I-Search: Prewriting, continued

Once you have your I-Search Report Map in place, you can start to fill in some information from your notes to prepare for answering your IQs in paragraph form.  In fact, now is a good time to see if you've really gathered enough information to write a good paragraph about your IQs. 

If it turns out that you don't have enough information from your sources to answer at least three of your IQs, you may need to find another source.  You may also want to change your questions, but you must make sure that they follow the guidelines for Interesting Questions.  When you change your questions, you also have to remember to put them in your Top Ten I-Search Topics story, like this:  example. 

If you find that you don't have enough information from your sources to answer even two of your questions, you may need to change your topic entirely.  It could also be that you haven't found enough sources yet.  You know that you can change your topic and your IQs, but doing that takes time.  You need to be committed to finding, reading, and paraphrasing more information in your notes either way. 

Here's the AIM for today's lesson:  Students will type (or copy and paste) their IQs into their I-Search Report Map, then begin to write some notes under each IQ using information they found while reading and paraphrasing information from their sources.  Students will begin to evaluate whether they have enough information to answer their IQs and decide on a good way to solve this problem if they don't. 

Here are today's lesson steps:

1. Create a new screen so you can read these directions and work on another screen. 
2. Log into the 8th grade site and click into your name page. 
3. Click into your I-Search Report story and replace the "First IQ" with your real first IQ.  Then continue this process until all five of your IQs are typed into your I-Search Report. 
4. Next, open another new screen, and then get into your I-Search Notes story. 
5. Type or copy and paste information from your I-Search Notes under your IQs in your I-Search Report. 
6. Evaluate your progress so far: do you have enough information to answer your IQs?  If not, do you need to find more sources or change your IQs?  Do you need to change your topic?  Once you decide, start taking steps to either find more sources, change your questions, or change your topic.  Ask me or Ms. Carroll if you need help. 
7. Post your work regularly to avoid losing work