Research starts with a topic and a question. Once you have a topic, you need to ask some questions. Questions will guide your research. Questions will make your project more interesting to you, and help you when you are stuck.
In the research project you are working on, what questions do you have? What do you wonder? Why did you choose this topic to research? At the beginning of a project, you want to think of lots of questions!
When we talked in class, we came up with lots of questions we could ask about the meaningful Americans we are studying. We broke those questions up into two categories: fact questions and thinking questions.
Fact questions are questions that you could answer by finding the exact piece of information that will answer the question. Sometimes you can think of a fact question that you can't answer! (For example, you might ask "What was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s favorite kind of ice cream?" and not be able to answer it is not information you can find in a biography of him.)
Some examples of fact questions:
- When was this person born?
- Where did this person live?
- Did this person get married?
- Did this person have any brothers or sisters?
- Where did this person go to school?
- Why did this person decide to become a ________?
Thinking questions are questions that you have to think about for yourself. To answer a thinking question, you need to decide on your opinion and support it with evidence. Your opinion is what you believe. Evidence is the reasons why you believe, the "because..." that support your argument with.
- What was the most important moment in this person's life?
- Did this person have a good childhood?
- Why was this person meaningful/important/famous?
- Is this person someone we can learn a lesson from?
- What is this person most known for doing?
It is good to balance fact questions with thinking questions. If you answer too many fact questions in your research, your report might not be very interesting!
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