My high school science students all seem really busy writing their term papers for the class. The papers are worth forty percent of their final grade and it makes me happy to see that they all seem to be taking it very seriously. I have given them a lot of class time to work on it, and they all seem to be using the time very wisely.

I never used to assign these research papers. In fact, I assigned them to one class that I was having issues with. That particular class was not paying attention in class and I felt like I was wasting my time trying to teach them. It did not seem as though they were learning anything.

I figured if I gave them a long essay to write, they would at least learn something and they would do it on their own time. That class ended up working really hard on the project and did very well. I decided that I would use this method with every class, as it seems to be the way they learn the most.