting and revising the report etc.  (Later, the search for the resources can be built into this procedure.)   The students then work together to generate questions, read the references, identify the answers, record the information, and write the reports.

Conclusion

Children are often very curious.  Effective guidance of inquiry can inspire the child's curiosity in meaningful, motivating ways.  Giving children early success with inquiry supports student learning of content and gives them strategies which support independent learning---for school and for a lifetime!

References

Children's  Britannica, Vol. 16, 1995 edition.  Permission granted for reproduction by S. Darwin, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.