For this assignment, students should be at the stage where maybe they had a broad topic idea and have done some research on their own to start narrowing that topic down (i.e. they may have started knowing they wanted to write about the ocean, but after research have a narrower topic of plastics in the ocean). Now they are ready to think of a more specific research question.

Step 1 - Free writing - have students write their topic at the top of the page. Then give them a few minutes to write about why they choose this topic. Next, give them time to write about what they already know about this topic - this should be information they discovered in their preliminary research.

Step 2 - Brainstorm questions. Now, give them time 10-15 minutes to list questions about their topic that they would like to answer through their research. They should make the list as long as they can.

Step 3 - Sharing out. Their are a number of formats, this assignment can take. Students can type on a Power Point presentation - one page for why this topic, the next for what they know, the next for questions - and then you can have them briefly share out with the class and have students add to their list of questions after they have presented. Or, you can do a gallery walk - to do this, the students can either write on large sheets of paper hung on the wall or they can print out documents typed on their screens or they can simple leave the document open on their screen. For the gallery walk, students should walk around the room and see what topics their classmates are doing. Require them to respond to a certain number of classmates by adding a question they can think of on the topic and checking off which of the existing questions they think is the most interesting. When done, the students will have an idea of what their classmates (and potential audience) want to know about this topic.