Back in 2016, middle school librarian Ellen Brandt showed me this word
cloud, and I was gobsmacked. Why, I wondered, did these students have
such a negative attitude toward a process I relish?
The more I talked to educators about my concern, the more I realized
that Ellen’s students aren’t an exception. They’re the rule.
To find out why, I started looking closely at the kinds of research experiences
elementary students are having.
At many
schools, early elementary students are handed fact sheets. For them, “research”
consists of picking facts off that sheet and incorporating them into a written report.
Older elementary students are often given a list of “acceptable” websites and
told to use only them.
Suddenly,
the word cloud started to make sense. Students were bored because they
weren’t doing authentic research.
Real
research is like a treasure hunt—a quest for
tantalizing tidbits of knowledge. It’s an active, self-driven process that
requires a whole lot of innovative thinking.
For professional writers, books and the internet are just the tip
of the research iceberg. To create distinctive, engaging books, we think
creatively about sources. We ask ourselves:
Who can I
ask?
Where can
I go?
How can I
search in a new or unexpected way?
To get a
better sense of this creative spirit, I’ve invited two dozen award-winning
children’s book authors to post their favorite research stories here on Fridays
for the rest of the school year.
Today, I’m going to begin the series by sharing a research story that inspired my newest
book Fourteen Monkeys: A Rain Forest Rhyme, illustrated by the
uber-talented Steve Jenkins.
I fell in love
with monkeys during a 2005 trip to Tortuguero National Park in Costa Rica. In
the photo below, you can see me (left) exploring a rain forest area with my intrepid
mother-in-law. We’re watching a deadly fer-de-lance snake that our guide just
pointed out.
At Tortuguero, we were fortunate to see—and hear—three different kinds of monkeys.
Each morning,
howler monkeys awoke us with their long, loud, bellowing calls.
Later in the
day, we often saw spindly spider monkeys swinging through the trees.
One day, while
my husband, brother-in-law, and niece took a siesta, my mother-in-law and I
hopped into a canoe and headed up a local waterway. We saw frogs, turtles, a
caiman, and all kinds of waterbirds. The pièce de resistance was an adorable capuchin
monkey. For about 10 minutes, it sat in a tree less than 10 feet above us and
casually snacked on a red, feathery pachira flower.
After that
incredible experience, I developed monkey mania. In 2017, I discovered that an
astonishing fourteen species of monkeys inhabit Manú National Park in Peru.
More than any other rain forest on Earth!
How could so
many kinds of monkey survive together in one place? I was dying to find out—and
share my new knowledge with kids.
Only
scientists with a special permit can visit Manú, so my experiences in Costa
Rica were invaluable. My firsthand understanding of how rain forest layers act
as microhabitats and my personal observations of three monkey species that live
in Tortuguero and Manú, helped me create richer, more precise text for Fourteen
Monkeys.
While most
students can’t visit a rain forest, if they’re writing about an animal that’s
native to your area, they can go to a local nature center to watch it in action.
And if they’re
writing about monkeys or lions or polar bears, they may be able to visit a
nearby museum with an experiential rain forest or savanna or arctic exhibit.
No matter what
animal a child chooses, they can watch documentaries to gather general
information. They can also search for webcams in wildlife sanctuaries to see
the animals in real time. While documentaries usually capture an animal’s most
exciting moments (such as a lioness stalking and attacking a gazelle), webcams
can show more typical behaviors (such as a lion sleeping for 20 hours a day).
As students
write, they can watch YouTube videos over and over until the find just the
right words to describe exactly how an animal moves. For example, does a
particular frog gracefully glide through the air or does it make short clumsy
hops? (Check out the Using Vivid Verbs video
mini-lesson
on my website to see how I employed this technique while writing Fourteen
Monkeys.)
When students
are invited to think creatively about research, they will be more excited about
and invested in the process, and that enthusiasm will inspire them to craft
nonfiction that sings.
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4 Responses
I love it when you share your research process!
This series and the enthusiasm for research, Melissa, will change this attitude for students. Part of this issue has to do with the type of assignments teachers create. In the school library world, we have called these "Bird Units."
David Loertscher, Carol Koechlin and Sandi Zwaan (Beyond Bird Units, 2007) explore inquiry models that require students to think more deeply and analyze information to create new and deeper understanding. https://sites.google.com/site/bythebrooksdesignforlearning/bird-units
Yes! This WILL change student attitudes about research. Thanks for being one of my best Kidlit Yodas Melissa!
Such an amazing adventure all in the name of research…you're inspirational!