Writing the Research Paper: 4 Steps to Tackle Research Writing

By Dr. Natalie Fallert

I recently was in a classroom with a very green teacher, working toward certification via a nontraditional path. Their PLC was beginning the research paper unit, so they jumped in alongside everyone else. Within fifteen minutes, I quickly realized the students had been assigned the task but needed to be taught the process. Luckily, the teacher had just started the unit, and we could discuss what was happening and put a plan in place that made both the teacher and students feel successful.

Here are a few quick steps when tasked with the research paper.

Step 1: Break Down the Process

Take a moment to sit quietly, either alone or in your PLC, to break down the steps YOU would take when beginning to write a research paper. For example, I might list things like:

• Determine a topic
• Search for sources
• Read and take notes
• Organize notes/thoughts
• Decide what to use and what not to use
• Know how to combine it in some format (MLA, APA, etc.)

Now, there might be steps on this list that I’ve missed or that you may replace with something else. It depends on the demands/expectations of your PLC/district, the level of your students, and the tight or loose vertical alignment within your school. For instance, I didn’t mention how to properly embed an in-text citation or how to cite on a works cited page properly. Deborah Dean provides a great list of strategies she used in writing her book, What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practice. She explains that “there is not a master list” of writing strategies; yes, “some strategies are more universal than others,” and some “are more helpful in relation to a specific genre or task”. The key is to offer students various ways to research a topic, allowing them to choose the best approach to achieve a specific purpose.

Step 2: Understand Your Students

What do you inherently and/or with experience know about kids?

1. They want a quick way to access information.
2. Some students won’t read the source at all. Here, you need to ask why; yes, the easy answer is they are lazy, but in truth, they are most likely missing the skills necessary to tackle this nonfiction reading. Consider different reading strategies and practices to teach explicitly.
3. Others will read but struggle to distinguish important information from interesting information, connect ideas across sources, or take notes they can actually use later.
4. Their organizational structure is likely to be either terrible or nonexistent.

Each of these can become teaching points that enable your students to become more independent researchers and take some of the workload off your shoulders. Let’s face it, no teacher wants to write 120 different research papers every year!

Step 3: Consider the Big Picture

This is an excellent opportunity for vertical conversations, but you can still do this work if you are a lone wolf. Consider these things:

• What would you or your PLC/district identify as the hierarchy of skills when teaching the research process?
• Make a list of what comes first.
• Considering grade bands, break that list into focus areas for each grade level. You may need to revisit previously mastered skills frequently each year.
• Choose 2-3 focus areas and let the rest go.
• Seriously! You have to let some of it go. They will be fine–I promise.

Think of this analogy: When you teach a kid to ride a bike, you give them a bike that physically meets their needs, like a 14-inch bike with training wheels. You would never give a five-year-old a 24-inch ten-speed and expect them to be riding it with one hand, drinking from a water bottle, and yielding to traffic after a few weeks. Yes, this might be the ultimate goal, but it won’t happen until a few years of practice and physical and mental growth are cultivated along the way.

Just as we wouldn’t expect a child to master biking in a single lesson, we shouldn’t expect students to master every component of research in one assignment. John Hattie refers to this as “SOLO (structure of observed learning outcomes) method developed by Biggs and Collis (1982) to explain the movement from surface to deep learning as a process”. He simply explains that students will begin with one idea before moving on to many ideas. Then, they can consider related ideas and extend them into their writing, conversations, or other areas.

Step 4: Teach the Process, Not Just the Task

These previously mentioned items can become individual teaching points for the research paper. The key is to teach the process, not simply assign a task such as “Write a research paper.” Consider these ideas for lessons:

Consider creating mini-lessons like this for each item you listed above. Some might take more time than others, and some might be able to be skipped. Some might only need to be taught to a small group of students. In any case, if your students are not producing a solid research paper (for the expected grade level) entirely independently, it is most likely because they don’t know how to work through the process, so you need to teach them.

Every strategy students will use in the final paper deserves practice before it becomes part of the final assessment. Students should never be expected to use a strategy independently for the first time on a graded product. Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle have co-authored two books, 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents and 4 Essential Studies: Beliefs and Practices to Reclaim Student Agency, that offer examples of ways teachers can provide opportunities for practice. 180 Days provides examples of informative and argumentative writing opportunities that would build students' writing to tackle a full research paper independently. 4 Essential Studies offers research expectations and questions students can consider in the process.

Common Roadblocks

Complete choice

If your students are not independently skilled in research, then it might be better to have a few topics for students to choose versus free-range of topics.

Starting from scratch

If your students know little about a topic they will struggle to write well about it. It will be important to either choose topics students are already familiar with or provide opportunities for them to build background knowledge. Their background knowledge will allow them to ask better questions, so exposing them to short articles, videos, images, or class discussions that provide a basic understanding of the topic will pay dividends later. Students ask better questions—and find better sources—when they already know something about what they are researching.

Reading is the issue

Many students aren't avoiding the reading because they don't care—they're avoiding it because the reading is difficult. Research articles often contain unfamiliar vocabulary, complex sentence structures, dense informational text features, and ideas that assume background knowledge students simply don't have yet.

Research papers depend heavily on the language comprehension strands of Scarborough's Reading Rope. Students need strong vocabulary, sufficient background knowledge, an understanding of complex language structures, and the ability to monitor their own comprehension while reading. When one of those strands is weak, the struggle often begins long before students ever start writing.

Publishing the Research Unit

Before you put the finishing touches on your research unit, remember this: simplicity isn't lowering expectations—it is reducing unnecessary complexity so students can focus on learning. There is nothing simple about teaching it or the process. So keep in mind that every additional skill we ask students to master simultaneously increases the cognitive demands of the assignment. When students are trying to evaluate sources, learn MLA/APA formatting, synthesize information, organize ideas, and write polished paragraphs all at once, they often become overwhelmed. Prioritizing just a few instructional targets allows students to build confidence before adding additional layers of complexity.

It is also important to acknowledge that we sometimes think of the research paper as a writing assignment, but in reality it is first a reading assignment. Students cannot write well about information they cannot successfully read, understand, and synthesize. Strong writing grows from strong reading.

Teaching the research paper isn't about lowering expectations; it's about making expert thinking visible. The more we model the invisible decisions skilled readers and writers make, the more independent our students become.

References

Dean, D. (2021). What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practice, 2nd Ed. National Council of Teachers of English.

Fisher, D. (2017). Teaching literacy in The visible learning classroom: 6-12 classroom companion to Visible Learning for Literacy. Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Gallagher, K., & Kittle, P. (2022). 4 essential studies: Beliefs and practices to reclaim student agency. Heinemann.

Gallagher, K., & Kittle, P. (2018). 180 days: Two teachers and the quest to engage and empower adolescents. Heinemann.

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