research skills for middle school

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10 Great Research Topics for Middle School Students

Middle school is the perfect time to start exploring the fascinating world of research, especially if you're passionate about STEM and the humanities. Engaging in research projects now not only feeds your curiosity but also develops critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and a love for learning. Whether you're intrigued by the secrets of the universe, the beauty of numbers, or the complexity of robotics, there's a research project that you can pursue to help you build your knowledge. Let's dive into some advanced yet accessible research topics that will challenge you and enhance your academic journey.

1. Program your own robot

What to do:  Start by defining the purpose of your robot. Will it be a pet robot that follows you around, or perhaps a robot that can help carry small items from one room to another? Sketch your design on paper, focusing on what sensors and motors you'll need. For instance, a robot that follows light might need light sensors, while a robot that avoids obstacles will require ultrasonic sensors. Use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi as the brain. You'll need to learn basic programming in Python (for Raspberry Pi) or C++ (for Arduino) to code your robot's behavior.

Tips to get started:  The official websites for Arduino  and Raspberry Pi  offer tutorials for beginners. For more specific projects, such as building a pet robot, search for guides on Instructables  that detail each step from hardware assembly to software programming.

2. Design a solar-powered oven

What to do:  Investigate how solar ovens work and the science behind solar cooking. Your oven can be as simple as a pizza box solar oven or more complex, like a parabolic solar cooker. Key materials include reflective surfaces (aluminum foil), clear plastic wrap to create a greenhouse effect, and black construction paper to absorb heat. Experiment with different shapes and angles to maximize the heat capture and cooking efficiency. Test your oven by trying to cook different foods and measure the temperature achieved and cooking time required.

Tips to get started:  The Solar Cooking  wiki is an excellent resource for finding different solar cooker designs and construction plans. YouTube also has numerous DIY solar oven tutorials. Document your process and results in a project journal, noting any changes in design that lead to improvements in efficiency.

3. Assess the health of a local ecosystem

What to do:  Choose a local natural area, such as a stream, pond, or forest, and plan a series of observations and tests to assess its health. Key activities could include water quality testing (for pH, nitrates, and phosphates), soil testing (for composition and contaminants), and biodiversity surveys (identifying species of plants and animals present). Compile your data to evaluate the ecosystem's health, looking for signs of pollution, habitat destruction, or invasive species.

Tips to get started:  For a comprehensive approach, NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory  provides information on atmospheric and environmental monitoring techniques. Tools like iNaturalist  can assist in species identification, and water and soil testing kits are available from science education suppliers.

4. Develop an educational app

What to do:  Identify a gap in educational resources that your app could fill. Perhaps you noticed that students struggle with a particular math concept, or there's a lack of engaging resources for learning a foreign language. Outline your app’s features, design the user interface, and plan the content it will deliver. Use MIT App Inventor  for a drag-and-drop development experience, or Scratch  for a game-like educational app. Test your app with classmates or family members, and use their feedback for improvements.

Tips to get started:  Both MIT App Inventor  and Scratch  provide tutorials and community forums where you can learn from others’ projects. Begin with a simple prototype, focusing on one core feature, and expand from there.

5. Model rocketry: design, build, and launch!

What to do:  Dive into the basics of rocket science by designing your own model rocket. Understand the principles of thrust, aerodynamics, and stability as you plan your rocket. Materials can range from simple kits available online to homemade components for the body, fins, and nose cone. Educate yourself on the proper engine selection for your design and the recovery system to ensure your rocket returns safely. Conduct a launch in a safe, open area, following all safety guidelines.

Tips to get started:  The National Association of Rocketry  is a treasure trove of information on model rocket safety, design, and launch procedures. For beginners, consider starting with a kit from Estes Rockets , which includes all necessary components and instructions.

6. Create a wearable electronic device

What to do:  Envision a wearable device that solves a problem or enhances an aspect of daily life. It could be a smart bracelet that reminds you to stay hydrated or a hat with integrated LEDs for nighttime visibility. Sketch your design, listing the components you'll need, such as LEDs, sensors, a power source, and a microcontroller like the Adafruit Flora or Gemma. Plan your circuit, sew or assemble your device, and program it to function as intended.

Tips to get started:   Adafruit’s Wearables  section offers guides and tutorials for numerous wearable projects, including coding and circuit design. Start with a simple project to familiarize yourself with electronics and sewing conductive thread before moving on to more complex designs.

7. Explore the science of slime and non-Newtonian fluids

What to do:  Conduct experiments to understand how the composition of slime affects its properties. Create a standard slime recipe using glue, borax (or contact lens solution as a safer alternative), and water. Alter the recipe by varying the amounts of each ingredient or adding additives like cornstarch, shaving cream, or thermochromic pigment. Test how each variation affects the slime’s viscosity, stretchiness, and reaction to pressure.

Tips to get started:  The Science Bob  website offers a basic slime recipe and the science behind it. Document each experiment carefully, noting the recipe used and the observed properties. This will help you understand the science behind non-Newtonian fluids.

8. Extract DNA at home

What to do:  Use common household items to extract DNA from fruits or vegetables, like strawberries or onions. The basic process involves mashing the fruit, adding a mixture of water, salt, and dish soap to break down cell membranes, and then using cold alcohol to precipitate the DNA out of the solution. Observe and analyze the DNA strands.

Tips to get started:  Detailed instructions and the science explanation are available at the Genetic Science Learning Center . This project offers a tangible glimpse into the molecular basis of life and can be a springboard to more complex biotechnology experiments.

9. Investigate the efficiency of different types of solar cells

What to do:  Compare the efficiency of various solar panels, such as monocrystalline, polycrystalline, and thin-film. Design an experiment to measure the electrical output of each type under identical lighting conditions, using a multimeter to record voltage and current. Analyze how factors like angle of incidence, light intensity, and temperature affect their performance.

Tips to get started:  Introductory resources on solar energy and experiments can be found at the Energy.gov  website. Consider purchasing small solar panels of different types from electronics stores or online suppliers. Ensure that all tests are conducted under controlled conditions for accurate comparisons.

10. Study ocean acidification and its effects on marine life

What to do:  Simulate the effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms in a controlled experiment. Use vinegar to lower the pH of water in a tank and observe its impact on calcium carbonate shells or skeletons, such as seashells or coral fragments. Monitor and record changes over time, researching how acidification affects the ability of these organisms to maintain their shells and skeletons.

Tips to get started:   NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program  offers educational materials and experiment ideas. For a simpler version of this experiment, see instructions for observing the effects of acidified water on eggshells, which are similar in composition to marine shells, at educational websites like Science Buddies .

By pursuing these projects, you will not only gain a deeper understanding of STEM principles but also develop invaluable skills in research, design, and critical analysis. These projects will teach you how to question, experiment, and innovate, laying the groundwork for future scientific inquiries and discoveries.

One other option – Lumiere’s Junior Explorer Program

The Lumiere Junior Explorer Program is a program for middle school students to work one-on-one with a mentor to explore their academic interests and build a project they are passionate about .  Our mentors are scholars from top research universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Duke and LSE.

The program was founded by a Harvard & Oxford PhD who met as undergraduates at Harvard. The program is rigorous and fully virtual. We offer need based financial aid for students who qualify. You can find the application in the brochure ! 

To learn more, you can reach out to our Head of Growth, Khushi Malde, at [email protected] or go to our website .

Multiple rolling deadlines for JEP cohorts across the year, you can apply using this application link ! If you'd like to take a look at the cohorts + deadlines for 2024, you can refer to this page!

Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.

• middle school students

Teaching Research Skills to K-12 Students in The Classroom

Research is at the core of knowledge. Nobody is born with an innate understanding of quantum physics. But through research , the knowledge can be obtained over time. That’s why teaching research skills to your students is crucial, especially during their early years.

But teaching research skills to students isn’t an easy task. Like a sport, it must be practiced in order to acquire the technique. Using these strategies, you can help your students develop safe and practical research skills to master the craft.

What Is Research?

By definition, it’s a systematic process that involves searching, collecting, and evaluating information to answer a question. Though the term is often associated with a formal method, research is also used informally in everyday life!

Whether you’re using it to write a thesis paper or to make a decision, all research follows a similar pattern.

• Choose a topic : Think about general topics of interest. Do some preliminary research to make sure there’s enough information available for you to work with and to explore subtopics within your subject.
• Develop a research question : Give your research a purpose; what are you hoping to solve or find?
• Collect data : Find sources related to your topic that will help answer your research questions. 
• Evaluate your data : Dissect the sources you found. Determine if they’re credible and which are most relevant.
• Make your conclusion : Use your research to answer your question! 

Why Do We Need It?

Research helps us solve problems. Trying to answer a theoretical question? Research. Looking to buy a new car? Research. Curious about trending fashion items? Research! 

Sometimes it’s a conscious decision, like when writing an academic paper for school. Other times, we use research without even realizing it. If you’re trying to find a new place to eat in the area, your quick Google search of “food places near me” is research!

Whether you realize it or not, we use research multiple times a day, making it one of the most valuable lifelong skills to have. And it’s why — as educators —we should be teaching children research skills in their most primal years. 

Teaching Research Skills to Elementary Students

In elementary school, children are just beginning their academic journeys. They are learning the essentials: reading, writing, and comprehension. But even before they have fully grasped these concepts, you can start framing their minds to practice research.

According to curriculum writer and former elementary school teacher, Amy Lemons , attention to detail is an essential component of research. Doing puzzles, matching games, and other memory exercises can help equip students with this quality before they can read or write. 

Improving their attention to detail helps prepare them for the meticulous nature of research. Then, as their reading abilities develop, teachers can implement reading comprehension activities in their lesson plans to introduce other elements of research. 

One of the best strategies for teaching research skills to elementary students is practicing reading comprehension . It forces them to interact with the text; if they come across a question they can’t answer, they’ll need to go back into the text to find the information they need. 

Some activities could include completing compare/contrast charts, identifying facts or questioning the text, doing background research, and setting reading goals. Here are some ways you can use each activity:

• How it translates : Step 3, collect data; Step 4, evaluate your data
• Questioning the text : If students are unsure which are facts/not facts, encourage them to go back into the text to find their answers. 
• How it translates : Step 3, collect data; Step 4, evaluate your data; Step 5, make your conclusion
• How it translates : Step 1, choose your topic
• How it translates : Step 2, develop a research question; Step 5, make your conclusion

Resources for Elementary Research

If you have access to laptops or tablets in the classroom, there are some free tools available through Pennsylvania’s POWER Kids to help with reading comprehension. Scholastic’s BookFlix and TrueFlix are 2 helpful resources that prompt readers with questions before, after, and while they read. 

• BookFlix : A resource for students who are still new to reading. Students will follow along as a book is read aloud. As they listen or read, they will be prodded to answer questions and play interactive games to test and strengthen their understanding. 

• TrueFlix : A resource for students who are proficient in reading. In TrueFlix, students explore nonfiction topics. It’s less interactive than BookFlix because it doesn’t prompt the reader with games or questions as they read. (There are still options to watch a video or listen to the text if needed!)

Teaching Research Skills to Middle School Students

By middle school, the concept of research should be familiar to students. The focus during this stage should be on credibility . As students begin to conduct research on their own, it’s important that they know how to determine if a source is trustworthy.

Before the internet, encyclopedias were the main tool that people used for research. Now, the internet is our first (and sometimes only) way of looking information up. 

Unlike encyclopedias which can be trusted, students must be wary of pulling information offline. The internet is flooded with unreliable and deceptive information. If they aren’t careful, they could end up using a source that has inaccurate information!

How To Know If A Source Is Credible

In general, credible sources are going to come from online encyclopedias, academic journals, industry journals, and/or an academic database. If you come across an article that isn’t from one of those options, there are details that you can look for to determine if it can be trusted.

• The author: Is the author an expert in their field? Do they write for a respected publication? If the answer is no, it may be good to explore other sources.
• Citations: Does the article list its sources? Are the sources from other credible sites like encyclopedias, databases, or journals? No list of sources (or credible links) within the text is usually a red flag. 
• Date: When was the article published? Is the information fresh or out-of-date? It depends on your topic, but a good rule of thumb is to look for sources that were published no later than 7-10 years ago. (The earlier the better!)
• Bias: Is the author objective? If a source is biased, it loses credibility.

An easy way to remember what to look for is to utilize the CRAAP test . It stands for C urrency (date), R elevance (bias), A uthority (author), A ccuracy (citations), and P urpose (bias). They’re noted differently, but each word in this acronym is one of the details noted above. 

If your students can remember the CRAAP test, they will be able to determine if they’ve found a good source.

Resources for Middle School Research

To help middle school researchers find reliable sources, the database Gale is a good starting point. It has many components, each accessible on POWER Library’s site. Gale Litfinder , Gale E-books , or Gale Middle School are just a few of the many resources within Gale for middle school students.

Teaching Research Skills To High Schoolers

The goal is that research becomes intuitive as students enter high school. With so much exposure and practice over the years, the hope is that they will feel comfortable using it in a formal, academic setting. 

In that case, the emphasis should be on expanding methodology and citing correctly; other facets of a thesis paper that students will have to use in college. Common examples are annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, and works cited/reference pages.

• Annotated bibliography : This is a sheet that lists the sources that were used to conduct research. To qualify as annotated , each source must be accompanied by a short summary or evaluation. 
• Literature review : A literature review takes the sources from the annotated bibliography and synthesizes the information in writing.
• Works cited/reference pages : The page at the end of a research paper that lists the sources that were directly cited or referenced within the paper. 

Resources for High School Research

Many of the Gale resources listed for middle school research can also be used for high school research. The main difference is that there is a resource specific to older students: Gale High School . 

If you’re looking for some more resources to aid in the research process, POWER Library’s e-resources page allows you to browse by grade level and subject. Take a look at our previous blog post to see which additional databases we recommend.

Visit POWER Library’s list of e-resources to start your research!

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Research Activities For Middle School: Discussions, Tips, Exploration, And Learning Resources

February 6, 2024 //  by  Josilyn Markel

Learning to research effectively is an important skill that middle-school-aged students can learn and carry with them for their whole academic careers. The students in question will use these skills for everything from reading news articles to writing a systematic review of their sources. With increased demands on students these days, it’s never too early to introduce these sophisticated research skills. 

We’ve collected thirty of the best academic lessons for middle school students to learn about sophisticated research skills that they’ll use for the rest of their lives. 

1. Guiding Questions for Research

When you first give a research project to middle school students, it’s important to make sure that they really understand the research prompts. You can use this guiding questions tool with students to help them draw on existing knowledge to properly contextualize the prompt and assignment before they even pick up a pen. 

Learn More: Mrs. Spangler in the Middle

2. Teaching Research Essential Skills Bundle

This bundle touches on all the writing skills, planning strategies, and so-called soft skills that students will need to get started on their first research project. These resources are especially geared towards middle school-aged students to help them with cognitive control tasks plus engaging and active lessons. 

Learn More: Pinterest

3. How to Develop a Research Question

Before a middle school student can start their research time on task, they have to form a solid research question. This resource features activities for students that will help them identify a problem and then formulate a question that will guide their research project going first. 

Learn More: YouTube

4. Note-Taking Skills Infographic

For a strong introduction and/or systematic review of the importance of note-taking, look no further than this infographic. It covers several excellent strategies for taking the most important info from a source, and it also gives tips for using these strategies to strengthen writing skills. 

Learn More: Word Counter

5. Guide to Citing Online Sources

One of the more sophisticated research skills is learning to cite sources. These days, the internet is the most popular place to find research sources, so learning the citation styles for making detailed citations for internet sources is an excellent strategy. This is a skill that will stick with middle school students throughout their entire academic careers! 

Learn More: Educator’s Technology

6. Guided Student-Led Research Projects

This is a great way to boost communication between students while also encouraging choice and autonomy throughout the research process. This really opens up possibilities for students and boosts student activity and engagement throughout the whole project. The group setup also decreases the demands on students as individuals. 

Learn More: The Thinker Builder

7. Teaching Students to Fact-Check

Fact-checking is an important meta-analytic review skill that every student needs. This resource introduces probing questions that students can ask in order to ensure that the information they’re looking at is actually true. This can help them identify fake news, find more credible sources, and improve their overall sophisticated research skills. 

Learn More: Just Add Students

8. Fact-Checking Like a Pro

This resource features great teaching strategies (such as visualization) to help alleviate the demands on students when it comes to fact-checking their research sources. It’s perfect for middle school-aged students who want to follow the steps to make sure that they’re using credible sources in all of their research projects, for middle school and beyond!

9. Website Evaluation Activity

With this activity, you can use any website as a backdrop. This is a great way to help start the explanation of sources that will ultimately lead to helping students locate and identify credible sources (rather than fake news). With these probing questions, students will be able to evaluate websites effectively.

10. How to Take Notes in Class

This visually pleasing resource tells students everything they need to know about taking notes in a classroom setting. It goes over how to glean the most important information from the classroom teacher, and how to organize the info in real-time, and it gives tips for cognitive control tasks and other sophisticated research skills that will help students throughout the research and writing process. 

Learn More: Visualistan

11. Teaching Research Papers: Lesson Calendar

If you have no idea how you’re going to cover all the so-called soft skills, mini-lessons, and activities for students during your research unit, then don’t fret! This calendar breaks down exactly what you should be teaching, and when. It introduces planning strategies, credible sources, and all the other research topics with a logical and manageable flow. 

Learn More: Discover Hub Pages

12. Google Docs Features for Teaching Research

With this resource, you can explore all of the handy research-focused features that are already built into Google Docs! You can use it to build activities for students or to make your existing activities for students more tech-integrated. You can use this tool with students from the outset to get them interested and familiar with the Google Doc setup. 

13. Using Effective Keywords to Search the Internet

The internet is a huge place, and this vast amount of knowledge puts huge demands on students’ skills and cognition. That’s why they need to learn how to search online effectively, with the right keywords. This resource teaches middle school-aged students how to make the most of all the search features online. 

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

14. How to Avoid Plagiarism: “Did I Plagiarize?” 

This student activity looks at the biggest faux pas in middle school research projects: plagiarism. These days, the possibilities for students to plagiarize are endless, so it’s important for them to learn about quotation marks, paraphrasing, and citations. This resource includes information on all of those and in a handy flow chart to keep them right!

Learn More: Twitter

15. 7 Tips for Recognizing Bias

This is a resource to help middle school-aged students recognize the differences between untrustworthy and credible sources. It gives a nice explanation of sources that are trustworthy and also offers a source of activities that students can use to test and practice identifying credible sources. 

Learn More: We Are Teachers

16. UNESCO’s Laws for Media Literacy

This is one of those great online resources that truly focuses on the students in question, and it serves a larger, global goal. It offers probing questions that can help middle school-aged children determine whether or not they’re looking at credible online resources. It also helps to strengthen the so-called soft skills that are necessary for completing research. 

Learn More: SLJ Blogs

17. Guide for Evaluating a News Article

Here are active lessons that students can use to learn more about evaluating a news article, whether it’s on a paper or online resource. It’s also a great tool to help solidify the concept of fake news and help students build an excellent strategy for identifying and utilizing credible online sources. 

Learn More: Valencia College

18. Middle School Research Projects Middle School Students Will Love

Here is a list of 30 great research projects for middle schoolers, along with cool examples of each one. It also goes through planning strategies and other so-called soft skills that your middle school-aged students will need in order to complete such projects.

Learn More: Madly Learning

19. Teaching Analysis with Body Biographies

This is a student activity and teaching strategy all rolled into one! It looks at the importance of research and biographies, which brings a human element to the research process. It also helps communication between students and helps them practice those so-called soft skills that come in handy while researching. 

Learn More: Study All Knight

20. Top Tips for Teaching Research in Middle School

When it comes to teaching middle school research, there are wrong answers and there are correct answers. You can learn all the correct answers and teaching strategies with this resource, which debunks several myths about teaching the writing process at the middle school level. 

Learn More: Teaching ELA with Joy

21. Teaching Students to Research Online: Lesson Plan

This is a ready-made lesson plan that is ready to present. You don’t have to do tons of preparation, and you’ll be able to explain the basic and foundational topics related to research. Plus, it includes a couple of activities to keep students engaged throughout this introductory lesson.

Learn More: Kathleen Morris

22. Project-Based Learning: Acceptance and Tolerance

This is a series of research projects that look at specific problems regarding acceptance and tolerance. It offers prompts for middle school-aged students that will get them to ask big questions about themselves and others in the world around them. 

Learn More: Sandy Cangelosi

23. 50 Tiny Lessons for Teaching Research Skills in Middle School

These fifty mini-lessons and activities for students will have middle school-aged students learning and applying research skills in small chunks. The mini-lessons approach allows students to get bite-sized information and focus on mastering and applying each step of the research process in turn. This way, with mini-lessons, students don’t get overwhelmed with the whole research process at once. In this way, mini-lessons are a great way to teach the whole research process!

24. Benefits of Research Projects for Middle School Students

Whenever you feel like it’s just not worth it to go to the trouble to teach your middle school-aged students about research, let this list motivate you! It’s a great reminder of all the great things that come with learning to do good research at an early age. 

Learn More: Thrive in Grade Five

25. Top 5 Study and Research Skills for Middle Schoolers

This is a great resource for a quick and easy overview of the top skills that middle schoolers will need before they dive into research. It outlines the most effective tools to help your students study and research well, throughout their academic careers. 

Learn More: Meagan Gets Real

26. Research with Informational Text: World Travelers

This travel-themed research project will have kids exploring the whole world with their questions and queries. It is a fun way to bring new destinations into the research-oriented classroom. 

Learn More: The Superhero Teacher

27. Project-Based Learning: Plan a Road Trip

If you want your middle school-aged students to get into the researching mood, have them plan a road trip! They’ll have to examine the prompt from several angles and collect data from several sources before they can put together a plan for an epic road trip. 

Learn More: Appletastic Learning

28. Methods for Motivating Writing Skills

When your students just are feeling up to the task of research-based writing, it’s time to break out these motivational methods. With these tips and tricks, you’ll be able to get your kids in the mood to research, question, and write!

29. How to Set Up a Student Research Station

This article tells you everything you need to know about a student center focused on sophisticated research skills. These student center activities are engaging and fun, and they touch on important topics in the research process, such as planning strategies, fact-checking skills, citation styles, and some so-called soft skills.

Learn More: Upper Elementary Snapshots

30. Learn to Skim and Scan to Make Research Easier

These activities for students are geared towards encouraging reading skills that will ultimately lead to better and easier research. The skills in question? Skimming and scanning. This will help students read more efficiently and effectively as they research from a variety of sources.

K-12 Internet Resource Center

A totally free index of Internet resources for the K-12 Community.

How to Help Students Build Research Skills

Do you want to support students at your school as they conduct research this year? You can help students build research skills starting in elementary school. One of the hardest parts of getting started is finding resources that are just right for this age group of readers. We often associate teaching research skills with the work taking place in secondary classrooms. Middle school and high school students might synthesize information from a variety of sources for a research project. Research skills are important in elementary classrooms, too.

Elementary educators can introduce informational text to students as they take on the role of a fact-finder who gathers information to share with an audience.

Dr. Monica Burns October 18, 2023

Attributes: 1-3 4-5 Lesson Plan

Resource Link:  https://classtechtips.com/2023/10/18/how-to-help-students-build-research-skills/

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Teaching ELA with Joy

Middle School ELA Resources

6 Ideas for Teaching Research Skills

By Joy Sexton Leave a Comment

When thinking about ideas for teaching research skills, teachers can easily become overwhelmed. That’s mainly because our standards list so many requirements for students to master! If your school requires a major research paper, you might need to start off with some smaller practice pieces. Do your students know how to paraphrase? Can they judge if a website is credible? Do they know how to compose an open-ended question? How about citing sources? Check out these activities that will help your students gain essential practice with research skills.

Ideas for Teaching Research Skills

1. Say It Your Way – One great place to start is getting students in the habit of paraphrasing. Choose an interesting topic and a short article to demonstrate. An online encyclopedia comes in handy here. We worked with information on a particular dinosaur. Project the article and with class participation, highlight 5 pieces of key information. This is the information students will be “taking notes” on. Then query the students how each piece of information could be stated in bulleted notes (without copying full sentences!). Model the bulleted note-taking as students complete their own copy. When the bulleted notes are complete, engage the class in composing new sentences that are paraphrased. Again, model writing this paragraph as students follow suit. Now the process of note-taking and paraphrasing should seem “doable” in their own research.

2. Surprising Facts – A fun way for students to dive into research is to give them a topic and simply task them with finding facts that are surprising . This activity works great with partners. Topics could tie in with a current class novel or story (such as “elephant” from The Giver) or even an author. Surprising facts about Gary Paulsen, Kwame Alexander, or Edgar Alan Poe make an interesting class discussion! Students enjoy sharing their findings. I devised a free handout where students can record the topic, their surprising facts, and the website(s) they used. Grab it in Google Docs and copy to your drive by clicking the link: https://bit.ly/3Nah9UB

3. Give Credit Where It’s Due – Most students understand that sources need to be cited. However, many remain unclear on the process. A demonstration using a citation generator will help. I like www.bibme.org , but if you google “citation generator” you’ll find a slew of them. I open a few tabs in advance with animal websites. To demonstrate, grab the URLs and insert into the generator. Cut and paste the citations to a blank document. Then you can show students how to indent and alphabetize. For practice, give students a list of several websites. You could also include a magazine article and a book. With a partner, have them construct the works cited using a generator, indenting and alphabetizing correctly.

4. Support an Opinion – Students love to voice their opinions , but need practice supporting them with facts . Lucky for us, there are loads of argument topics available free online. You can offer several topic choices, and students choose one and respond with their opinion. Next, have them locate 2-3 important facts or statistics that specifically support their opinion. Make sure to emphasize that the information will need to be paraphrased. And since sources were used, a Works Cited should also be added.

5. Good Question! – One purpose of research is to answer a question, so students need practice in formulating good questions . An open-ended question, one that requires more than just one answer, is the goal. Start by demonstrating the difference between an open-ended question and a “thin”  or “skinny” question (not open-ended). One way is to project an image of a violin on your whiteboard. Then type or write out these questions: 1. How many strings does a violin have? 2. How is a violin made? Ask students which is the open-ended question and why. Then project another image. Ask for volunteers to formulate a thin question, and then an open-ended question.  Once they understand this concept, let all students practice composing both thin and open-ended questions. This activity works well in groups. Each student contributes a topic.

6. Format is Key – A sure-fire way to get students excited about a research project is offering engaging formats for presentation. PowerPoint is well known by most students, but take time to demonstrate some other great options. Canva allows students to create awesome Infographics! Or how about a tri-fold brochure in Publisher? Students can make up a quick template with custom headings. Set a timer for 10-15 minutes and let students experiment with the possibilities. My students have enjoyed a Q & A format, using a template I created with PowerPoint. Even students who prefer typing their report in paragraphs can easily design a poster. Along with the paragraphs, just add images, captions, topic, and headings.

I hope I have broadened your ideas for teaching research skills. I think you’ll agree that students need time and mini-lessons to get comfortable with the procedures we require. A quick graphic organizer coupled with a short activity can help solidify the skills they’ll need.

Here’s another post I wrote that will give you more helpful ideas for teaching research skills: 10 Ideas to Make Teaching Research Easier

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10 Ways To Develop Research Skills in Middle School Students

Helping students develop research skills in middle school is useful and necessary for students to thrive later in life. In this blog post, Marypat Mahoney from Just Add Students and I explore practical ways to guide students in their journey to develop research skills through various methods. 

From determining citation methods and scaffolding each skill to embracing information literacy and integrating hands-on experiences, the post offers a comprehensive roadmap for educators to encourage and educate students on their research journey. 

Whether through prewriting activities, interview practice, small-scale exercises, or the analysis of primary sources, these strategies aim to equip students with the tools they need to navigate the research world confidently.

Get The Librarian Involved (Kristy)

If your school is fortunate enough to have a school librarian or media specialist, get them involved in helping your students develop research skills. School librarians can show the students what resources the school and/or the school board or district have and use hands-on activities to engage them in the research process. 

In this blog post, 12 Ways a School Librarian Can Help Teachers , Barbara Paciotti, retired School Librarian and Science teacher, shares how school librarians can be an asset to classroom teachers.

Determine How You Want Students To Cite Sources (Marypat)

Before even jumping into research skills, decide how you want students to cite their sources.  This can be as simple as students creating a list with clickable links or as complex as a works cited list that is in compliance with the MLA’s 9th edition .  

If you want a combo of the two, teach your students how to create an annotated works cited list.  This is a great way to get students thinking about why they are choosing sources and what the sources have to offer. 

Scaffold Each Skill (Kristy)

When seeking to develop research skills in middle school students, it is important to start with a small research project and work towards bigger, more independent projects. These mini-research projects help students develop the key skills needed for more intricate and self-directed assignments. 

Once students are ready for more independence, it is still important to break down larger assignments into smaller, manageable tasks. Guide students through the process of selecting topics, conducting research, and presenting findings. I love to work on each step as a class and then give students more independence once they have demonstrated they are on the right track. 

For an example of how I scaffold for my students, check out this Article of the Week framework . 

Student Driven – Use The Scientific Method – Start With A Question (Marypat)

Students will be more engaged and excited about starting a research project when they are curious and invested in the topic. And, even more importantly, when they can choose their own topic. 

But helping students choose that topic can be a challenge. One thing that helps is using the scientific method . This starts with asking a question. The more questions students ask, the easier the research topic will be to choose. Students will end up with a list of questions they want to know more about. 

Teach Information Literacy (Kristy)

In today’s digital world, not everything is as it seems online. Focus on teaching students how to evaluate sources, spot bias, and differentiate between reliable and unreliable information/sources – this can be a key element when striving to help students develop research skills. 

Emphasize to students that going beyond surface-level acceptance of digital content is key. Teach them how to analyze information and think critically about the content they consume. The goal is to nurture students to be capable of confidently navigating the digital world.

If you want help with lesson ideas on these topics, read my posts, Why Teach Fake News in the Middle School ELA Classroom? – 2 Peas and a Dog and Engaging Middle School Digital Citizenship Lessons – 2 Peas and a Dog . 

Generate Prewriting Ideas (Marypat)

Prewriting is often a quickly completed activity, but with research, prewriting can help students flesh out ideas, generate more questions, and dig into deeper research.

Encourage students to “follow the questions” they have about their topic by generating more questions that they want answered. A simple graphic organizer like a KWL chart is a good place to start. But don’t stop there. Offering multiple prewriting activities helps students not only get excited to get started but they’ll develop a plan forward.     

Interview Practice (Kristy)

Conducting primary research is a key skill that some people require in their careers. It does not have to be formal research conducted by a university or a think tank. People need to acquire information by talking to other people and then making informed decisions. 

Teach students basic interview techniques and have them conduct interviews with school staff, local experts, or community members, then present their findings to their peers. When I taught Grade 6 Social Studies, students had to interview someone who had immigrated to Canada from another country. 

They could interview a family member or a friend of the family. They were also permitted to get the story from their parents if no direct contact could be made with the relative who immigrated to Canada. This helped students learn how to talk to adults and gather information that they made into a presentation to share with the class. 

A project that will help students learn the interview process and further develop research skills is my Biography Symbolism Assignment . Student can create a life map outlining the important events in their chosen interviewee’s life. It doesn’t have to be huge, but something to get students heading in the right direction when it comes to the interview process. 

How can you incorporate interviews into your lessons? Check out this list of 32 Fun Project Ideas That Aren’t Overused For Middle School Students to think of different ways to change up your lessons.  

Small Scale Practice With Note Taking, Summarizing, And Quoting (Marypat)

Once students have their idea and their research sources – the next big step is recording information. Summarizing material is often challenging for students.  Make this easier by using texts that students are already familiar with: fairy tales, fables, popular movies, or even songs. 

Take out the writing aspect and allow them to share a short summary with a partner. Can they do this in less than 30 words? You’ll be able to add new texts as students build confidence. Use this summarizing skills freebie to help you get started .

Analyze Primary Sources (Kristy)

Another way to develop research skills is to introduce historical primary sources (letters, diaries, speeches) and guide students in interpreting and analyzing these documents.

This is something I try to do with my students in my Canadian history lessons as well as when I am teaching a novel if I can find sources that align with the concepts or events. Students need to understand that not all content comes from secondary sources. Sometimes, they can use primary sources as a way to gather information. 

Create a sharing wall (Marypat)

Provide a “Did You Know?” wall for students to share information about their topic that they think is interesting. Sometimes, students find information that doesn’t quite fit into their research topic, but it is still interesting to them.  A sharing wall is the perfect spot for that random information.  As a side benefit, students are sharing their research!

The journey to help students develop research skills can be a collaborative effort that involves educators, librarians, and the entire school community. Developing these skills is not a one-size-fits-all process but rather a multifaceted approach that encompasses citation methods, scaffolding, information literacy, and hands-on experiences. 

By incorporating strategies like prewriting, interview practice, small-scale exercises, and the analysis of primary sources, educators can empower students to confidently navigate their research. I hope you can use some of these ideas to develop research skills in middle school students.

Marypat has been a classroom teacher for over fifteen years and a  mentor teacher for over ten.  Her experience ranges from fourth grade to college, but the majority of her time has been in middle school teaching ELA. She created Just Add Students to support busy teachers who may be struggling with teaching reading and writing to upper elementary and middle school students. She also sells teaching resources on Teachers Pay Teachers and on her website .

Kristy has taught ELA and other subjects to middle school students for over 17 years in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. She is guilty of always having a book in her hand – even at the dinner table! She shares teaching content on her website, 2 Peas and a Dog , and sells middle school education resources on Teachers Pay Teachers or Shopify .

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By using highly-engaging rants, your students won’t even realize you’ve channeled their daily rants and complaints into high-quality, writing!

• Research Skills

How to Teach Online Research Skills to Students in 5 Steps (Free Posters)

Please note, this post was updated in 2020 and I no longer update this website.

How often does this scenario play out in your classroom?

You want your students to go online and do some research for some sort of project, essay, story or presentation. Time ticks away, students are busy searching and clicking, but are they finding the useful and accurate information they need for their project?

We’re very fortunate that many classrooms are now well equipped with devices and the internet, so accessing the wealth of information online should be easier than ever, however, there are many obstacles.

Students (and teachers) need to navigate:

• What search terms to put into Google or other search engines
• What search results to click on and read through (while avoiding inappropriate or irrelevant sites or advertisements)
• How to determine what information is credible, relevant and student friendly 
• How to process, synthesize, evaluate , and present the information
• How to compare a range of sources to evaluate their reliability and relevancy
• How to cite sources correctly

Phew! No wonder things often don’t turn out as expected when you tell your students to just “google” their topic. On top of these difficulties some students face other obstacles including: low literacy skills, limited internet access, language barriers, learning difficulties and disabilities.

All of the skills involved in online research can be said to come under the term of information literacy, which tends to fall under a broader umbrella term of digital literacy.

Being literate in this way is an essential life skill.

This post offers tips and suggestions on how to approach this big topic. You’ll learn a 5 step method to break down the research process into manageable chunks in the classroom. Scroll down to find a handy poster for your classroom too.

How to Teach Information Literacy and Online Research Skills

The topic of researching and filtering information can be broken down in so many ways but I believe the best approach involves:

• Starting young and building on skills
• Embedding explicit teaching and mini-lessons regularly (check out my 50 mini-lesson ideas here !)
• Providing lots of opportunity for practice and feedback
• Teachers seeking to improve their own skills — these free courses from Google might help
• Working with your librarian if you have one

💡 While teaching research skills is something that should be worked on throughout the year, I also like the idea of starting the year off strongly with a “Research Day” which is something 7th grade teacher Dan Gallagher wrote about . Dan and his colleagues had their students spend a day rotating around different activities to learn more about researching online. Something to think about!

Google or a Kid-friendly Search Engine?

If you teach young students you might be wondering what the best starting place is.

I’ve only ever used Google with students but I know many teachers like to start with search engines designed for children. If you’ve tried these search engines, I’d love you to add your thoughts in a comment.

💡 If you’re not using a kid-friendly search engine, definitely make sure SafeSearch is activated on Google or Bing. It’s not foolproof but it helps.

Two search engines designed for children that look particularly useful include:

These sites are powered by Google SafeSearch with some extra filtering/moderating.

KidzSearch contains additional features like videos and image sections to browse. While not necessarily a bad thing, I prefer the simple interface of Kiddle for beginners.

Read more about child-friendly search engines

This article from Naked Security provides a helpful overview of using child-friendly search engines like Kiddle.

To summarise their findings, search-engines like Kiddle can be useful but are not perfect.

For younger children who need to be online but are far too young to be left to their own devices, and for parents and educators that want little ones to easily avoid age-inappropriate content, these search engines are quite a handy tool. For older children, however, the results in these search engines may be too restrictive to be useful, and will likely only frustrate children to use other means.

Remember, these sorts of tools are not a replacement for education and supervision.

Maybe start with no search engine?

Another possible starting point for researching with young students is avoiding a search engine altogether.

Students could head straight to a site they’ve used before (or choose from a small number of teacher suggested sites). There’s a lot to be learned just from finding, filtering, and using information found on various websites.

Five Steps to Teaching Students How to Research Online and Filter Information

This five-step model might be a useful starting point for your students to consider every time they embark on some research.

Let’s break down each step. You can find a summary poster at the end.

Students first need to take a moment to consider what information they’re actually looking for in their searches.

It can be a worthwhile exercise to add this extra step in between giving a student a task (or choice of tasks) and sending them off to research.

You could have a class discussion or small group conferences on brainstorming keywords , considering synonyms or alternative phrases , generating questions etc. Mindmapping might help too.

2016 research by Morrison showed that 80% of students rarely or never made a list of possible search words. This may be a fairly easy habit to start with.

Time spent defining the task can lead to a more effective and streamlined research process.

It sounds simple but students need to know that the quality of the search terms they put in the Google search box will determine the quality of their results.

There are a LOT of tips and tricks for Googling but I think it’s best to have students first master the basics of doing a proper Google search.

I recommend consolidating these basics:

• Type in some simple search terms using only the important keywords
• If the initial results aren’t what you want, alter the search terms and get more specific  (get clues from the initial search results e.g. you might see synonyms that would work or get ideas from the “People Also Ask” section)
• Use quotation marks if you want your keywords in an exact order, e.g. “raining cats and dogs”
• use your best guess with spelling (Google will often understand)
• don’t worry about punctuation
• understand that everyone’s results will be different , even if they use the same search terms (depending on browser history, location etc.)

📌 Get a free PDF of this poster here. 

Links to learn more about Google searches

There’s lots you can learn about Google searches.

I highly recommend you take a look at  20 Instant Google Searches your Students Need to Know by Eric Curts to learn about “instant searches”.

Med Kharbach has also shared a simple visual with 12 search tips which would be really handy once students master the basics too.

The Google Search Education website is an amazing resource with lessons for beginner/intermediate/advanced plus slideshows and videos. It’s also home to the  A Google A Day classroom challenges. The questions help older students learn about choosing keywords, deconstructing questions, and altering keywords.

Useful videos about Google searches

How search works.

This easy to understand video  from Code.org to explains more about how search works.

How Does Google Know Everything About Me?

You might like to share this video with older students that explains how Google knows what you’re typing or thinking. Despite this algorithm, Google can’t necessarily know what you’re looking for if you’re not clear with your search terms.

What about when the answer comes up in Google instantly?

If you’ve been using Google for a while, you know they are tweaking the search formula so that more and more, an answer will show up within the Google search result itself. You won’t even need to click through to any websites.

For example, here I’ve asked when the Titanic sunk. I don’t need to go to any websites to find out. The answer is right there in front of me.

While instant searches and featured snippets are great and mean you can “get an answer” without leaving Google, students often don’t have the background knowledge to know if a result is incorrect or not. So double checking is always a good idea.

As students get older, they’ll be able to know when they can trust an answer and when double checking is needed.

Type in a subject like cats and you’ll be presented with information about the animals, sports teams, the musical along with a lot of advertising. There are a lot of topics where some background knowledge helps. And that can only be developed with time and age.

Entering quality search terms is one thing but knowing what to click on is another.

You might like to encourage students to look beyond the first few results. Let students know that Google’s PageRank algorithm is complex (as per the video above), and many websites use Search Engine Optimisation to improve the visibility of their pages in search results. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the most useful or relevant sites for you.

As pointed out in this article by Scientific American ,

Skilled searchers know that the ranking of results from a search engine is not a statement about objective truth, but about the best matching of the search query, term frequency, and the connectedness of web pages. Whether or not those results answer the searchers’ questions is still up for them to determine.

Point out the anatomy of a Google search result and ensure students know what all the components mean. This could be as part of a whole class discussion, or students could create their own annotations.

An important habit to get into is looking at the green URL and specifically the domain . Use some intuition to decide whether it seems reliable. Does the URL look like a well-known site? Is it a forum or opinion site? Is it an educational or government institution? Domains that include .gov or .edu might be more reliable sources.

When looking through possible results, you may want to teach students to open sites in new tabs, leaving their search results in a tab for easy access later (e.g. right-click on the title and click “Open link in new tab” or press Control/Command and click the link).

Searchers are often not skilled at identifying advertising within search results. A famous 2016 Stanford University study revealed that 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labelled “sponsored content” and a real news story.

Time spent identifying advertising within search results could help students become much more savvy searchers. Looking for the words “ad” and “sponsored” is a great place to start.

4) Evaluate

Once you click on a link and land on a site, how do you know if it offers the information you need?

Students need to know how to search for the specific information they’re after on a website. Teach students how to look for the search box on a webpage or use Control F (Command F on Mac) to bring up a search box that can scan the page.

Ensure students understand that you cannot believe everything you read . This might involve checking multiple sources. You might set up class guidelines that ask students to cross check their information on two or three different sites before assuming it’s accurate.

I’ve written a post all about teaching students how to evaluate websites . It includes this flowchart which you’re welcome to download and use in your classroom.

So your students navigated the obstacles of searching and finding information on quality websites. They’ve found what they need! Hooray.

Many students will instinctively want to copy and paste the information they find for their own work.

We need to inform students about plagiarism  and copyright infringement while giving them the skills they need to avoid this.

• Students need to know that plagiarism is taking someone’s work and presenting it as your own. You could have a class discussion about the ethics and legalities of this.
• Students also need to be assured that they can use information from other sources and they should. They just need to say who wrote it, where it was from and so on.

All students can benefit from learning about plagiarism, copyright, how to write information in their own words, and how to acknowledge the source. However, the formality of this process will depend on your students’ age and your curriculum guidelines.

Give students lots of practice writing information in their own words. Younger students can benefit from simply putting stories or recounts in their own words. Older students could investigate the difference between paraphrasing and summarising .

There are some free online tools that summarise information for you. These aren’t perfect and aren’t a replacement from learning the skill but they could be handy for students to try out and evaluate. For example, students could try writing their own summary and then comparing it to a computer summary. I like the tool SMMRY as you can enter text or a URL of an article. Eric Curts shares a list of 7 summary tools in this blog post .

Students also need a lot of practice using quotation marks and citing sources .

The internet can offer a confusing web of information at times. Students need to be shown how to look for the primary source of information. For example, if they find information on Wikipedia, they need to cite from the bibliography at the bottom of the Wikipedia article, not Wikipedia itself.

There are many ways you can teach citation:

• I like Kathy Schrock’s PDF document which demonstrates how you can progressively teach citation from grades 1 to 6 (and beyond). It gives some clear examples that you could adapt for your own classroom use.

Staying organised!

You might also like to set up a system for students to organise their information while they’re searching. There are many apps and online tools to curate, annotate, and bookmark information, however, you could just set up a simple system like a Google Doc or Spreadsheet.

The format and function is simple and clear. This means students don’t have to put much thought into using and designing their collections. Instead, they can focus on the important curation process.

Bring These Ideas to Life With Mini-Lessons!

We know how important it is for students to have solid research skills. But how can you fit teaching research skills into a jam-packed curriculum? The answer may be … mini-lessons !

Whether you teach primary or secondary students, I’ve compiled 50 ideas for mini-lessons.

Try one a day or one a week and by the end of the school year, you might just be amazed at how independent your students are becoming with researching.

Become an Internet Search Master with This Google Slides Presentation

In early 2019, I was contacted by Noah King who is a teacher in Northern California.

Noah was teaching his students about my 5 step process outlined in this post and put together a Google Slides Presentation with elaboration and examples.

You’re welcome to use and adapt the Google Slides Presentation yourself. Find out exactly how to do this in this post.

The Presentation was designed for students around 10-11 years old but I think it could easily be adapted for different age groups.

Recap: How To Do Online Research

Despite many students being confident users of technology, they need to be taught how to find information online that’s relevant, factual, student-friendly, and safe.

Keep these six steps in mind whenever you need to do some online research:

• Clarify : What information are you looking for? Consider keywords, questions, synonyms, alternative phrases etc.
• Search : What are the best words you can type into the search engine to get the highest quality results?
• Delve : What search results should you click on and explore further?
• Evaluate : Once you click on a link and land on a site, how do you know if it offers the information you need?
• Cite : How can you write information in your own words (paraphrase or summarise), use direct quotes, and cite sources?
• Staying organised : How can you keep the valuable information you find online organised as you go through the research process?

Don’t forget to ask for help!

Lastly, remember to get help when you need it. If you’re lucky enough to have a teacher-librarian at your school, use them! They’re a wonderful resource.

If not, consult with other staff members, librarians at your local library, or members of your professional learning network. There are lots of people out there who are willing and able to help with research. You just need to ask!

Being able to research effectively is an essential skill for everyone . It’s only becoming more important as our world becomes increasingly information-saturated. Therefore, it’s definitely worth investing some classroom time in this topic.

Developing research skills doesn’t necessarily require a large chunk of time either. Integration is key and remember to fit in your mini-lessons . Model your own searches explicitly and talk out loud as you look things up.

When you’re modelling your research, go to some weak or fake websites and ask students to justify whether they think the site would be useful and reliable. Eric Curts has an excellent article where he shares four fake sites to help teach students about website evaluation. This would be a great place to start!

Introduce students to librarians ; they are a wonderful resource and often underutilised. It pays for students to know how they can collaborate with librarians for personalised help.

Finally, consider investing a little time in brushing up on research skills yourself . Everyone thinks they can “google” but many don’t realise they could do it even better (myself included!).

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14 Replies to “How to Teach Online Research Skills to Students in 5 Steps (Free Posters)”

Kathleen, I like your point about opening up sites in new tabs. You might be interested in Mike Caulfield’s ‘four moves’ .

What a fabulous resource, Aaron. Thanks so much for sharing. This is definitely one that others should check out too. Even if teachers don’t use it with students (or are teaching young students), it could be a great source of learning for educators too.

This is great information and I found the safe search sites you provided a benefit for my children. I searched for other safe search sites and you may want to know about them. http://www.kids-search.com and http://www.safesearch.tips .

Hi Alice, great finds! Thanks so much for sharing. I like the simple interface. It’s probably a good thing there are ads at the top of the listing too. It’s an important skill for students to learn how to distinguish these. 🙂

Great website! Really useful info 🙂

I really appreciate this blog post! Teaching digital literacy can be a struggle. This topic is great for teachers, like me, who need guidance in effectively scaffolding for scholars who to use the internet to gain information.

So glad to hear it was helpful, Shasta! Good luck teaching digital literacy!

Why teachers stopped investing in themselves! Thanks a lot for the article, but this is the question I’m asking myself after all teachers referring to google as if it has everything you need ! Why it has to come from you and not the whole education system! Why it’s an option? As you said smaller children don’t need search engine in the first place! I totally agree, and I’m soo disappointed how schooling system is careless toward digital harms , the very least it’s waste of the time of my child and the most being exposed to all rubbish on the websites. I’m really disappointed that most teachers are not thinking taking care of their reputation when it comes to digital learning. Ok using you tube at school as material it’s ok , but why can’t you pay little extra to avoid adverts while teaching your children! Saving paper created mountains of electronic-toxic waste all over the world! What a degradation of education.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Shohida. I disagree that all schooling systems are careless towards ‘digital harms’, however, I do feel like more digital citizenship education is always important!

Hi Kathleen, I love your How to Evaluate Websites Flow Chart! I was wondering if I could have permission to have it translated into Spanish. I would like to add it to a Digital Research Toolkit that I have created for students.

Thank you! Kristen

Hi Kristen, You’re welcome to translate it! Please just leave the original attribution to my site on there. 🙂 Thanks so much for asking. I really hope it’s useful to your students! Kathleen

[…] matter how old your child is, there are many ways for them to do research into their question. For very young children, you’ll need to do the online research work. Take your time with […]

[…] digs deep into how teachers can guide students through responsible research practices on her blog (2019). She suggests a 5 step model for elementary students on how to do online […]

Writing lesson plans on the fly outside of my usual knowledge base (COVID taken down so many teachers!) and this info is precisely what I needed! Thanks!!!

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Middle school is a time of burgeoning curiosity and the perfect opportunity for students to engage in research that not only educates them academically but also cultivates skills for the future. By encouraging young learners to explore topics they are passionate about, educators and parents play a pivotal role in their intellectual development and the growth of their intrinsic motivation. This blog post outlines a diverse range of research topics suited to the inquiring minds of middle school students, giving them the freedom to deepen their understanding of various subjects while honing critical thinking and independent study skills.

Uncovering the Mysteries of History

Middle schoolers often find history fascinating, particularly when learning about the past from distinct perspectives. Here are some intriguing historical research topics to consider:

• The Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement: Apart from the well-known leaders, students can explore the contributions of lesser-known figures who played a significant role in the struggle for equality.
• The Impact of Ancient Civilizations on Modern Society: Researching the ways in which the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, or other ancient societies have influenced contemporary culture, politics, and technology offers a broad canvas for exploration.
• Everyday Life in Different Historical Periods: Focusing on the routines, customs, and technologies that shaped people’s daily lives in times gone by can provide valuable insights into societal norms and individual experiences.

Science and the Natural World

The sciences are a playground of wonder, with an infinity of topics waiting to be explored. Here are some research ideas that can nurture a love for discovery and experimentation:

• Climate Change: Effects and Solutions: Investigating the causes and potential solutions to this global challenge can make students aware of their role in protecting the planet.
• The Wonders of the Solar System: Encouraging a study of the planets, their moons, and the vast expanse of space they inhabit can ignite dreams of interstellar exploration.
• Biodiversity and Ecosystem Conservation: Researching the variety of life on Earth and strategies to protect and sustain ecosystems can foster a sense of environmental stewardship.

Literature, Language, and Creative Expression

Language and literature are potent forms of human expression, allowing students to explore complex ideas and emotions. Here are some topics that bridge the gap between art and academia:

• Interpreting Classic Literature for Modern Relevance: Encouraging the study of timeless works can lead to discussions on their contemporary significance and the evolution of societal values.
• The Structure and Evolution of Language: Investigating the origins and changes in language over time can be a rich area of study, especially when paired with the examination of cultural shifts.
• The Intersection of Art and Literature: Exploring how visual arts and writing intersect to convey messages and emotions can be a fertile ground for interdisciplinary research.

Mathematics and Logic Puzzles

The precision and patterns found in mathematics can be both satisfying and thought-provoking. Middle school students often enjoy the thrill of solving problems and unraveling puzzles. Here are some mathematical research topics that can engage students’ analytical minds:

• Famous Mathematical Conjectures: Researching unsolved problems, such as the Goldbach conjecture or the Riemann hypothesis, can introduce students to the excitement of open questions in mathematics.
• The Application of Math in Various Industries: Investigating how mathematical principles underpin fields like music, art, sports, and technology can illuminate the subject’s real-world utility.
• The History of Mathematical Discoveries: Tracing the lineage of mathematical concepts through different cultures and periods can showcase the universality and timelessness of mathematics.

Social Sciences and Human Interaction

Studying human behavior and society can help students develop empathy and a deeper understanding of the world around them. Here are some social science research ideas to explore:

• The Impact of Social Media on Friendships and Relationships: Research could focus on positive and negative effects, trends, and the future of social interaction.
• Cultural Traditions and Their Meanings: Investigating the origins and contemporary significance of customs from various cultures can foster respect for diversity and a global perspective.
• The Psychology of Decision Making: Exploring the factors that influence human choices, from cognitive biases to social pressures, can provide insights into individual and collective behavior.

Technology and Innovation

Middle schoolers are often tech-savvy and interested in the latest gadgets and advancements. Here are some technology and innovation research topics to tap into that curiosity:

• The Impact of Gaming on Society: Research could examine how video games influence education, social issues, or even career choices.
• Emerging Technologies and Their Ethical Implications: Encouraging students to study technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, or wearable tech can lead to discussions on the ethical considerations of their use and development.
• Inventions That Changed the World: Chronicling the history and influence of significant inventions, from the wheel to the internet, can provide a lens through which to view human progress.

By providing middle schoolers with the opportunity to conduct meaningful research in a topic of their choosing, we not only deepen their education but also equip them with the skills and passion for a lifetime of learning. This list is just the beginning; the key is to foster curiosity and guide young minds toward engaging, challenging, and diverse research experiences. Through such explorations, we empower the next generation to think critically, communicate effectively, and, most importantly, to nurture their innate curiosity about the world.

Implementing Research Projects in the Classroom

Encouraging middle school students to undertake research projects requires a strategic approach to ensure sustained interest and meaningful outcomes. Here are some methods educators can employ:

• Mentorship and Support: Pairing students with teacher mentors who can guide them through the research process, provide feedback, and encourage critical thinking is essential for a fruitful research experience.
• Cross-Curricular Integration: Linking research topics to content from different subjects helps students appreciate the interconnectedness of knowledge and develop versatile learning skills.
• Use of Technology and Media: Incorporating digital tools for research, presentation, and collaboration can enhance engagement and teach essential 21st-century skills.
• Presentation and Reflection: Allocating time for students to present their findings nurtures communication skills and confidence, while self-reflection activities help them internalize their learning journey.

These strategies can create a robust framework within which students can pursue their curiosities, leading to a more personalized and impactful educational experience.

What is a good topic to research for middle school?

A good topic for middle school research could delve into the Role of Robotics in the Future of Society . Students can explore how robotics may transform jobs, healthcare, and everyday life. They can examine the balance between automation and human work, predict how robots could augment human abilities, and discuss the ethical dimensions of a robotic future. This inquiry not only captivates the imagination but also encourages critical thinking about technology’s impact on tomorrow’s world.

What are the 10 research titles examples?

• The Evolution of Renewable Energy and Its Future Prospects
• Investigating the Effects of Microplastics on Marine Ecosystems
• The Influence of Ancient Civilizations on Modern Democracy
• Understanding Black Holes: Unveiling the Mysteries of the Cosmos
• The Impact of Augmented Reality on Education and Training
• Climate Change and Its Consequences on Coastal Cities
• The Psychological Effects of Social Media on Teenagers
• Genetic Engineering: The Possibilities and Pitfalls
• Smart Cities: How Technology is Shaping Urban Living
• The Role of Nanotechnology in Medicine: Current Applications and Future Potential

Fascinating Facts About Middle School Research Topics

• Interdisciplinary Impact : Research projects in middle school often blend subjects, such as the integration of art and mathematics when exploring patterns and symmetry, which helps students discover the interconnectivity of different fields of knowledge.
• Skill Building : Engaging in research equips middle schoolers with advanced skills in critical thinking, problem-solving, and time management, which are beneficial across their academic journey and beyond.
• Diversity in Content : Middle school research topics are notably diverse, ranging from examining the role of robotics in society to exploring the psychological effects of social media, catering to a wide array of student interests and strengths.
• Tech Savvy Learning : Technology-based research topics, such as the influence of smart cities or the impact of augmented reality in education, are deeply relevant to tech-savvy middle school students, making learning more engaging and relatable.
• Cultural Relevance : Researching topics like cultural traditions and their meanings encourages middle schoolers to develop a global perspective and fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation for the diversity within their own school community and the world at large.

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20 Literacy Strategies for Engaging the Middle Level Brain

By: Marcia L. Tate

Effective ways to enhance reading and writing experiences.

Recently, I was teaching a language arts class in Logan, West Virginia. The objective of the lesson was to analyze the impact of tradition on human behavior using narrative text. Sounds really dull, doesn’t it? It could have been, had I not used engaging strategies to facilitate the lesson. The vehicle for accomplishing the objective was  The Lottery  by Shirley Jackson. If you have not read it, you should!

Even though it was considered a short story,  The Lottery  contained a great deal of text, so I had to devise ways to help students. I placed students in pairs to facilitate discussion and divided the short story into sections. Before reading each section, I provided discussion questions  to give students a purpose for reading  the chunk. I read the first section aloud while students tracked the print in their books. Then a whole class discussion ensued that would provide answers for the designated questions.

For the second section, I continued to read aloud but paused periodically so that students could chorally provide the next word in the sentence. Section three needed some movement so we stood and chorally read this section with expression.

Section four involved partner reading where a student could elect to read a page, a paragraph, or pass his or her turn. It was during the reading of this section that many students realized that this lottery was not going to be

a good thing. By the time the lesson was finished, we had purposely used five brain-compatible strategies.

Whether you examine any of the research on how the brain acquires information, you will find there are 20 ways to deliver instruction. These instructional strategies increase academic achievement for all students regardless of grade level or content area, decrease behavior problems and make teaching and learning engaging.

Brainstorming and Discussion

Engaging students in a spirited discussion is a useful way to enhance comprehension. Teachers often ask recitation questions where the answer choice is either right or wrong. Discussion questions, on the other hand, can challenge students’ thinking since there can be more than one appropriate response. As a teacher, focus on facilitating discussions between and amongst students.

Drawing and Artwork

Many students have a natural affinity for drawing. Use it! I could have stopped periodically and had students draw a scene from  The Lottery . A picture of the box in which the lottery slips were kept would have been a good way to ascertain students’ attention to detail.

Field Trips

The brain remembers what it experiences when it travels to places in the real world. Having students make written predictions regarding what they will see on the trip and then write about what was seen are good literary activities to incorporate. Virtual field trips enable students to travel to places that would otherwise be inaccessible or cost prohibitive.

Nothing facilitates a good review better than playing a game. Dividing students into three heterogeneous teams and competing in a spirited game of Jeopardy is a good way to review major concepts prior to a test. Tossing a Nerf ball for students to catch is a great way to call on students to respond.

Graphic Organizers, Semantic Maps, and Word Webs

I would be hard pressed to teach any comprehension skill without the use of graphic organizers. This strategy appeals to both hemispheres of the brain. Create mind maps for teaching main idea and details, sequence of events, cause and effect, compare and contrast, and many other comprehension skills.

The job of the “class clown” is to research an approved joke and tell it at a designated time during the period. This role rotates among all students who choose to fulfill it. Jim Carey related the story of how one of his high school teachers made a deal with him that if he participated in class and completed all homework, he could have the last minute of class to tell a joke. The rest is history.

Manipulatives, Experiments, Labs, and Models

Having students read and follow the directions for an experiment or for building a model is a way to integrate literacy across the curriculum.

Metaphors, Analogies, and Similes

One of the highest level thinking strategies is the use of metaphors. When a student can find ways to compare two or more dissimilar things, they are really using their brains. For example, when teaching main idea and supporting details, I compare it to a table and legs.

Mnemonic Devices

Every content area contains acronyms and acrostics, shortened ways of helping students retain content. While these may not foster higher levels of thought, they go a long way toward increasing the amount of content students can remember.

Movement is my favorite strategy, since anything students learn while in motion has a better chance of being remembered. Having students form a living timeline is an effective way to teach and learn sequence of events.

Music, Rhythm, Rhyme, and Rap

Have students create a song, rhyme, or rap that depicts students’ understanding of a concept previously taught. While completing this assignment, they must employ one of the highest levels of thinking—synthesis—or the ability to take information and put it into a different form.

Project-Based and Problem-Based Learning

Take 10 or 15 literary objectives and incorporate them into a real-life project or give them a relevant problem to solve. These objectives will be mastered so much easier if students encounter them within the context of real life.

Reciprocal Teaching and Cooperative Learning

Having students sometimes work in pairs or teams to accomplish curricular objectives is a good way to ensure that they are career and “life” ready since the ability to work together is a major workplace and community competency.

Role Plays, Drama, Pantomimes, and Charades

When students act out the steps in a math word problem, pantomime a content-area vocabulary word as classmates guess it, or dramatize a scene from history, it goes a long way toward enabling them to remember the information prior to and after a test.

Storytelling

While invaluable in social studies, storytelling is a cross curricular strategy. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end and connect content together. These connections facilitate memory. Tell stories as you deliver content and then have students create their own and watch recall improve.

The use of technology is another workplace competency that every student should acquire prior to graduation. It is essential since so much literacy today involves computer literacy. However, I would like to add a word of caution. I have observed students who are so engrossed in technology that they have little time for anything else such as developing the social skills necessary for successful teamwork or the movement so essential for good health and long life.

Visualization and Guided Imagery

When authors do not provide visuals in a story, novel, or textbook, good readers are able to create their own visuals of what they are reading. Many students find this strategy difficult to implement since so many of the technological devices they interface with today have visuals provided. Pausing during read alouds and having students develop pictures in their brains of what they are seeing as they read is a good way is a good way to help them perfect their visualization skills.

We live in an extremely visual world. So visual, in fact, that at least 50% of students who walk into any classroom today will be predominantly visual learners. Comprehension is facilitated when students have visuals (pictures, captions, bold and subheadings, charts, and graphs) to assist them.

Work Study and Apprenticeships

Work study refers to apprenticeships, internships, and externships. In other words, it is on-the-job training. Can you begin to imagine how much informational text reading and comprehension would occur when students are learning to repair an engine, become a dental hygienist, or prepare culinary delights?

Writing and Journals

I have known good readers who were not necessarily good writers, but I have not known the opposite. Those who write well usually have a good command of the language which they use expertly to communicate their message. Even stopping periodically for quick writes facilitates memory and understanding.

The object of a learning experience is not to see how many learning strategies can be incorporated but to determine which ones are best for students and the content being explored.

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Printable Student Research Skills Worksheets

These worksheets are great for working on library and media skills. In order to complete these printables students will need to intensely research the topics independently. It is also a great idea to have them properly cite the references that they use.

Research Skills Worksheets Related To History and Social Studies

• Abolition of slavery in America
• Adolph Hitler becomes dictator after coup
• America buys Alaska
• American Constitution Drafted
• Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Berlin Wall built between East and West Germany
• "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Ireland
• Civil Rights Act passed in US
• Cleopatra becomes Queen of Egypt
• End of Crusades (Tenth) with defeat of Muslims in Israel
• Great Wall of China Is Built
• Henry Ford designs first mass-produced cars
• Ivan IV (the Terrible) crowned Tsar of Russia
• Julius Caesar becomes Roman Leader
• Joan of Arc burnt at stake after military campaigns against England
• John Cabot lands in Canada
• King John forced to sign Magna Carta
• Last major eruption of Mount Etna, Sicily
• Macbeth becomes king of Scotland
• Napoleon sells Louisiana to America
• Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal
• Poland and Lithuania unite
• Portugal achieves independence from Spain
• Portuguese travelers discover Congo River
• Reformist John Calvin regains authority in Geneva
• Republic of Rome Declared
• Teutonic Knights established in Prussia
• The Boston Tea Party
• Treaty of Paris
• Witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts

Research Skills Worksheets For Grade 3 to 6 Students

• Do The Research Worksheet 1
• Do The Research Worksheet 2
• Do The Research Worksheet 3

Research Skills Worksheets For Middle School Students

How to improve your research skills.

Research is one of the universal requirements that we come across more often than we think we do. Whether we are deciding which new car to buy, the best fat loss strategy, or authoring a thesis, research is one of the unavoidable processes we must go through.

It can also be said that when we go through research, we most definitely grow through it. Considering its ever-increasing demand, being a good researcher is a must-have skill. With the vast armada of information and disinformation available in today's world, the ability to separate useful from the highly abundant irrelevant material is indeed an art and a skill.

Like any skill, it can be learned, and if you are looking to tackle your woes of not being able to research properly, you've come to the right place!

In this article, five tips are highlighted for your consideration: time-tested tactics that people use and recommend related to searching and researching. These tips will assist you in refining your research skills and, if done properly, will result in speedy execution with less effort. Read on to find out!

Essential Tips on How to Improve These Skills

Research skills are essential for both your academic and professional lives. These skills enable you to identify problems, search for solutions to solve these problems, or perhaps even come up with new solutions altogether.

These types of abilities are necessary for building knowledge and facilitating the process of learning. With increased awareness, you understand social issues and become more aware of your surroundings. If you are well-researched and well-versed on a topic, you will be in a better position to disapprove lies and uphold the truth while building on creating authentic and reliable knowledge.

Here are some essential tips for improving your research skills! Plan Bottom-Up

When you are researching, you may be initially overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the task at hand. This is a common occurrence that the result of planning ahead can overcome. A recommended planning strategy revolves around starting on broad terms on the top and then narrowing it down into subsections.

Suppose you are writing a paper on a particular event in history. It will help you go through a general overview of the topic on an open-source online website like Wikipedia. It will give you a gist of the occurrence in a brief manner.

Now to narrow down on the causes, detailed occurrence, results, aftermath, and the effects of the event, you can search accordingly in search engines for more detailed articles.

The critical takeaway is to begin research by first getting a general overview of the article and then going into its depth after getting that basic understanding. This way, you will have a mental image of the desired product at each stage and will definitely hit the bull's eye without wasting excessive time and effort.

Verify Your Sources

The internet presents us with various options that are not always accurate in what they say. It is impossible to ensure the authenticity of everything that is listed online.

However, by cross-checking multiple sources, you will be able to establish fact from fiction. This may appear to be a time-consuming process, but it may actually be done through the correct use of search engines and websites with the reference list for the source of information.

Be Organized In Your Research

Being organized in your research pays more dividends with each passing moment. While the attraction is strong towards having more and more information available to us, it becomes a challenging task to keep it in a manner in which we can access it at the required time without making too much effort. Being organized can be done in multiple ways. For example, you can save essential links in the bookmarks section of your browser; this will enable you to access information quickly and easily while your record will be maintained effectively.

A second tip would be to keep an annotated bibliography of research material which you can use at a later stage as per requirement. Another way people keep organized is to make folders regarding different subtopics of your research topic, which can assist you when you need to cite a particular reference. These tips help you achieve optimal performance and are a must learn for the academic researcher.

Do Not Disregard Library Sources

Libraries are one of the best places to do research. Library resources offer organized systems with search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. The databases available in libraries contain a vast amount of data and information and superior searching capabilities that allow you to verify and evaluate your information sources. These databases come in different forms that are as follows:

- Catalogs - E-books - E-journals - Internet Resources - Trading Print Resources

So, if you doubt your research skills, you need not worry –there are numerous places where you can carry out research. Several high schools and colleges allow the general public to access their resources. So, keep an eye out for any such facilities in your area.

You can access research guides or gain access to specific databases by checking out the library websites. Remember that the key to successful research is knowing how to use and select appropriate resources that meet your requirements and are relevant to your study.

You may come across certain answers that sound surprising to you during your research. To be a good researcher, one must learn to be open to such answers.

If you only look for information that confirms your idea or thoughts, you are not doing a very good job. You would selectively pick and choose only that information supporting your theory. This approach prevents you from developing an accurate understanding of the subject matter. So, have an open mind while conducting your research.

The key to successful research is identifying the problem, collecting information from relevant sources, and verifying your sources. Remember to always be open in your research!

Does the Science of Reading Include Middle School?

What does research have to say about teaching older students phonics? Dr. Shanahan shares his insight as he reviews what “the science” is telling us. Reprinted with permission from Shanahan on Literacy 

Teacher Question

We have been working on strengthening and refining our early literacy instruction to be in line with the science. This has me wondering about the middle level. What does the science prioritize for middle level ELA instruction? Is there a point when teaching into a phonics gap for students does not have a payoff? With limited time in a middle school classroom, I am thinking about what needs to be prioritized. Some parents are wondering if phonics instruction should continue into middle school. This may need to happen for some students, but I imagine that Tier 1 instruction would focus on higher levels of structured literacy like morphology . I would be interested what the research says about teaching phonics in middle school.

Shanahan’s Response

Not surprisingly, most phonics instruction studies have been focused on preschool, kindergarten, and grade 1. The National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) and the National Reading Panel (NRP) reported clear benefits to such instruction: improvements in the ability to read words and nonsense words, spelling, oral reading fluency , and reading comprehension . Making explicit, systematic phonics part of a comprehensive reading and writing program for beginning readers is a no brainer.

There have been some studies focused on the teaching of phonics in grades 2 and up, but not many, and most of those studies were aimed at struggling readers or dyslexic students. That poses multiple problems – there are reasons to believe that those populations may be particularly difficult to teach effectively and the generalizability of those results to regular classrooms are dubious.

In any event, the NRP found few benefits to phonics instruction, beyond grades K-1. Here are some relevant quotes from that report:

“However, phonics instruction failed to exert a significant impact on the reading performance of low-achieving readers in 2nd through 6th grades (i.e., children with reading difficulties and possibly other cognitive difficulties explaining their low achievement). The effect size was d= 0.15, which was not statistically greater than chance. Possible reasons might be that the phonics instruction provided to low-achieving readers was not sufficiently intense, or that their reading difficulties arose from sources not treated by phonics instruction such as poor comprehension, or there were too few cases (i.e., only eight treatment-control comparisons pulled from three studies) to yield reliable findings.” p. 2-94

“The effects of systematic phonics instruction on text comprehension in readers above 1st grade were mixed. Although gains were significant for the subgroup of disabled readers (d= 0.32), they were not significant for the older group in general (d= 0.12).” p. 2-94

“Because most of the comparisons above 1st grade involved poor readers (78%), the conclusions drawn about the effects of phonics instruction on specific reading outcomes pertain mainly to them. Findings indicate that phonics instruction helps poor readers in 2nd through 6th grades improve their word reading skills. However, phonics instruction appears to contribute only weakly, if at all, in helping poor readers apply these skills to read text and to spell words. There were insufficient data to draw any conclusions about the effects of phonics instruction with normally developing readers above 1st grade.” p. 2-116

Of course, the NRP report is 23 years old… there must be lots of new research on this topic that would provide us with a more definitive answer to your question. Accordingly, I conducted a search of studies that focused on phonics in middle school and high school. I found only 4 studies worth mentioning and none of these were particularly encouraging. 

• One study had high school students tutoring struggling sixth graders in phonics, sight word phrases, and text reading fluency (Lingo, 2014). It reported fluency improvement, but it would be impossible to attribute this to the phonics portion of the intervention.
• Another study focused on a district school improvement effort that provided district wide phonics teaching (Hutcheson, Selig, & Young, 1990). They reported gains in word identification in the elementary and high school grades, but not middle school; and gains in spelling and reading comprehension at all levels. This study had no control group, so it is not certain to what to attribute these fall-to-spring learning gains (e.g., phonics instruction, maturation, other instruction).
• Denton and her colleagues (Denton, Wexler, Vaughn, & Bryan, 2008) implemented a multicomponent reading intervention in middle school, with English Learners who had learning disabilities. The intervention included phonics. The students did not do any better in word recognition , comprehension, or fluency than students in the regular program.
• Finally, an intensive phonics program was delivered for 12 weeks to 8 middle school students with learning disabilities. They improved in word recognition and spelling.

In other words, no convincing evidence

So, I dipped into the What Works Clearinghouse analysis of reading interventions. Few of the studies with older students focused on phonics. Nevertheless, I went looking for upper grades (Grades 2-12) evidence on programs that explicitly included phonics/ decoding instruction as part of their routine. The Clearinghouse had such information on 8 programs: Achieve3000, Corrective Reading, Fast ForWord, Failure Free Reading, Open Court, Reading Mastery, SpellRead, and Wilson Reading System.

An improvement in decoding ability?

What I wanted to see was, first, whether these programs improved older students’ decoding ability. The reason this is important is because for the most part, these programs included multiple components. If a program taught phonics and fluency, but only obtained improvements in fluency, it is unreasonable to attribute that gain to phonics. If the students had improved in both decoding and fluency, then maybe part of the fluency gain was due to phonics. This is an especially important consideration if the study evaluated decoding and reported no improvement. It is damning if a program taught phonics without any gains in decoding.

What I found was that several programs fostered improvements in some reading skills. For the most part, however, they either didn’t bother to look for increases in decoding, or they looked and found none in grades 2-12 (Achieve3000, FastForWord, Failure Free Reading, Open Court, Reading Mastery). The Wilson Reading System had improved students’ decoding skills in Grade 3, but without any accompanying gains in fluency or comprehension, while SpellRead improved decoding, comprehension, and reading fluency with students in grades 5-6.

To me, those reports are consistent with what NRP reported so long ago: not enough studies , most of the studies focused on Tier 2 teaching, evidence that it is possible to improve decoding skills in the upper grades with explicit instruction , but with little evidence that such improvement transfers or generalizes to overall literacy gains at least in regular classrooms.

I think it is fair to say that we don’t know much about how best to teach decoding in grades 2-12.

That doesn’t mean that students in grades 2 and up shouldn’t be receiving some morphology and spelling instruction, with a small amount of decoding work on things like multisyllable words or conditional spelling patterns. However, given current knowledge, phonics beyond grade 1 (and with the kind of limited scope just mentioned), it should mainly (though not entirely) be a Tier 2 issue. For most kids a regular daily regimen of vocabulary /morphology/spelling with those occasional decoding lessons should be sufficient.

If you had written to me in 1999, I would have given a somewhat different answer.

At the time, the studies that I knew had shown no positive outcomes for phonics with older students. Consequently, I’d have discouraged any additional phonics beyond grades 1 or 2.

The NRP work (I served on the Alphabetics committee) convinced me that we could successfully teach phonics to older struggling students in Tier 2 settings. But given the lack of transfer of those skills when taught to older kids, it was evident to me that phonics alone would not be enough. Now, I find myself shifting again.

Some, not all, may need targeted phonic instruction

Recent research has reported that a significant number of older students (here I mean middle school and high school) still lag in decoding ability to an extent not widely acknowledged in the field (Wang, Sabatini, O’Reilly, & Weeks, 2019, Magliano, Talwar, Feller, Wang, O’Reilly, & Sabatini, 2023). Those adolescents who can read at a third or fourth grade level – and higher – may need targeted phonics instruction despite those reading levels. Not long ago, I’d have discouraged this. I would have taken those students’ reading levels as evidence that they had sufficient decoding ability.

What research now reveals is that below a particular level of decoding proficiency, older students do not seem able to improve in reading – no matter what interventions and instructional approaches we adopt. Students above that decoding threshold, do manage to improve in reading from a wide range of instruction.

• Make certain that in your middle school classrooms that students spend considerable time on words – vocabulary, morphology, spelling, and occasionally phonics. I’ve long argued for 25% of the language arts time to be devoted to developing knowledge of words and how they work. I would suggest that such teaching be systematic and explicit.
• Be on the lookout for kids who are not able to decode proficiently. Vigilance is needed to keep kids from slipping through the decoding cracks. It doesn’t matter the source of those problems – inadequate primary grade instruction, learning disabilities, transfers from other schools – they need to be identified.
• Provide high quality Tier 2 phonics instruction for kids who need it. This kind of teaching is often available to elementary students, but it tends not to be in middle school and high school. At those levels, students may be assigned to an all-purpose intervention which can be enough for some kids. But those kids below the decoding threshold? They need a dedicated, explicit phonics intervention in addition to anything else you can provide to support their literacy learning. (Phonics is unlikely to be enough for those kids, but without it, they won’t advance).

Denton, C. A., Wexler, J., Vaughn, S., & Bryan, D. (2008). Intervention provided to linguistically diverse middle school students with severe reading difficulties.  Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 23 (2), 79-89. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2008.00266.x

Hooks, L., & Peach, W. (1993). Effectiveness of phonics for students with learning disabilities.  Journal of Instructional Psychology, 20 (3), 243-245.

Hutcheson, L., Selig, H., & Young, N. (1990). A success story: A large urban district offers a working model for implementing multisensory teaching into the resource and regular classroom.  Bulletin of the Orton Society, 40 , 79-96. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02648141

Lingo, A. S. (2014). Tutoring middle school students with disabilities by high school students: Effects on oral reading fluency .  Education & Treatment of Children, 37 (1), 53-75. https://doi.org/10.1353/etc.2014.0005

Magliano, J. P., Talward, A., Feller, D. P., Wang, Z., O’Reilly, T., & Sabatini, J. (2023). Exploring thresholds in the foundational skills for reading and comprehension outcomes in the context of postsecondary readers. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 56(1), 43-57.

National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000).  Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction . U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Wang, Z., Sabatini, J., O’Reilly, T., & Weeks, J. (2019). Decoding and reading comprehension: A test of the decoding threshold hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 387–401. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000302

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10 facts about today’s college graduates

Having a bachelor’s degree remains an important advantage in many sectors of the U.S. labor market. College graduates generally out-earn those who have not attended college, and they are more likely to be employed in the first place. At the same time, many Americans say they cannot afford to get a four-year degree – or that they just don’t want to.

Here are key facts about American college graduates.

This Pew Research Center analysis about U.S. college graduates relies on data from sources including the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Student Clearinghouse and the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as surveys conducted by the Center.

Everyone who took the Pew Research Center surveys cited is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about  the ATP’s methodology .

Nearly four-in-ten Americans ages 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree, a share that has grown over the last decade. As of 2021, 37.9% of adults in this age group held a bachelor’s degree, including 14.3% who also obtained a graduate or professional degree, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. That share is up 7.5 percentage points from 30.4% in 2011.

An additional 10.5% had an associate degree in 2021. About four-in-ten Americans ages 25 and older had a high school diploma with no further education (25.3%) or completed some college but didn’t have a degree (14.9%).

In a reversal, women are now more likely than men to graduate from college, according to the Current Population Survey . In 2021, 39% of women ages 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or more education, compared with 37% of men in the same age range. The gap in college completion is even wider among adults ages 25 to 34: 46% of women in this age group have at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 36% of men.

In an October 2021 Pew Research Center survey of Americans without a degree, 34% of men said a major reason why they have not received a four-year college degree is that they just didn’t want to. Only one-in-four women said the same. Men were also more likely to say a major reason they didn’t have a four-year degree is that they didn’t need more education for the job or career they wanted (26% of men said this vs. 20% of women).

Women (44%) were more likely than men (39%) to say not being able to afford college was a major reason they don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Men and women were about equally likely to say a major impediment was needing to work to help support their family.

There are racial and ethnic differences in college graduation patterns, as well as in the reasons for not completing a degree. Among adults ages 25 and older, 61% of Asian Americans have a bachelor’s degree or more education, along with 42% of White adults, 28% of Black adults and 21% of Hispanic adults, according to 2021 Current Population Survey data. The share of bachelor’s degree holders in each group has increased since 2010. That year, 52% of Asian Americans had a four-year degree or more, compared with a third of White adults, 20% of Black adults and 14% of Hispanic adults.

The October 2021 Center survey found that among adults without a bachelor’s degree, Hispanic adults (52%) were more likely than those who are White (39%) or Black (41%) to say a major reason they didn’t graduate from a four-year college is that they couldn’t afford it. Hispanic and Black adults were more likely than their White counterparts to say needing to work to support their family was a major reason.

While a third of White adults said not wanting to go to school was a major reason they didn’t complete a four-year degree, smaller shares of Black (22%) and Hispanic (23%) adults said the same. White adults were also more likely to cite not needing more education for the job or career they wanted. (There weren’t enough Asian adults without a bachelor’s degree in the sample to analyze separately.)

Only 62% of students who start a degree or certificate program finish their program within six years, according to the most recent data from the  National Student Clearinghouse , a nonprofit verification and research organization that tracked first-time college students who enrolled in fall 2015 with the intent of pursuing a degree or certificate. The degree completion rate for this group was highest among students who started at four-year, private, nonprofit schools (78.3%), and lowest among those who started at two-year public institutions (42.2%).

Business is the most commonly held bachelor’s degree, followed by health professions.  According to the  National Center for Education Statistics , about a fifth (19%) of the roughly 2 million bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2019-20 were in business. Health professions and related programs were the second most-popular field, making up 12.6% of degrees conferred that year. Business has been the single most common major since 1980-81; before that, education led the way.

The  least  common bachelor’s degrees in 2019-20 were in military technologies and applied sciences (1,156 degrees conferred in 2019-20), library science (118), and precision production (39).

There is a growing earnings gap between young college graduates and their counterparts without degrees. In 2021, full-time workers ages 22 to 27 who held a bachelor’s degree, but no further education, made a median annual wage of $52,000, compared with $30,000 for full-time workers of the same age with a high school diploma and no degree, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This gap has widened over time. Young bachelor’s degree holders earned a median annual wage of $48,481 in 1990, compared with $35,257 for full-time workers ages 22 to 27 with a high school diploma.

The unemployment rate is lower for college graduates than for workers without a bachelor’s degree, and that gap widened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. In February 2020, just before the COVID-19 outbreak began in the U.S., only 1.9% of college graduates ages 25 and older were unemployed, compared with 3.1% of workers who completed some college but not a four-year degree, and 3.7% of workers with only a high school diploma. By June 2020, after the pandemic hit, 6.8% of college grads, 10.8% of workers with some college, and 12.2% of high school grads were unemployed.

By March 2022, the unemployment rate had nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels for college graduates (2%) while dropping to 3% among those with some college education but no four-year degree, and 4% among those with only a high school diploma.

Recent college graduates are more likely than graduates overall to be underemployed – that is, working in jobs that typically do not require a college degree, according to an analysis of Census Bureau and BLS data by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York . As of December 2021, 41% of college graduates ages 22 to 27 were underemployed, compared with 34% among all college graduates. The underemployment rates for recent college grads rose in 2020 as the COVID-19 outbreak strained the job market, but have since returned to pre-pandemic levels.

As of the end of 2021, only 34% of underemployed graduates ages 22 to 27 worked what the Fed defines as “good non-college jobs” – those paying at least $45,000 a year – down from around half in the 1990s. The share of underemployed graduates ages 22 to 27 in low-wage jobs – those earning less than $25,000 annually – rose from about 9% in 1990 to 11% last year.

When it comes to income and wealth accumulation, first-generation college graduates lag substantially behind those with college-educated parents, according to a May 2021 Pew Research Center analysis . Households headed by a first-generation college graduate – that is, someone who has completed at least a bachelor’s degree but does not have a parent with a college degree – had a median annual income of $99,600 in 2019, compared with $135,800 for households headed by those with at least one parent who graduated from college. The median wealth of households headed by first-generation college graduates ($152,000) also trailed that of households headed by someone with a parent who graduated from college ($244,500). The higher household income of the latter facilitates saving and wealth accumulation.

The gap also reflects differences in how individuals finance their education. Second-generation college graduates tend to come from  more affluent families , while first-generation college graduates are more likely to incur education debt than those with a college-educated parent.

Most Americans with college degrees see value in their experience. In the Center’s October 2021 survey , majorities of graduates said their college education was extremely or very useful when it came to helping them grow personally and intellectually (79%), opening doors to job opportunities (70%) and developing specific skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace (65%).

Younger college graduates were less likely than older ones to see value in their college education. For example, only a third of college graduates younger than 50 said their college experience was extremely useful in helping them develop skills and knowledge that could be used in the workplace. Among college graduates ages 50 and older, 45% said this.

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Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center

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Search engines can streamline the process of teaching basic research to elementary schoolchildren who require expert guidance on how to navigate the Web — and the earlier, the better.

Elementary school is when kids first begin to learn how to learn. Kids start using search engines quite early on, making elementary school the perfect time to teach research skills that become a foundation for a lifetime of learning.

The base skill for all schoolchildren is the ability to sift content for relevance and accuracy. Here are five ways teachers can help improve this skill in elementary-age children.

1. Define the task

What exactly must be researched? It’s very easy to get lost if children do not know precisely what they are looking for. In elementary school the subjects may be relatively simple, but they still must be defined accurately to aid in the search.

Teachers should talk with students about what they will be looking for and how to get specific results. The more specific they can get, the easier it will be to come up with search terms.

2. Discover keywords

Elementary school students may not fully grasp the concept of keywords, so they’ll need to be instructed in this foundational aspect of search technology. Search engines perform well only if correct keywords are used, and students need to learn how to come up with those words to get the results they need.

Keywords are typically based upon the most common approach to discussing a subject. Often, it will take some trial and error to discover just what keyword combination yields the desired results. Teachers can create a whole lesson around keywords, including what they are, how they work and how to find them.

3. Use appropriate tools

Google and Bing are probably the most popular search engines, but they may not be the best for teaching research skills to young people. Teacher Mary Beth Hertz recommends one of the more popular search engines for students, Sweet Search, whose results are screened by experts. Using something like Sweet Search may make it easier to teach research skills by weeding out a lot of the chaff that so often comes up on the more popular engines.

4. Teach about source hierarchy and evaluation

Elementary students can comprehend the tiers of legitimacy related to information-gathering. Teachers can explain about primary sources, original research and the reliability of information found on the Web. Kids can learn about how information travels from research papers to news sources to blogs and so on.

By going through examples, teachers can demonstrate the way various information sources find their information and present it to the public, and how to determine which information is best to use for their projects.

Children may not need to cite abstracts from scientific research papers, but they can learn to seek information more intelligently.

5. Take notes and compile information

The complexity of note-taking skills will depend on the students’ grade level, but even kids in the younger grades can learn to take pencil to paper and record the most important pieces of information they gather. The better they get at finding quality sources, the easier the note-taking will become.

Students should also learn how to cite their sources appropriately.

Setting up a lifelong skill

Learning research skills at a young age will give students a skill that will serve them over a lifetime. This skill will not only be useful in school, but in their everyday lives as they attempt to absorb ever-increasing amounts of information. Teachers will do their students a great service in teaching these skills.

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Categorized as: Tips for Teachers and Classroom Resources

Tagged as: Early Childhood and Elementary (Grades: PreK-5) ,  Engaging Activities

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