Conduct short and sustained research, gather and assess authoritative sources with advanced searches, integrate evidence without plagiarism, and produce, revise, publish and update discipline-specific writing

Learning goal: Produce clear and coherent writing in which development, organization and style are appropriate to task, purpose and audience; develop and strengthen writing by planning, revising, editing, rewriting or trying a new approach, focusing on what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience; use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish and update individual or shared writing in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information; conduct short and more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem, narrowing or broadening the inquiry when appropriate and synthesizing multiple sources; gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources using advanced searches effectively, assess the strengths and limitations of each source for the task, purpose and audience, and integrate information selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation; draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection and research; and write routinely over extended and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes and audiences.

Task, purpose and audience shape everything. The same findings can become very different texts. Take the invented Pell Creek study from the science lessons: nitrate-nitrogen in shallow groundwater fell by about 72 percent across a 25-meter buffer, but a watershed model estimates that about 70 percent of spring water leaves the fields through tile drains that bypass it. For a lab report to a science teacher, the development is methodical (hypothesis, method, data, analysis, conclusion), the organization follows the report's conventional sections, and the style is impersonal and exact. For a one-page letter to the watershed group, development centers on the recommendation and its cost, the organization leads with the finding that matters to them, and the style is formal but plain. For a public explainer, development uses an analogy and one graph, and the style avoids jargon. Clear and coherent writing is writing whose development, organization and style fit its task, purpose and audience; the same paragraph cannot serve all three.

Revision is a set of different operations. Planning decides what the piece must do. Revising changes content and structure: adding the counterclaim you skipped, moving the strongest evidence earlier, cutting a paragraph that does not serve the purpose. Editing corrects sentences, word choice and conventions. Rewriting redrafts a section from scratch. Trying a new approach changes the form itself, for example turning a chronological narration into a comparison when the reader's question is "which explanation is best?" The skill is focusing on what is most significant for the purpose and audience: a draft with a wrong calculation needs revision before it needs a comma fixed.

Technology for producing, publishing and updating. Shared documents let a team draft together, comment on specific sentences and see the version history. Publishing online (a class site, a shared report) makes writing available for feedback. Updating in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information, is part of disciplinary practice: when next spring's flow measurements arrive, a posted Pell Creek report should be revised, with a dated note stating what changed and why, rather than silently edited. Readers who cited the earlier version can then see the difference.

Short and sustained research. A short research project answers a focused question in a class period or two: "What is the federal drinking-water limit for nitrate, and how is it expressed?" A sustained project spans weeks and synthesizes many sources: "Which practices reduce nitrate losses from tile-drained fields, and under what conditions?" A self-generated question is one you frame yourself from a problem you noticed. As you search, narrow a question that returns too much to use ("farm pollution in Ohio" becomes "nitrate in tile drainage in northwest Ohio"), or broaden one that returns almost nothing ("woodchip bioreactors on Pell Creek" becomes "woodchip bioreactors in Midwestern tile-drained fields").

Advanced searches. Effective searching uses the tools of the search engine or database: quotation marks for an exact phrase ("tile drainage" nitrate); a site limit to find government or university sources (site:.gov or site:.edu); a minus sign to exclude an irrelevant sense (bioreactor -pharmaceutical); a date range to get current work; a file-type limit for reports (filetype:pdf); and a library database's subject and peer-review filters. For print sources, a library catalog search by subject heading or keyword leads to books and printed reports, and a book's bibliography leads to further sources. Search strings are part of your research record, so another person could repeat your search.

Assessing sources for the task, purpose and audience. Authority is not a single yes-or-no. A peer-reviewed field study is strong on method and data but may be narrow in place and time, and it may be hard for a public audience. A state agency fact sheet is often current and practical (check its date and which office wrote it) but may summarize without showing data. A farm-magazine article reports farmers' experience and costs but may promote a product. A news segment reaches the public but, as the Pell Creek broadcast showed, can compress findings until they are wrong. For each source, state what it is strong for and what it is weak for, in terms of your task, purpose and audience.

Integrating information selectively and avoiding plagiarism. Use a source only where it advances your idea, introduce it with a signal phrase, and either quote a short, exact phrase or paraphrase in genuinely new words and structure, always with a citation. Patchwriting (keeping a source's sentence and swapping a few words) is plagiarism even with a citation. Overreliance means letting one source supply most of the evidence and structure of the whole piece, so that your own analysis and the other relevant sources drop out; a paragraph that analyzes or critiques one source is not overreliance when the piece as a whole weighs several. Follow a standard citation format consistently: sciences commonly use APA or a journal's author-date style; history commonly uses Chicago notes; your teacher will name the one required.

One citation format modeled (APA, 7th edition). Suppose you used this journal article (invented for this lesson): Harlan, M. J., & Ostrowski, P. (2025). Nitrate removal in a riparian buffer beside tile-drained fields. Journal of Riparian Field Studies, 14(2), 101–115. The reference-list entry gives each author's surname and initials, with an ampersand before the last author; the year in parentheses; the article title in sentence case, not italicized; the journal name and volume number in italics; the issue number in parentheses, not italicized; the page range; and, when the article has one, its DOI written as a link (https://doi.org/ followed by the number). In the text, a paraphrase is cited by author and year, (Harlan & Ostrowski, 2025), or narratively, Harlan and Ostrowski (2025) found that ...; a direct quotation adds a locator, (Harlan & Ostrowski, 2025, p. 108). With three or more authors, cite the first author's surname and et al. from the first citation. Every in-text citation must match an entry in the reference list, and every entry must be cited in the text. (The common exception is a personal communication, such as an interview or email, which is cited in the text only.)

Drawing evidence from informational texts. Evidence supports three different acts. Analysis: "The report's own data give a 72.3 percent decrease between the mean concentrations, not 75." Reflection: "I assumed buffers would treat all field water; the tile-flow estimate changed my view." Research: "Three sources agree that tile water bypasses buffers; they disagree on how much."

A fully worked model of integration. Source sentence (from the invented Harlan and Ostrowski article modeled above, for practice): "Because subsurface drainage conveys water beneath riparian vegetation, buffers on tile-drained fields intercept only the fraction of field water that reaches them as surface runoff or shallow groundwater." Patchwritten: "Since subsurface drainage carries water under riparian plants, buffers on tile-drained fields catch only the part of field water that reaches them as surface runoff or shallow groundwater." That is plagiarism. Integrated: "As one field study explains, on tile-drained land the drains carry water beneath the buffer's roots, so the buffer can treat only the water that reaches it across or through the soil (Harlan & Ostrowski, 2025)." New structure, new words, the citation in the required style, and the sentence serves the writer's argument.

Writing routinely. Disciplinary writers write both quickly and slowly: a ten-minute lab reflection, a one-day source summary, and a multi-week research paper with time for reflection and revision. Each has its own purpose and audience.

A misconception. Students often treat a citation as permission to copy. A citation identifies whose idea it is; the words and sentence structure must still be yours unless they are in quotation marks.

Worked narrowing and broadening: Starting question: "How does farming affect water?" Search returns thousands of general pages. Narrowed: "How much nitrate do riparian buffers remove from tile-drained fields in the Midwest?" Search string: "riparian buffer" nitrate "tile drainage" site:.edu. If too few results, broaden one element at a time: replace "tile drainage" with drainage, or replace riparian buffer with "conservation practices." Record each string and the number of useful sources it produced.

Worked source assessment (hypothetical source types): Task: a letter recommending practices to a watershed group. (1) Peer-reviewed field study: strength, measured data and stated methods; limitation, one site, three years, technical language the group may not share. (2) State agency fact sheet: strength, practical, written for landowners, and current if its date is recent; limitation, few data, so claims must be checked. (3) Farm-magazine profile of a grower: strength, costs and practical problems from a user; limitation, one farm, possibly promotional. Use: the study for the finding, the fact sheet for practice descriptions, the profile only to illustrate a cost concern, and not the profile as evidence of effectiveness unless its figures are documented and corroborated.

Worked revision focused on what is most significant: Draft paragraph for the watershed group: "Buffers are super important and do lots of good things for streams, like habitat and stuff. The report says 75% of nitrate gets removed which is really a lot." Most significant problem: the figure is wrong (the verified value is 72.3 percent) and it applies only to water passing through the buffer. Second: informal style for this audience. Revised: "In shallow groundwater passing through the buffer, mean nitrate-nitrogen fell by about 72 percent. Because the watershed model estimates that about 70 percent of spring water leaves these fields through tile drains, a rough estimate, assuming tile water and groundwater carry similar nitrate concentrations, puts the buffer's effect on total losses nearer 22 percent; measured flows would be needed to confirm it." Editing commas came last.

Research log (representation): For a self-generated question from your science, history or technical course, keep a log with columns for: the question as it stood that day; the search string and where it was run; the source found and its full citation in your required format; its strengths and limitations for your task, purpose and audience; and the note you took, marked Q (exact quotation), P (paraphrase) or S (summary). Record at least one point where you narrowed or broadened the question and why.

Routine writing: Across two weeks, write three short pieces (a ten-minute reflection on how your question changed, a one-day source summary, a paragraph of analysis using evidence from an informational text) and one extended piece.

Short research project: In one or two class periods, answer a focused question (for example, what the federal drinking-water limit for nitrate is and how it is expressed) from at least two authoritative sources found with an advanced search, and write a cited paragraph that synthesizes them.

Independent performance: Complete a sustained research project and write a 900- to 1,200-word paper or report answering your question for a named audience. Success criteria: (1) development, organization and style suited to the task, purpose and audience; (2) at least five authoritative sources, including at least one print source (a book, printed report or journal issue, found for example through a library catalog) and at least one digital source, with no central claim resting on one source where others are available (check claim by claim); (3) your search strings and a short assessment of each source's strengths and limitations included in an appendix; (4) information integrated selectively, with no patchwriting, and every source cited in one standard format, each in-text citation matching a reference-list entry; (5) evidence from informational texts used for analysis and for at least one reflection on how your view changed; (6) the draft shared electronically for feedback, and a final version published with a dated revision note that states what changed in response to feedback or new information.