In high-school, I do the research-paper-in-stages thing myself, and it works really well–however, I have a different approach. I have them write whole chunks of the paper through out the year–I don’t care how they outline or take notes of whatever, because everyone has their own method, and I think forcing the means–rather than the outcome–leads to resentment from the brightest kids.
It works like this: I teach an American literature survey. At the beginning of the year, they pick a broad topic–women, or nature, or sex, or, or race, or religion, or whatever–to research. For each literary period we study–Puritanism, Rationalism, Romanticism, Realism/Naturalism, and Modernism–they write a 2-3 page paper that sums up the period in general and what the secondary sources have to say about their broad topic in that time period, and ending with their own analysis of the way their topic is portrayed in a primary source from the period–usually in the novel we read for class. Each mini-paper has a bibliography.
I labouriously line-edit each mini-paper, noting mistakes and making suggestions. Then, in the spring, they copy-and-paste them all into one document, write an introduction–with a comprehensive thesis–and a conclusion, and integrate thier bibliographies. It works very well because we aren’t mastering any one skill and then building on it, but repeating the same skill set over and over. The idea of establishing a solid foundation to build on has an aesthetic appeal, but it doesn’t work, because minds don’t work like buildings. Nothing is ever really mastered: if you try to master one skill and then move on, you always forget whatever you think you mastered. Instead, students need to be taught all the skills they need more or less at once, then you let them do badly, correct them, let them do it all again, correct again, repeat as needed. It’s in the repeition that they learn, and conventional research paper models don’t really allow for repetion-with-feedback, because once the big paper is over, you’re done.
If you were teaching someone to cook a feast, you wouldn’t have them make a menu one week, prepare a grocery list the next week, shop the third week, set up the kitchen the fourth week, cook everything the fifth week, and serve the food on the sixth week. You’d have them plan, shop, set-up, cook, and serve each individual dish each week, and then have them cook everything together for the final meal.