How to do a Research Paper for Both Career Exploration and ELA
As you know, there's not ONE right way to homeschool high school. We at 7Sisters covered research papers each year of high school, as well as:
For our college-bound teens, each type of writing helped prepare them for classes at university. However, even our non-college bound teens experienced each of these writing styles, adapted for their needs and interests. Each our our teens (and the local teens we have advised over the decades) have benefitted from writing in a variety of ways.
Writing research papers can be useful and practical for teens. Some teens actually enjoy writing them. However, even those who do not get up in the morning asking to write a research paper have told us that the process has been good for them. This is especially true for building their ELA credits and Career Exploration credits.
Of course, research papers are part of each solid English/Language Arts credit.
It is good for teens to learn to dig for good information, digest it and communicate it through writing. Not only that, but it is good for teens to learn to share that information in different formats. For instance:
They can share basic, unbiased information in APA format. (This is a good first research paper format because it builds on the simple reports that they probably wrote in middle school.)
Teens can use their 7Sisters APA writing guide to gently work their way through this writing process. 7Sisters also offers this APA Research Paper Writing Guide in a format for states that reimburse for curriculum.
Not only that, but if they enjoy asynchronous instruction, they can use their writing guide with our online APA course.
Or they can explore an opinion through a thesis statement and learn to back it up with solid information in an MLA paper.
High schoolers have benefitted from working through 7Sisters MLA Research Paper Writing Guide, along with the free MLA Writing Guide syllabus.
Also, for families in states that reimburse for curriculum, you can download our MLA Research Paper Writing Guide that is appropriate for those requirements.
College-bound teens will find it beneficial to try out a Chicago-style research paper before they graduate. Many of our homeschool graduates have told us that they have run into all of these styles of research papers in colleges.
As part of the ELA credit, research paper writing helps build writing, thinking and time management skills such as:
Honing teen's ability to recognize reliable and good sources of information
This is an important skill in today's misinformation culture
BTW- a good tool to help check reliability of sources is our 7Sister Allison's method called SCAM
Strengthening their abilities avoid plagiarism
This, in particular, helps college-bound teens, who will write LOTS of papers then!
Learning to time-manage and project-manage using a syllabus and/or Scheduling Backwards
College Prep: Many of our local homeschool graduates tell us that their excellent training for research-paper writing (using 7Sisters' Research Paper Writing Guides, of course) truly gave them the leg up in their college classes.
So you can see, writing research papers are good tools for a strong ELA credit (and some life skills).
Now How to do Research Paper for Career Exploration
Here's a really useful, practical thing for homeschool high schoolers: When they write make their research paper topic about a possible career, they can log those hours for both ELA and their Career Exploration elective. That's one of the beauties of homeschooling high school: teens can integrate subjects (where appropriate). Career Exploration and ELA are a good example.
We recommend the APA-Style Research Paper Writing Guide for this project. Teens will use the logging Carnegie credit method to explore a career or careers of interest.
Homeschool high schoolers can research an interesting career field by:
Exploring CareerOneStop is an excellent place to start for the following information.
Various types of specific jobs. For instance:
Teens interested in Psychology careers could look into counseling, social work, organizational psychology, policy work, missions, human development and more.
Those interested in Engineering could look up job descriptions for various engineering fields like: environmental engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc.
Levels of training and education needed
Salaries that could be expected
Occupational outlook (Will there be jobs in the field in five years?)
Interviews with people working in the field
Read books or articles about the field and/or biographies of people in the field
Papers from homeschool high schoolers that I have read include: professional dancer, personal trainer, athletic trainer, psychologist, cosmetician, auto mechanic, HVAC and plumbing training programs, and more.
All of that information can be distilled into an interesting and useful research paper. It might inspire a teen to choose that career...or decide away from it, which is just as useful!
BTW- for teens who have never written much and feel reluctant to start right away on a full research paper, here's help:
We have a freebie that coaches a parent and teen together through a report-style paper. It is just fine for a novice paper writer.
Check out and download 7Sisters' user-friendly, step-by-step no-busywork research paper writing guides.
For more writing resources, check out these posts:
For tips on how to help your teen get their research paper done.
Why Writing Matters for College Bound Students, from our Cousin Cheryl Carter at Capable Scholar. (Plus Outschool writing courses from Cheryl.)