Ender's Game Research Project Materials

Promote student choice and facilitate the process of researching relevant topics from beginning to end with this low-prep activity to conclude a unit on Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Students will choose from thirty research topics—addressing ideas such as real-life child soldiers, humanitarian organizations, Project Blue Book, the Fermi paradox, space travel, and other events transpiring as recently as 2023—and navigate academically appropriate sources with the goal of teaching their peers about their topics. A detailed scoring rubric is provided. Materials are delivered in Word Document and PDF formats.

Ultimately, students will perform the following tasks:

• Articulate connections between a research topic and the assigned novel
• Conduct research using available resources
• Collect and classify reliable sources
• Develop successful methods of recording information
• Evaluate the credibility of nonfiction texts, taking into consideration readability, date, relevance, expertise, and bias
• Apply conventions of MLA formatting
• Correctly site resources to avoid plagiarism
• Organize information in a cohesive manner, using a note-taking system that includes summary, paraphrasing, and quoted material
• Analyze, synthesize, and integrate information, generating a thoughtfully comprehensive report, free of generalities and redundancies
• Present information in a formal, coherent manner