Elementary School Report Tips
What homework projects should my elementary school child expect?
There are usually two main types of elementary school reports. There is a book report where a child reads a book and writes a report about it. There is also a research report where you have to do some kind of outside research on a subject, whether it's a state, animal, famous scientist, famous woman, famous African American, etc. The elementary school child has to write a research report on that topic.
What is a "book report"?
Your basic book report is a report about a book the student's read. Your basic components, you've got to list your main characters, you've got to talk about the setting, you've got to do a basic plot summary. Usually students have to write some kind of review about the book, or if there's a moral or a theme in the book, they've got to put that in. A lot of times teachers will ask for a genre, so is it a historical fiction book, or an adventure book, a mystery book, what kind of book is it?
How can I help my child choose a great book to read for a book report?
When your child's choosing a book for a book report, the first point to consider is they should choose a book they're interested in reading and that looks good to them. The second point when choosing a book for a report is they should choose a book that's at the right level for them to read independently. This means they should be able to read ninety-five percent of the words well. If they read a paragraph out to you, if they miss more than one or two words then that books is probably too hard for their book report. Finally I try to avoid book for which there are movies because I find the kids have a really hard time sticking to the book and not just summarizing when writing their book report.
My child hates writing book reports; how can I encourage her to enjoy them?
There's going to be homework that every child hates. Some of them hate the math, some of them hate the book reports. One way to make them like book reports more is to just really try to help them find books or a set of books or ideally a series of books that they like and to keep reading them. And what my perfect thing is, is the kids read books and when a book report comes, they can do it on a book that they've recently read. So they don't have to read a book specifically for the book report. They've just finished a book or they're in the middle of a book when the book report's assigned and they can use that one, so something that they're already reading for fun. The other thing is, is if you have a child who tends to read books and not have any idea of what happened in them, read it with them. Rather than going through the whole thing having him feel like he's read the whole book but in fact not having understood it. Read it together. Switch off, read it together, talk about it as you go along and that way the book report in the end should be easier to write.
What is the secret to helping my child with his reports?
When parents are helping children write reports, their first instinct is often to think, 'I have to make it better - it sounds funny, or it's too choppy or it's too short or it's too childish.' One of the things you have to remember is your child's teacher knows your child; they know what the child is capable of, they know how they speak and what their writing skills are. So your child's teacher is not going to be surprised when your second grade child turns in a second grade level report. That's what they're expected to do so you should definitely let your child do that. The rule of thumb that I usually follow when helping children write reports is that if I can explain to them a change that I'd like them to make and they can understand it then it's acceptable. For example, "OK, so you'd like to do paragraphs, you want to break different ideas into different sections. What two ideas do you have in this report? ... OK, well, badgers are really furry mammals and I have a section on kinds of animals that eat badgers. OK fine, so could we break these into two different paragraphs?" If your child can keep up with you and understand what you are talking about, than you've taught your child something and helped them. When you sit down at the computer and start breaking things into paragraphs and moving things around for them, you're changing the report and they're not learning anything. The other thing your child learns is time management. They learn that if you want to find out all about badgers and write a really lovely report about badgers, you're going to have to invest some time into learning about badgers. If your child does not tell you about this report until the night before it's due to be finished - and invariably this will happen at eight o'clock at night the night before it's done - they're going to write a pretty crummy report about badgers. In my mind, that's just something the child is going to have to live with. If your kid can put in a good hour between eight and nine, you do your best, you put something together so they have something to turn in. Your child does her best, and you put something together so she has a report to turn in. The next time your child is set a report you say, "Remember that really great report you wanted to write about badgers? Let's write that really good report about dolphins now, let's start two weeks early and let's do it really well like you wanted to last time." You want them to learn from their mistakes if they procrastinate when writing school reports.
What is a "visual display" and how can one be added to my child's report?
For the reports, elemntary school teachers often want some kind of visual display. They usually have a little list of requirements for the report, and one of those is some kind of visual display. This is the sort of thing that often sends parents into a little tail-spin; they don't know what to do about it. When you are looking for a visual display for a report, you want to bear in mind that teachers don't usually want anything grandiose. They want something that shows that the child knows what an animal looks like, or what a map of the state looks like, etc. There will be bonus points for a child who actually draws something for his visual display, rather than print it off the internet. We now live in a world where printing a color picture from the internet is so simple. That's fine: Google image searches will bring up all kinds of pictures that you can print and put on your cover of your report. However, even better is if your child will then draw that image themselves. The other thing we do a lot for visual displays is cut things out of old magazines and make little collages. Sometimes we make little diaramas. We can put a little diarama into a shoebox, make a little creature out of styrofoam or clay, etc. If you have child that struggles with writing or language, a visual display is an opportunity to show that they are talented with physical things, and show off to classmates and teachers the fact that they've put a lot of effort into their work. My one rule to remember with visual displays is that the report gets done first and then the visual display can be done afterwards. If this isn't a rule, a child will spend weeks on the display and then the report will be done at the last minute.
How can I help my child write impressive research reports?
To me, the hardest thing about research reports for elementary children is that most of the material that's out there is written for adults. Children don't understand, and they often resort to plagiarism; with the internet, they just copy and paste things wholesale off the internet. Elementary teachers can tell when a 2nd grader is writing like a professional, but it's not really the 2nd grader who did it. The first thing you want to do with a research report is try to find material that's up to the right level. Go to the library, go to the animal section or state section, and try to find a book for a child that's on the subject they're researching .When I do internet searches, I often write 'badgers for kids' or 'badgers, children', and that will help bring you up sites geared towards kids. That's one step is help them find material that's the right level for their research report. The second thing to do is to read the material together and talk about it. One of the steps that so many children and parents skip is exploration stage. Read the research information together and they can put it in their report. They may change a few words around. The way you want to approach this is to read the whole book about badgers, for example, then read a couple of internet articles about badgers, then talk about what the most interesting things are about badgers. Get your child talking with what they learnt and liked during their research. You want to try to push your child into writing that spoken word onto the page, so that their report is really theirs, is something that they really incorporated the information they've researched. The best way to impress a teacher is by showing them something that the child did.
How can I help my child prepare for an oral presentation?
Oral presentations are often really hard for little kids. They get really scared. One of the best things you can is do, is just let them do it for you as many times as they want.So, they may need little note cards, they may need cheat sheet for themselves, but let them do it in front of you. Let them do it in front of their dolls, or their stuffed animals, or their baby sister, whoever it is. Let them do it front of an audience. Let them practice it a few times. Get some of it into their heads, and keep it low pressure. Let them know that every other kid is just as nervous as they are and they just need to get up there and put out their information, and the more that they do it, the easier it'll become, the easier it'll feel. So, just kind of be as brave as they can and go and do it.
How can I help my child organize his elementary school research report?
Although parents often like outlines - they seem very formal and organized - outlines are often daunting for kids. They seem too text-y, with too much about indenting and moving things around. For children, the first method of organization I like to use is bubbles. You put your main concept in the middle. We can talk about dolphins, and then what they eat. We put that they eat little fish, like plankton. Why are they special? They communicate with one another. Where do they live? They live in the ocean, in salt water. Then look at the different sorts of oceans and climates that they live in. It gives children a way of organizing their work: each little bubble and the facts around it become one of the child's paragraphs. That's a really visual way for the child to see the information that goes together. Other kids, you start having them write a bubble thing, and it's all over the place. By the time they fill in one bubble the whole page is filled, they've got lines squiggling all over it, and it doesn't help them organize at all. For those kids, sometimes it's better to use separate pieces of paper. On one piece of people you say what dolphins eat. On that piece of paper the child gets to write down everything they know about dolphins eating. Then, on a new piece of paper, where do they live? They live in the ocean, they live in these oceans, they live in these kinds of temperatures, etc. That way everything has its own piece of paper. When a child is going to put together each paragraph, they've got an organized set of notes for each topic.
What is the "one sentence per paragraph rule" for research reports?
One of the problems that students, parents, and teacher struggle with is plagiarism. I think it's kind of epidemic, especially with the internet it's really easy for kids to cut and paste and move things over. At college nowadays, professors are increasingly having students turn in their work through a website that actually checks how much of the work can be found on the internet and I know a number of high schools around here are doing the same thing.So, it's getting to be one of those things that we really want to teach kids, morally but also practically, how they can use information and not plagiarize it .What we work with is a "one sentence per paragraph" rule. Basically we ask kids to read through a paragraph in their source material, whether it's an internet page, a book, or an encyclopedia, and then give a one sentence summary and that's the summary that goes into their notes. It forces them to condense the information; it forces them to understand the information and it forces them to take a good hunk of information and put it into their own words. So, if you're really struggling with your child, and they really just want to copy things word for word - some of them won't do the outlines, won't do the clusters. They get really frustrated; they just want to write it.That's one thing you can say, "Alright, you're going to summarize one paragraph - one sentence for each paragraph that you read. "It's a little more of a direct writing process. It's not your ideal writing process, but at least you make sure that they understand what they're doing, that it's in their own words, and that they're not plagiarizing anything.
