Super Sleuths

With a little guidance from the teacher as facilitator, your students can become super sleuths, uncovering information through research!


WHAT IS RESEARCH?
"The word research means to "search" again, and that is precisely what a good researcher will do...search, and then search again...and again."

Research is not simply:

* information gathering
* movement of facts from one location to another
* retrieving information

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary [4th edition], research is the careful search or inquiry for; endeavour to discover new facts, procedures, methods and techniques by the scientific study of a subject, course of critical investigation.

Good research results from methodically tackling a clearly stated problem, stating the results accurately and concisely and producing a clearly stated conclusion. When students convince themselves that this is what research is, then they, too, can perform research! Now that we know WHAT research is, we can start searching right? WRONG!


FROM THE GENERAL TO THE SPECIFIC
Before students dive into the research section of the library, or begin surfing the net, they need to have selected a topic. Without an idea of what he/she will be writing about, students waste an enormous amount of time "shopping around" and changing their minds. Students should begin the research with an idea of a broad topic in mind beforehand.

CHOOSING THE TOPIC...
Selecting a topic is possibly the most difficult part of doing research. Is it too big? Is it too narrow? Will I be able to find enough on it? Students should choose a topic that they like or are curious about. Since they will be working on it for quite a while, they should try to find one that's interesting and that can be reasonably covered in the time and space allotted.

With a broad topic in mind, students can begin browsing background information on the topic with the purpose of narrowing the topic to a concise thesis statement. Browsing the topic means starting broad, like an encyclopedia entry or a few search engine results to get a "feel" for the topic.

Once a student has a general understanding of his topic, he should try to begin to narrow the topic into one statement, or "mission" that he will set out to prove in his paper.

Have students try writing their topic out as a short sentence or question in order to look at the different components that make up that statement. Next, direct them to compile a list of key words from the statement that they might use to research their topic.

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