 |
| An example of a "Research Tree" students created to help guide their research. |
By Katie Jones
The end of the school year is less than two months away, but that doesn’t mean students aren’t doing anything in their classes. The juniors have another joint project between their Technical Reading and Writing (TRW) and Chemistry classes. This time, instead of writing instructions, students will be writing a manuscript. The manuscript project will last until the end of the year, and students will be doing a variety of things for this project.
The juniors will be learning how to conduct and communicate research, test water, and compose a scientific manuscript. By doing each of these things students will increase their understanding of compiling research to provide context for their original research as well as communicating their research in the way that scientific journal articles would.
Specific to Chemistry, students will be focusing on acids and bases, the design of a research project, and solution concentrations/calculations. In TRW, the juniors’ learning will be more research and writing oriented. They will compile outside research into an annotated bibliography and use that research to write a scientific manuscript. Scientific manuscripts are unpublished research articles. In addition, students will have the opportunity to send their manuscript off for publication in various high school science journals.
Before writing the manuscript though, students had to first create a research question. For some groups, this was a rather long process with many revisions to the original question. One of the ways students refined their questions was by creating a research tree. These “trees” had the driving question of the entire project at the bottom, with the students’ own question on the tree trunk. Each group then added branches to the tree which had suggestions of things to look up that related to their questions.
However, research trees aren’t the only resource available to the juniors. To help in the process of creating this manuscript, several outside guests have or will come present to the juniors. These presenters include Chad Hammerschmidt, who is an Earth and Environmental Sciences Professor and Director of Graduate Programs at Wright State University (WSU) and Deanne French, a Statistical Consultant at WSU. Kate Excoffon, Associate Professor and Biological Sciences Associate Professor at Wright State University, will also be speaking.
However, what many students are most looking forward to are the field trips that they will be going on for this project. The juniors will go on field trips to the pond behind DRSS, Delco Park, and Woodmen Fen. Along with these three locations, they will also visit bodies of water/wetlands in and near various MetroParks like Wegerzyn Gardens, Island MetroPark, and Eastwood. Alyssa Jackson, one of the students going on the field trips, says that, “I really like that we get to go on an all-day field trip. I’m especially excited to visit the ponds.” Mrs. McDaniel, the TRW teacher, is similarly looking forward to the project stating that, “One of the things I’m most excited about is getting outside when the weather is going to be warmer, watching students do research, and then learning how to really communicate their research like they will in the real world and in their future career fields.”
