Two Third Grade Students Explain their Research Process [9:00]

One of my most gratifying collaborations this past school year was with a third grade teacher during a unit on opinion writing. Together, we revisioned this unit and empowered her third graders to demonstrate incredible capacities for critical thinking when it comes to media literacy.

In previous implementations of this unit, students would express an opinion (homework is an unnecessary waste of time, for example) and then conduct research to prove their opinion and write a subsequent essay. The problem that arose, however, was that this approach created—rather than dismantled—bias confirmation. So instead, we asked students to choose a topic that related to their daily lives and ask a question about that topic.

We then worked with them to refine their questions so they were open and not leading to a predetermined answer. Using a gradual release approach, the teacher modeled each step of this process for the students. The topic of "school lunch" resulted first in a question such as: why are school lunches too small? And evolved into: what makes a school lunch healthy? Questions about homework began as: why is homework a waste of time? And became: is homework important?

Next, we watched the TEDx talk delivered by Simon Link when he was in third grade (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh9GbYugA1Y). Students worked together to identify the topic of Simon's talk and craft what they thought might have been his research question. The teacher and I unpacked one paragraph of Simon's talk, identifying the evidence and discussing why we thought it was credible. Students then worked together to do the same for the next paragraph and then again independently for another paragraph (gradual release). As a class we discussed why we believed the evidence he used to support his opinion. It was research-based, came from scientific studies, was provided by experts in the field, etc.

Together, the teacher and I created a template for the students to use as a research journal. Each page of the journal was for one source and students were expected to consult a minimum of three sources. Next, they copied each fact from their journals onto individual stickies on a Jamboard. They sorted their facts into groups and then wrote one sentence describing each group. Now, they had paragraph topic sentences and synthesized evidence from across their sources to build each paragraph. We delivered separate lessons on body paragraph, introduction, and conclusion writing and the students wrote their TED talks.

The final stage of the unit was video recording their speeches. Students practiced delivering their talks with the use of a teleprompter, and we used a Chromebook and WeVideo to record them in front of a green screen. The students chose a TED stage to drop in as their new background and we made an unlisted YouTube playlist of their talks to share with the school and families.

The students repeatedly told us this was hard. At several points, they said it would be so much easier if they could do their work the old way. I told them that they can do hard things. It became the mantra we chanted each day as we began the work. Ultimately, the students embraced and supported each other's critical thinking. They organically began reviewing each other's work and suggesting where evidence could be bolstered. As we progressed through the unit, students practiced and demonstrated a range of standards: in addition to practicing their inquiry, reading and writing skills, they improved their listening and speaking skills. And, they had fun. While doing hard things.

Watch the video above to discover what two students learned about the research process from their experience creating TED talks.

Source

Link, Simon. "Kids Need Recess," YouTube video, 3:38. December 18, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh9GbYugA1Y