Honors Biology Research Part I: Beginning Research

Each year the BVH library works closely with the Honors Biology team to engage students in the research process for a year-long project.  The project requires students to come up with a topic and hypothesis, write a literature review, complete an experiment, and then report on that experiment. Although the middle school teachers and librarians do an incredible job preparing students for high school research, these kids still require much support throughout the process, and we are happy to have the opportunity to teach these skills.


This year the teacher/librarian team is joining up more then ever, and we have broken down the research process into steps which will necessitate six lessons in the library.  We began by introducing a libguide with resources ranging from databases and websites to handouts and tutorials.  The kids got some time to poke around the guide and determine their own topic.

The first real instructional support the students received in the library centered on database instruction and generating search terms. We introduce the concept of Boolean searches and run students through examples of each type of search.  Students then download a document attached to their libguide that allowed them to enter in their hypothesis and search terms prior to beginning research. We find that generating these terms helps students not only think more deeply about a topic, but also prepares them for the information retreival process.

Once students have their terms identified they will comeplete their own Boolean searches using two terms of their choosing and the operators and, or, and not.  Once they have finished, we will look at their number of search results and determine whether or not they successfully used Boolean operators.  We find this to be a quick and useful means of formatively assessing student understanding, which allows us to follow up with kids who struggle with the concept before they get very far into the research process.

So far we have found much success breaking the process down into manageable parts with guided support for new researchers.  We are VERY grateful to the Honors Biology team for allowing us so much time with thier students, and look forward to the next portion of the assignment!