So, one of the big questions I've been grappling with has been: how should we frame out what a good research paper looks like? How should they be graded, in a way that is specific but asks for a well rounded and well written paper?
Overall, I've decided to try using the CARs rubric as a guide for what we should be doing. As a part of this, in class today we brainstormed most of the important topics and vocabulary necessary to explain and understand inheritance.
Now, since the CARs rubric requires that a topic be explained in such a way that no reasonable questions are unanswered, we then talked about the importance of considering (as you write) what questions your reader may have. In essence, it is important to envision any sort of research or explanatory paper as a dialogue or conversation between the author and the reader. The problem is, of course, that the author cannot hear the reader, so they must try to anticipate the reader's questions and confusions and answer them and clarify them in advance.
This is not easy. Nonetheless, most everyone did impressively well.
To practice this, we took our brainstormed ideas and chose the best one to start with. Every single class picked the obvious starting place: explaining inheritance. We then tried to anticipate what questions a reader may have about inheritance, and then go on to answer those questions. Then, we tried to anticipate what new questions might come up. In general what this did was build a sort of outline of the order in which topics should be presented and discussed in the paper. For example, one class came up with:
1. Explain what inheritance is.
2. Explain what traits and genes are.
3. Explain dominant and recessive alleles
4. Explain phenotype versus genotype.
5. Explain homozygous and heterozygous genotypes
6. Explain zygotes, gametes, and haploidy/diploidy.
7. And now we're back to meiosis...
We practiced this a little, writing an explanation and then reading them to each other so that we could ask what questions our partners could ask. Finally, we worked alone on fleshing out our outline into a full explanation/research section (on inheritance) which is due tomorrow.
The final point we discussed was that of how to cite properly: a lot of people have been quoting huge chunks of text, and then paraphrasing them. While this is an important skill, so is simply paraphrasing what was learned during research. In general for this sort of research paper it is better to write what you've learned, and then simply indicate where you learned it, rather than copy something down and explain what it means. (Usually, this is a stronger indicator of what you've learned.) So, for now in citations, all I'm looking for is once you've written out an explanation of an important topic, that you indicate a place where I can find that information to prove you did not make it up. You will give the details of where to find it in the resources section at the end of your paper. In your paper, all you need to do is give me just enough information in parentheses at the end of a sentence or section to let me find the right resource in your resource section. Usually, this means that you indicate the author and page number if its a book, and the title and location if a handout, or the website name and date accessed if a website (huffordstevenson.weebly.com, 3/13/2014.)
In any case, your rough drafts are due tomorrow. spelling isn't critical, but sequence, clarity, completeness and accuracy are.
Night!