Common Core Standards
Grades 9-10
Writing W.9-10.7
Conduct short as well as sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.
In this standard, students will complete brief or extended research in order to answer a question that you, or they themselves, pose. Students might use one source, or they might dig a little deeper on the topic and use several sources that they will synthesize in order to answer the question. A key skill here is knowing how to narrow or broaden the scope of their research as needed, so you’ll want to give students some strategies for finding more specific and more general information.
Another key skill is time management depending on the time frame of the research. Help students create a backwards plan for research and writing, beginning with the due date, and setting incremental goals for the different tasks they must complete. After deep and critical thinking, students will show that they have a thorough understanding of their discoveries. They might give a presentation, write a paper, complete a multi-genre project, or lead a small group discussion on their topic to show what they’ve learned. Keep reading for an example you might use with your class.
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Teaching Guides Using this Standard
- 1984 Teacher Pass
- A Raisin in the Sun Teacher Pass
- A Rose For Emily Teacher Pass
- A View from the Bridge Teacher Pass
- Animal Farm Teacher Pass
- Antigone Teacher Pass
- Beowulf Teacher Pass
- Brave New World Teacher Pass
- Fahrenheit 451 Teacher Pass
- Fences Teacher Pass
- Frankenstein Teacher Pass
- Grapes Of Wrath Teacher Pass
- Great Expectations Teacher Pass
- Hamlet Teacher Pass
- Heart of Darkness Teacher Pass
- Julius Caesar Teacher Pass
- King Lear Teacher Pass
- Lord of the Flies Teacher Pass
- Macbeth Teacher Pass
- Moby Dick Teacher Pass
- Narrative of Frederick Douglass Teacher Pass
- Oedipus the King Teacher Pass
- Of Mice and Men Teacher Pass
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Teacher Pass
- Othello Teacher Pass
- Romeo and Juliet Teacher Pass
- Sula Teacher Pass
- The Aeneid Teacher Pass
- The As I Lay Dying Teacher Pass
- The Bluest Eye Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales General Prologue Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales: The Miller's Tale Teacher Pass
- The Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath's Prologue Teacher Pass
- The Cask of Amontillado Teacher Pass
- The Catch-22 Teacher Pass
- The Catcher in the Rye Teacher Pass
- The Crucible Teacher Pass
- The Great Gatsby Teacher Pass
- The House on Mango Street Teacher Pass
- The Iliad Teacher Pass
- The Lottery Teacher Pass
- The Metamorphosis Teacher Pass
- The Old Man and the Sea Teacher Pass
- The Scarlet Letter Teacher Pass
- The Tell-Tale Heart Teacher Pass
- Their Eyes Were Watching God Teacher Pass
- Things Fall Apart Teacher Pass
- To Kill a Mockingbird Teacher Pass
- Twilight Teacher Pass
- Wide Sargasso Sea Teacher Pass
- Wuthering Heights Teacher Pass
Example
Assignment Example
You’ve just read “The Scarlet Ibis.” Through your tears (YES, even tenth grade boys cry), you try to picture the terrible storm Doodle and his brother just ran through. Somehow this reminds you of what your teacher meant when she mentioned that you’d be asked to answer this question: How does the setting of a story impact the plot and characters of a story? You imagine what it would be like for the character, Doodle, living as a physically-challenged child in the South during the World War I. You imagine a place where everything might create problems for such a character. Probably, life is filled with tension, hardship, and fear.
You can’t imagine why, but your teacher insists that you to some research before answering the question. What, your imagination isn’t a good enough source? Confused, you head for the computer lab where you will look into the factors involved. You know the time period is about 1911-1919 when the First World War was occurring. You know this because President Wilson is mentioned in the story. Information about Wilson and World War I is a must. From your inquiry, you learn that several battle sites of that war are referred to in the story: Amiens, Chateau Thierry, Soissons. Those battles would be worth discussing.
You have lots of clues that the story takes place in the South: hurricanes occur, Doodle enjoys going to Old Woman Swamp, and Dix Hill is mentioned. You decide to Google “Dix Hill” and discover that it is an institution in North Carolina. Now you’ll be able to find out even more about the specific climate and weather. To narrow down the setting even further, you believe that Doodle’s family lives in a rural area since the swamp is near his house. There is also a barn loft where Doodle’s coffin is kept and mention of a landing and a creek. It is a place “where across the fields and swamps you could see the sea,” and a boy spent time “flying kites” and “climbing vines” while wearing a “big straw hat.” The narrator also often uses descriptions that sound rural: “stream of love” and “seed of destruction.”
You note in the story that, time and again, the narrator refers to many types of flowers, insects, and birds common to the southern part of the country. You type some of these in your search bar: bleeding tree, magnolia, oriole, Scarlet Ibis, five-o’clocks, palmetto, toothbrush tree, doodlebug, screech owl, nightshade bush, ferns, and bayflowers. These details help create the atmosphere of the rural South.
You write your essay, inserting Internet links to your main points, and, just for fun, adding pictures of the plants, bugs, and winged beasts you’ve discovered. You could continue your research, but the time frame selected by your teacher is one class period. You’ve completed the first part of the question, so your time management plan says it’s time to move on. WAIT, THERE’S MORE?
Like most research questions, your assigned topic has more than one part. The next chunk is analysis, or separating the parts of the whole, and synthesis, bringing together all the parts of your research to create meaning. Using your critical-thinking skills, you’ll need to figure out how all of these elements affected the characters and plot.
Looking at your research and notes from the text, you realize that the time period of the war and the resulting deaths of young people from Doodle’s area act as symbols for the dying Doodle. The hurricanes and terrible storms that are weather events in the South foreshadow the destruction of Doodle. Old Woman Swamp, a lush and overgrown bog, was Doodle’s favorite place on earth where he could see only beauty, and the flowers, sometimes described as beautiful, become faded and die just as Doodle does. All of those factors put together drive what characters do, think, and say. See? Your teacher was right about the research being helpful.
Drill 1
Use the words below to fill in the blanks.
Part Short Critical-thinking
Sustained synthesis Self-generated
The time frames allowed for research in this standard are (1)_______________ and (2)_____________________.
A research question in which the student selects the topic is called a (3)_____________ question.
(4)_____________________ is the act of bringing together the information from multiple sources to create meaning.
Building knowledge infers that you are using your (5)________________ skills rather than just memorizing facts.
Most research questions are made up of more than one (6)_____________.
ANSWERS:
1. Short – You might do research in a day or a few days and only look at one or two sources.
2. Sustained – Sustained research might be a week or several weeks, enough time to do in-depth reading of many different sources.
3. Self-generated – You know, you generated or created the question yourself.
4. Synthesis – This means you can read many different and even conflicting texts and make sense of how they all add up.
5. Critical-thinking – Critical thinking means you are analyzing and evaluating information instead of just knowing what a text says.
6. Part – Good research questions are too complicated to be answered in one part.
Aligned Resources
- Teaching A View from the Bridge: Talk Show
- Teaching Fahrenheit 451: Burn, Baby, Burn: Censorship 101
- Teaching Fences: Making a Collage – Bearden Style
- Teaching All Quiet on the Western Front: Oh The Humanity!
- Teaching Sula: Write a Review
- Teaching Moby-Dick: Kill the Whale! Save the Whales!
- Teaching Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: Poetry Inspired by Douglass’s Narrative
- Teaching For Esmé with Love and Squalor: Time Heals All Wounds
- Teaching Frankenstein: Breaking News: Stormy Weather Puts the Science Back in Fiction
- Teaching Great Expectations: Ups and Downs: Graphing Pip's Tumultuous Life
- Teaching Hamlet: The 9th-Century Danish Story of Amleth, a Major Source for Shakespeare’s Play
- Teaching Things Fall Apart: Ibo Art and Culture in Things Fall Apart
- Teaching Thirteen Reasons Why: The Writing on the Wall
- Teaching Treasure Island: Post Early-Modern Prometheus
- Teaching Wuthering Heights: Isn't It Byronic?
- Teaching The Cask of Amontillado: Who...err, Why Dunnit?
- Teaching The Grapes of Wrath: Haunted By the Ghost of Tom Joad: The Enduring Legacy of a Mythic Character
- Teaching The Grapes of Wrath: Images of the "Grape" Depression: A Picture or a Thousand Words?
- Teaching The Scarlet Letter: Create a Travel Guide to the Puritan Settlement in New England
- Teaching Twilight: Judging a Book by its Cover
- Teaching Pudd'nhead Wilson: Actions Have Consequences
- Teaching Robinson Crusoe: On the Island
- Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Six-Pack Abs
- Teaching The Bell Jar: Mirror, Mirror…
- Teaching The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Need for Justice
- Teaching The Old Man and the Sea: Hemingway in Country Music
- Teaching The Piano Lesson: Modern Griot
- Teaching The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber: Murder Investigation
- Teaching The Tell-Tale Heart: Stuck in Medias Res with You
- Teaching The Tempest: Lost in the New World, or Shakespeare's Bermuda Vacation
- Teaching The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue & Frame Story: Dueling Portraits: The Canterbury Pilgrims in Art
- Teaching The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale: Emily's Voice
- Teaching The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale: Love Struck, Baby
- Teaching The Canterbury Tales: The Miller's Tale: Facebook in the Middle Ages
- Teaching The Catcher in the Rye: Judging a Book by Its Cover