This week I’ve been working with one of our incredible Biology teachers on a research project focusing on Cancer Awareness. She’s done versions of this project in the past, but wanted to take it to the next level with an enhanced research component and final product. I was beyond excited to get to work with her and support her students through the process!

The slide deck walks through the steps of the process I’ve been involved in, highlighting the steps we used for research. We used this project to take a very intentional and guided approach, which allows us to focus on specific skills. I walked students through the process of finding and citing a source from our online encyclopedia, a science-specific database, and the American Cancer Society website. We used NoodleTools for collecting and organizing our citations, then they created notecards as the located specific pieces of information.

They exported their References to create an Annotated Bibliography, then synthesized what they learned into a one-page flier to help raise awareness about the type of cancer they researched. I created a Canva template that they copied and customized for simplicity and consistency. Next, they will be working with our academic technology coordinator to create PSA style videos.

This was a great opportunity to introduce our students to APA format, as they typically research and write in humanities classes and default to MLA. It was also great to be able to practice key strategies for research and organization with a fairly straightforward topic.

With our big 9th grade research project on the horizon, this was a great intro for our freshmen in Biology. It was also a solid refresher for our sophomores who did their big research projects last spring.

For me personally, getting a collab going with a science teacher was a goal that I’ve had for a while now, so it was really exciting to finally make it a reality!