BJU Press Blog

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Research Papers: Embrace the Opportunities

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research papers and their opportunities

Sometimes, I feel like people don’t talk enough about research papers or give them enough credit. They might just be one of the most valuable learning opportunities you can give your children. After all, isn’t learning about a topic, knowing how to gather reliable information about that topic, formulating an opinion about it, and logically supporting that opinion with facts exactly what you want your children to be able to do?

Unfortunately, we’ve all seen—or written—one of those research papers that was all fluff, no substance, and somehow still got a good grade. I will readily admit that I’ve written a few of those myself. Obviously, the writer didn’t really learn anything, so what’s the point of assigning it? Research papers shouldn’t be just busywork. Each research paper you present to your kids is a beautiful opportunity for them to apply all the lessons you’ve been working on this year. And for you, a research paper is an opportunity to see how well your children have learned.

The Opportunity for Application

Science courses don’t include labs just for fun. Math courses don’t give math problems just to make it hard. Students need a chance to apply what they’ve learned in a new way so that it really sticks. And that’s as true for writing and reasoning skills as it is for the water cycle or long division. In a research paper, students can use those grammar rules they’ve learned to clearly communicate what they’re thinking. And, as they practice formulating an argument, they can use what they’ve learned about logical fallacies to make their argument strong.

Now, perhaps you think that the application questions in your child’s grammar workbook are enough. But applying grammar or logic rules to a sentence you’re expecting to be wrong is different from using those rules while you’re writing. Writers don’t think about the rules as they’re writing; they’re thinking about the next point they need to make or how thoughts connect. When you see your children’s writing, you’ll be able to know whether they really understand the rule. A research paper is a real-life, low-stakes opportunity to apply the rules—good practice for a job application letter or college entrance exam.

The Opportunity to Practice Critical Thinking

When students do a research paper properly, a lot of thought goes into the process. What kinds of information will validly support their thesis? How will they address information that contradicts their thesis? In addition to shaping their argument, they’re going to have to find and address questions that they might not expect. If they’ve never written a longer paper, they will need to learn how to adjust their process to account for the greater detail they’ll need. But it goes beyond just crafting the argument and planning out the project.

Researching also demands critical thinking skills. Remember that old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? You can write book after book about research techniques and finding information, but it’s all useless if the students don’t read comprehensively and consider the meaning. To research any topic, students need to actually think about the information they’re reading—which is something you often try to have your children do in a literature course. When they’re looking for information that supports an argument, it demands a whole new level of reading comprehension. I’ve had countless students who cited inappropriate sources for support because they didn’t actually read what their sources said. A research paper will tell you whether your children have developed their reading comprehension well enough to read information critically and apply it to their argument.

The Opportunity for Excitement

Have you ever found that, after spending hours on a single topic, you develop a unique interest in that topic? Writing about anything will leave that kind of impact. No matter what your feelings were about a topic before you decided to write about it, once you’ve spent hours researching it, developing an opinion, and writing and rewriting your argument, you’re going to have an interest in it and—dare I say?—an excitement about it. The same thing happens for your children when they write a research paper. They might not admit it. They might not follow up on that interest. But in the process, they will come away knowing something new.

While it is important to allow your children to write about what they love, they also need to be able to embrace a new, unfamiliar subject. Research papers are a valuable way to introduce children to new topics—even though they may not want that introduction.

In your homeschool, every chapter, every lesson, and every assignment is another opportunity for your children. Research papers may be a more challenging opportunity, but clear communication, reasoning skills, and learning are worth the effort.

Shopping for Math Number Sense at the Grocery Store

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Shopping for Math Number Sense at the Grocery Store
My wife Megan is a terrific teacher who effectvely uses real-life situations to teach our grade-school children number sense. When we recently celebrated our youngest daughter’s third birthday, our two oldest children wanted to buy something for her. So my wife gave them some extra chores and paid them enough money to buy one of those fancy helium birthday balloons—on sale for ninety-nine cents! My five-year-old stored her coins in a tin container made for holding tea.

Once they made it to the checkout line, Megan had the cashier ring up the balloon as a single order so my daughters could pay for their gift individually. When the cashier announced the cost, our kindergartener took her tin can and dumped all the coins out. Coins clanged on the floor and rolled to a stop. Then she started counting out the change for her purchase.

Megan said she was a little embarrassed, but our daughter counted out the needed change for her contribution to the gift, and our girls bought the balloon.

While the shopping excursion took extra time, it was a powerful homeschooling moment in my daughters’ understanding of math.

Starting with Creation

Children understand math when they begin their exploration of mathematical principles in God’s created order. When we teach counting, our family starts with counting grapes. Then we help our daughters learn place value by connecting blocks into groups of ten. We want our children to know that all those mathematical symbols represent something real. We call connecting mathematical symbols with the physical world number sense. It’s something they can touch and move. Starting with objects in God’s creation when learning math ignites a child’s understanding.

With the light of understanding, children are ready to practice so that math becomes automatic for them.

Practicing with Creation

We teach our children math so they can exercise good and wise dominion over God’s creation. This means that accurate computation is a means to an end. If we can show children that the math skills they’re learning will enable them to do more in the world around them, that gives math a purpose, and math mastery becomes more satisfying than getting a perfect score on a worksheet. They’re learning to solve real-life math problems by practicing with creation.

Bringing it together at the grocery story

Grocery shopping provides an ideal situation for developing number sense. Touching and moving physical coins and dollar bills allows them to manipulate objects as  they do the calculations. Then they can see how the money they have in hand corresponds to price tags in the store. This is the essence of number sense—knowing how those numerical symbols relate to the real world.

Now children are ready to use computation. “Do I have enough money to make this purchase? How much money will I have left over?” When they get older, they can calculate how much sales tax will add to their purchase. All of these activities demonstrate to children that their math skills are critical for everyday activities, such as buying groceries.

Math is a powerful tool for wisely stewarding the little part of creation that God has assigned to each of us. When we start teaching math to our children, it should have meaning that goes beyond plus and minus signs.

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The Bridge of Understanding

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bridge-understanding

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a similarity between my parenting and my homeschooling. In parenting, I’m less concerned about behavior modification than I am about my child’s heart attitude. If a little girl grabs a toy from her sister, I want to change her heart toward her siblings. But behavior merely reflects the heart. When a little one loves her sister, she won’t take toys from her.

The problem is that I can’t see what’s inside my child’s heart. However, I can see her behavior and then try to deal with her heart by questioning her about her behavior.

I think this is similar to education. The goal is understanding, but you can’t see understanding. It’s actually difficult to test for understanding. So how do we know when our children truly understand a concept? If we focus on facts, we’ll get surface level memorization from them. So what can we do?

The Bridge of Understanding

Understanding a topic is the critical step toward mastering more challenging cognitive activities. You cannot evaluate a piece of literature until you understand it. You also can’t apply math until you understand it. On the other side, if you understand who Napoleon was, it’s easy to analyze him. If you understand paragraph writing, you’re ready to create one.

So if your children can handle projects and test questions that require higher-order thinking skills, you know that they have moved beyond recall and now understand the topic. Here are four types of higher-order thinking that you can check for to see if your child understands a topic.

Apply

When we take a subject and use it in another context, we’re applying. Math, science, and grammar are easy to apply in everyday activities. Have your child use math concepts to plan snacks for a group. You might explain that each batch of cookies makes twenty-four and we’re expecting thirty guests.  How many batches should we make?

Analyze

Analysis sounds scary, but at the most basic level you’re just breaking a subject down into its parts and explaining their connections. In history or reading, small children can do analysis by making word webs. Meredith has an excellent post on word webs that can be applied to any subject.

Evaluate

Evaluation involves comparing something to a standard. Christians evaluate all academic subjects according to God’s Word. We also evaluate a writing sample against grammar rules and science hypotheses against observations. When children can use a standard to make a judgement, they understand their topic.

Create

Creating is a type of thinking that rewards children by allowing them to use the subject in a creative way. I was so proud of my second grader when she wrote a poem on kites after learning about poetry. It was better than any poetry I’d ever written. When students use principles from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to solve a problem, they’re creating in a satisfying way that conforms to the way God made us to function.

It’s hard to measure a child’s understanding of a topic. But understanding is a bridge that connects other activities such as applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. If we focus their learning on these higher-order thinking skills, we can be confident that our children have gained understanding. BJU Press homeschool curriculum builds bridges of understanding for children by having them apply, analyze, evaluate, and create.

Why choose BJU Press homeschool curriculum? Find out here.

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The Moral of the Story: How Not to Read the Old Testament

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Have you ever gotten lost in the middle of reading the Old Testament? Getting lost is easy because the Old Testament is long, the culture is foreign, and your recollection of the history may be fuzzy. From childhood, most of us have been taught to approach Scripture looking for morals to apply to our lives today. (Or maybe we just fall into this approach naturally.) But the Old Testament just doesn’t seem to provide what we’re looking for—unless we’re willing to stretch or twist the text out of context.

What’s the solution?

  • First, our approach to Scripture needs to change.
  • Second, we need to focus on the structure of the larger story of Scripture.
A God-Directed Approach to Scripture

Teaching children a foundation of biblical facts is important, and guiding them to make practical application should be an end goal. But the driving focus must be God-directed, not self-directed. Otherwise, children may learn all the morals for how to behave without recognizing the point—a right relationship with their Creator. For example, the point of the David and Goliath narrative isn’t to teach children to find courage in themselves. The point is to trust God because “the battle is the Lord’s” (1 Samuel 17:47).

Children need to be taught from a young age to look for what God reveals in His Word about Himself. And from those truths they can learn to look for what God has revealed to humans about having a relationship with Him. If we don’t teach children to approach the Bible this way, they may miss the Person at the center of it all; they may miss the all-powerful, self-existent God overflowing with love—the one all creation points to (Psalm 19:1).

Story of the OT
The Creation, Fall, Redemption Structure

Children need to learn to understand individual Bible stories according to the larger context of what the Bible is all about. The BJU Press textbook The Story of the Old Testament teaches young teens to approach Scripture theologically. That means that they understand the Bible to be the true story of what God is doing to glorify Himself by redeeming His fallen creation (Creation, Fall, Redemption). Why is this important?

The Bible isn’t a random collection of stories or moral platitudes like the Qur’an or the sayings of Confucius. Biblical morality must be grounded in the reality of the larger story of this world. And that story tells your children how to have a relationship with their Creator. No other moral system teaches what the Bible does; every other religion is false, no matter how laudable its morals, because the larger story of the world told in those other religions is false.

Even the truth of our need to trust God (another moral that can be drawn from the account of David and Goliath) doesn’t make sense unless children understand that David’s trust in the Lord rested on the covenant God had made with Israel when redeeming them out of Egypt. Similarly, the New Covenant cross work of Christ teaches us and our children to trust in God. Every story, every moral has to be seen in the larger context of the Creation, Fall, Redemption story line.

When you read the Old Testament and teach it to your children, remember that the morals that you want to teach only make sense when grounded in the overarching story (Creation, Fall, Redemption) that reveals who God is. Right behavior ought to be grounded in right beliefs (Titus 2:11–12).