So many “research reports” are really just “regurgitation re-writes.” Here’s one way to take a research report to a much more interesting level.
Differentiation TechniqueChange, Then Explain!
Read The OverviewSynthesize: Make A Change, Explain The Effect
I love the term "Synthesize" from the classic Bloom's Taxonomy, but it can be hard to know exactly what it looks like. My favorite "Synthesize Recipe" is to ask students to make a change to existing content and then explain the effects of that change to me.
Specific Examples of “Change, Then Explain!”
Create A Civilization: The River
Most humans want to live near fresh water, which means that most civilizations settled near a river! Let’s add a river to your students’ civilizations.
From “Summarize” to “Synthesize”
Even what seems like a low-level “summarize” task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Don’t Jump Straight to “Create”!
When we jump from “this kid likes board games” straight to “I’ll have them create a new board game”, we leave out important steps in the creative process and set kids up for disappointment (and end up with a lot of unfinished projects). Here’s how to scaffold a truly creative task.
Remix the Song “Help!”
Students took the classic song, Help!, and rewrote it to be about their collective summers.
Rewriting a Sentence With Different Coordinating Conjunctions
The first unit in our writing program was always teaching the coordinating conjunctions. It always felt goofy teaching this to 6th graders – especially a gifted magnet class. I mean… do they really not know the difference between “and” and “but”?
Creating A New Mathematical Operation
Do your students realize that addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all examples of the same idea: an operation? And that it’s quite possible to create a brand new operation? Let’s do it!
Creating A New Creature
We’re not doing a fluffy art project here. Kids are developing a realistic, made up creature that could have actually lived in a particular biome.
Reader Question: Unusual Animals
A reader asks how we can take the typical “look up facts online and then present with PowerPoint” task to an appropriate level of challenge.
Create A Civilization: Governments
My students, as part of their Create A Civilization project, had to select a type of government and explain its consequences. So I loved finding this list of all the different types of government.