ABSTRACT
he first thing teachers have to show the students is that organizing the research information is the most important groundwork they can lay for their writing. The thesis statement should be a well-crafted sentence; not a list of topics. New vocabulary works best when teachers can file it away in a folder in their mental filing cabinet that is already filled with words they are comfortable with. Once the organization has been built and the thesis has been fully developed, it is time to write. Kathleen Murdough is a ninth grade Social Studies teacher for a rural regional high school. Her students, coming in from five different middle schools, often show up to her heterogenous classes with varying skills in the classroom. Her higher-achieving students had fallen into the dangerous trap of longer always being better. No matter the ability of the student, she realized that her students had some difficult habits to overcome.
