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Senior Project: Home

Overview

The Research Paper must be 5-7 pages in length and must incorporate 5 sources (including one interview). In addition to teacher instruction, students will be provided video tutorials (to be viewed before the research process officially begins) that focus on research skills, available resources, and gauging the legitimacy of research.

Students may hand in assignments early and move on to the next step in the writing process; however, students must hand in each assignment by the teacher-assigned due date to avoid a 5% penalty for each day it is late.

Tasks

See Class of '26 Senior Project Research Paper Unit for more details and due dates.

  • Senior Class Research Paper Overview during CPT with Senior Project Coordinators
  • Teacher Instruction & Research Steps
    • Preliminary Research
    • Draft Thesis/Controlling Idea
    • Deep Research
    • Defense of Research Conference
    • Revised Thesis/Controlling Idea & Simple Outline with Working Bibliography
  • Writing Process (First Draft)
  • "Yes Test" Workshop
  • Paper Revisions
  • Submit Final Draft

Assessment

Before the holiday break, there will be a Mandatory Advisory Board/R.T.I. meeting during Eagle Block for any student who has not submitted a Senior Project Research Paper.

Mid-January Paper Revision Process: Students who do not score an 80 or above from their English teacher will be expected to make appropriate revisions, based on their teacher’s feedback, during this time period. 

  • January 28th: Revised Senior Project Research Paper DUE to Senior Project for Reading Day (these students will be sent a Google Form that they will be required to fill out - it will require that you attach a copy of your final revised paper)

February 3rd Senior Project Paper Reading Day: High School Faculty will read and assess papers during C.P.T.

Step 1: Preliminary Research

Preliminary Research

  • activates background knowledge
  • uses broad searches to find general information about a topic
  • requires finding targeted keywords to narrow your focus enough to draft a working thesis or controlling statement

Spend some time researching to identify topics of interest that you may want to explore in the paper. Remember, the topic you research and write about should in some way connect to your Fieldwork experience. Determine if your paper is going to be informational or argumentative based on your initial interests and findings. Individual teachers may assign a small initial research activity.

Develop your research topic with PRE-search strategies

Using your background knowledge, begin preliminary research. Preliminary research is not research used as evidence in your paper. It is an overview of your topic to help you learn a little more and determine what specifics you may want to focus on for your controlling statement.

Think about the following aspects:

  • What do you already know about your topic?
  • What do you need to learn to better understand your topic?
  • What kind of information resource might provide the answer to these questions?

Always consider your audience:

  • Who will read your paper?
  • Why will it be of interest to them?
  • What will be new to them?

Just a note:

The most time consuming part of any research project is the research. Plan your time wisely. Some 70-80% of your time should be devoted to reading and research so you thoroughly understand your subject. The remaining time is for writing. However, do not leave writing of the last minute. Remember, if you leave printing to the last minute, there are bound to be printer problems!

Your Librarian

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Sarah Hunicke
she/her
Contact:
Barrington High School
220 Lincoln Avenue
Barrington, RI 02806
401-247-3150 x225
Website

Meta-Search Engines

A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. (Wikipedia)