Learn to Work Together on Class Research Projects

You will learn how to work together with your classmates on research projects. When you work as a team, you can find more information and make learning fun. You will practice following discussion rules and taking turns and asking questions to be a good research partner.

Class research means finding information about a topic with your classmates. You might study butterflies, dinosaurs, or other interesting subjects. When you work together, you can share the job of looking for facts.

Research projects help you learn about the world around you. You will use books, ask your teacher questions, and share what you discover with others.

Working together means sharing ideas and helping each other. You can take turns looking in different books about your topic. One person might find facts about what butterflies eat while another learns about where they live.

You should listen to your classmates' ideas and share your own thoughts too. This builds on the skills you learned in taking turns in conversation and helps you become better at teamwork.

Gathering information means collecting facts about your research topic. You can find information in library books, by asking your teacher, or by looking at pictures. Each team member can look for different facts to share.

When you find interesting facts, you should tell your teammates what you learned. This way, everyone gets to know more about your topic. You might discover facts about animals, plants, or places like the prairie or savanna.

After you gather information, you will present what you learned to your class. Presenting means showing and telling others about your discoveries. You might draw pictures, share facts, or show what you collected.

Working together makes presenting easier because each person can share different parts of what the team learned. This connects to shared research writing projects that you will do later.

Research: Finding and collecting information about a topic you want to learn about.

Gathering: Collecting things together, like collecting facts from different books.

Information: Facts and details that help you learn about something.

Facts: True information about something, like what animals eat or where they live.

Teamwork: Working together with others to complete a job or project.

Presenting: Showing and telling others what you learned or discovered.

Sharing: Giving your ideas or information to others so everyone can learn.

Collaborating: Working together with classmates to complete a project.

You can practice research by looking at books about animals like butterflies or dinosaurs. Try drawing pictures of what you learn and sharing them with a partner. You can also collect things from nature, like pine cones, to study together.

Practice taking turns when you look for information. Let your teammate look in one book while you look in another. Then share what you both found.

Before you start class research, you should know how to follow discussion rules and practice taking turns and asking questions. You should also understand shared research and writing projects and how to connect new experiences through shared writing.

This topic connects to many other skills you will learn. You will use research information gather evaluate and research single source information to become better at finding facts. You will also learn about digital tools for writing tasks and computer and internet basics to help with your research.

After you master working together on research, you will be ready for basic note taking and citations and research using multiple sources. You will also learn about building on group ideas and writing informative texts to share what you discover.