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Unit III: Lesson Seven
Focused Research Essay
- Using all the information gathered about family
life in the Great Depression from documents, photographs, and sound
recordings, assign the students to write a five-paragraph essay about
family life in the Great Depression.
- Students form a thesis about family life in
the Great Depression and support this thesis by drawing upon specific
details learned from the study of the primary source materials. The
thesis should be a main question about family life in the Great Depression.
Discuss with students that in writing the paper, they are creating a
secondary source by using the results of their focused research.
- Teachers usually ask students to write a thesis
statement and think of a thesis as a declarative sentence not as an
interrogatory one. In the Grandparent/Elder
Project, the approach is different. Students are asked to begin with
a main question, an interrogatory sentence. The interrogatory sentence
becomes transformed into the thesis. This approach is purposefully taken
in this lesson and throughout the Grandparent/Elder project because
learning how to ask good questions leads to better student research
and writing. The use of questions as guiding tools continues in Unit
IV: Conducting and Presenting Research.
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