Tips and Ideas for Research Projects in the Classroom

Research projects for kids are easy and fun. Elementary teachers who need templates and printables for their lesson plans this post by Clutter-Free Classroom will help. It includes animal research, country research and biography project ideas for kids.

Research projects allow students to become thoroughly informed about an engaging topic. They encompass a lot of different skills and can be integrated into any subject area. Best of all they prepare students for real-life learning by teaching them how to gather information. The benefits don't end there. There are many other reasons to make them a part of your classroom including the following:

TIME MANAGEMENT

Research projects provide opportunities to practice time management skills. This takes time. The more guided practice students are given, the better they become at knowing how to pace themselves.

EXPLORATION OF INTERESTS

More and more often students are told what to read and what to learn. Research projects give them some choice. Choosing what to learn about makes practicing those important reading and writing skills so much more enjoyable which results in increased learning.

REPLICATES THE REAL WORLD

Students are not going to be students forever. As adults we are not handed passages on a subject, told to read them and then answer questions. We seek information based on our interests or our need to know something. Making independent research a regular activity in your classroom sets the foundation for real-world learning.

MAKES ENRICHMENT EASY FOR A TEACHER

It's extremely challenging to meet the individual needs of every learner in your classroom. Having ongoing research projects is an easy way to consistently provide valuable learning opportunities to the children who quickly complete other class assignments and demonstrate a need for enrichment.

CREATE A RESEARCH STATION IN YOUR CLASSROOM

Set up an area in your classroom where students can easily access what they need to get started on an independent research project. This may include highlighters, graphic organizers for brainstorming ideas, and some books that provide inspiration. For example, if you were to offer an Animal Research Project you may want to put out some books that show a lot of different animals with a brief summary about each. This is a great way for your students to initially become engaged and interested in learning more.

PROVIDE TIME FOR ALL STUDENTS TO RESEARCH

One of my favorite things about independent research projects is that the students ALWAYS have something to work on. The projects completely remove the problem of “I’m done...What do I do now?” This is great for your more advanced students and for the fast finishers. However, you do want to make sure to also build some time into your schedule to allow ALL students to enjoy learning about a topic of choice.

The easiest way to do this is to take a cross-curricular approach and integrate an independent project into your daily schedule. Let’s look at a biography research project focused on learning more about the life of an individual. You can have your students research people who have made contributions to science or who have impacted history in social studies. In math they could create a timeline of the person’s life.

ENCOURAGE KIDS TO COLLABORATE

I have found that it is more beneficial for research projects to be completed individually. This makes it easier for a student to work on his project at home or when free time arises in class. Group projects require a lot of skills that really should be taught and practiced with supervision. However, there are ways students can collaborate even when completing projects independently.

Let students who are working on similar topics work in groups so they can learn from each other.
Have students interview each other about their topics. By sharing what they have learned and having their peers ask them questions, the children are able to dive deeper into their research and expand their learning. This also may help students become interested in more topics when they learn about them from classmates.

SHOWCASING KNOWLEDGE CREATIVELY

After picking a topic, conducting research, and taking notes, your students should be little experts on the person, animal or thing they researched. Strive to find creative ways to show it off. I always ended each school year with animal research projects.

There have been years when I let the kids pick any animal at all. Other times I have let them pick from within a category. Once I transformed my classroom using a beach theme and had the students research ocean animals. Another year I went with a Camping Theme and the students each researched a woodland creature. We displayed these at our end of year open house. In addition to the activities in our animal research packets, I encouraged each student to come up with a creative project to complement their work.