Now that you’ve gathered all of your information, it’s time to organize your research. This will help you plan your presentation and visual aids so that it will make sense to you and your audience.
Begin by cutting apart your facts carefully. (The source boxes can be glued onto the bibliography sheet in alphabetical order.) You may want to store your facts in an envelope or ziploc bag so that you don’t lose any. Don’t throw any facts away!!

After you cut apart the facts, categorize them by placing them into groups. You may want to refer back to your essential questions to help establish categories. You should have three to six different categories, depending on the complexity of your topic and the depth of your research. There are many ways that you could organize your information, but we will use the Spider Tool, Flow Tree Tool, and/or Outline. These examples were sent home in the parent packet.

Spider Tool (1st and 2nd graders; optional for other grades)
Use a large sheet of paper and draw an oval in the middle. Write the topic of your study inside the oval. Then glue or tape down your facts in the categories you’ve established. Label each category. If you like, you can draw lines or arrows to show relationships between the categories.

Flow Tree Tool (3rd - 5th graders; optional for other grades)
Use a separate sheet of paper for each category. Write the name of the category at the top of the page and glue or tape down the facts in that category.

Outline (4th - 7th graders; optional for other grades)
Fourth and fifth graders will also need to create a simple outline of the research. Each category will be a topic. You may be able to further divide the categories into subtopics.
Example:
Topic: Knights
I. History
A. China
B. Vikings
C. Ancient Greece
D. Great Britain
II. Apparel
A. Armor
B. Weapons
III. Training
IV. Daily life

You may find after you organize your facts that you have very little information in a category or that an essential question was not answered. At this point, you will go back to the research step to gather more information.