Meaningful Work: How the History Research Paper Prepares Students for College and Life

Many elementary teachers teach students to write, but this writing tends to focus only on students writing about themselves or writing short stories. Because students do not spend enough time in the early grades reading nonfiction in science and history, they lack the knowledge--of both content and the nature of nonfiction writing--necessary to undertake research papers in middle and high school. To really teach students how to write, educators must give them examples of good writing found in nonfiction books and require students to read them, not skim them, cover to cover. Reading nonfiction contributes powerfully to the knowledge that students need in order to read more difficult material--the kind they will surely face in college. But more importantly, the work of writing a research paper will lead students to read more and become more knowledgeable in the process. As any good writer knows, the best writing emerges from a rich store of knowledge that the author is trying to pass on. Without that knowledge and the motivation to share it, all the literacy strategies in the world will not make much difference. In this article, the author suggests that schools start assigning a page per year: each first-grader would be required to write a one-page paper on a subject other than himself or herself, with at least one source. At least one page and one source would be added each year to the required academic writing, so that fifth-graders, for example, would have to write a five-page paper with five sources, ninth-graders would have to write a nine-page paper with nine sources, and so on, until each and every high school senior could be asked to prepare a 12-page history research paper with 12 sources. Such a plan would gradually prepare students for future academic writing and could also reduce the need for remedial instruction in writing (and perhaps in remedial reading as well) when students enroll in college. The author contends that if school districts adopted such a plan, it would not take high school teachers nearly as much time as it does now to teach students to write history research papers; students could draw on the knowledge they gained in previous grades to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, formulate an argument or a narrative based on those sources, develop a bibliography, and write and revise numerous drafts. (Contains 1 footnote.)