Polar Animal Research

It's hard to imagine snow here in Texas where it is currently 106 degrees, but here goes nothing...


For this project we let the students choose which animal they wanted to research. Again, Nancy Deveneau and I went to several libraries to find books. In the end we narrowed it down to about eight different animals. (Sadly, there was not enough literature out there on the arctic fox- bummer!) Since the kids picked their animals the groups were multi-talented and had varied levels of readers. This worked out perfectly!

One important thing we did in the library before we officially started research is make a list of the books we were using. The kids had a typed piece of paper titled "Resources." Then it was numbered 1-6, although some groups had more than six and had to add on. The students wrote down the titles and authors of all the books (in groups of course, we don't want a student to get writer's cramp). In some groupse we had Zoobooks and other magazines so we showed them how to record this as well. Then, we let the kids look through the books and explore.

Before we started the project I asked the students to fill this out to the best of their ability. At the end of the research I allowed them to go back and add on. This was great for pre and post asessment.

After recording their resources and the pre-assessment (so about the third day), I gave each student a research packet. This included the research project page on top and all the corresponding pages behind it. I stapled it booklet style (three staples on the left side) to keep it together. I knew the kids would be flipping back and forth A LOT. Okay, confession, this was way more copy paper than I was comfortable using. I'm all about going green, but honestly it was worth it in the end.

Polar Animal Research Project

Size it Up

X Marks the Spot

Predator and Prey

That's Me!

Adaptations

Habitat Scat

Sorry the picture wouldn't upload- but this is one of my favorite pages!
Five Fabulous Facts

Polar Munchies

Dynamic Diagrams

A couple important notes about this project:

1. I went old school style and handwrote the page numbers. Yes, I'm sure there is a way to combine all documents and have a pretty little typed number on the bottom. If you figure that
out, please email me the upgraded copy! I didn't bother with this because I wanted to print my pages front to back and save trees. Once I had a finished copy front to back I added the page numbers to the bottom corner AND on the tic tac toe board. I wanted the kids to be able to find the activity fast.

2. On the X Marks the Spot page, again I went old school. I printed a world map from our online social studies resources, cut it out, and glued it on the page. Sorry I left a big blank space there, forgive me!

I hope this helps you in some way! If you use it please let me know how it works for you!

Research Unit

Long time, no blog! What happened to July?

So, today I'm posting one of my favorite research units. Three years ago I worked with an amazing teacher, Nancy Deveneau, to create this. Actually to say she is amazing is not giving her enough credit, I would give my right pinky to teach another year with her!

In first grade we had two research projects a year. The first unit was nocturnal animals which we started at the end of October and worked until Thanksgiving break. Nancy and I combed through several libraries to find nonfiction books that would be the "right fit" for our kids. We checked out over 30 books between our school library and two local libraries. We shared the books between our classes. First, we modeled how to conduct research in a whole group setting on bats. We did this for several days. Then, we assigned kids in groups and took them to our library. (Yes, I know, I hate assigning them in groups without letting them choose, but you will see in our next research unit that we gave them many more options when they had a research project under their belt.) We sorted the books by tables- so the skunk kids sat together, owls, etc. We had parents come in to help and of course our librarian was fantastic! We spent 30 minutes in the library for three days. After we worked for 30 minutes Mrs. Deveneau's class came in for thirty minutes, etc. On the fourth day the librarian talked to the kids about online resources and gave them time to practice. The fifth day of research the students printed some new info from these resources in the computer lab. Below are the pages they would fill out while in the library. Download the Owl Page




Download the Skunk Page



Download the Raccoon Page

After a week of researching the kids worked together to make their presentation boards. Within their groups they decided how they wanted to present to the class. Some groups performed poetry, others used this script to create a newscast. If you would like to see their podcasts click here. The third and final week of this project, the students also had to do some independent work at stations. This included an All About Book production and a descriptive paragraph about their animal using the stoplight writing method. I gave each student a grade using this rubric.

Also, tomorrow I will be posting our polar unit. We did this in January when the kids were really soaring with their reading and had experience with research. I LOVE the arctic/polar project we came up with and can't wait to share it with you. You will definitely see how we layed the foundation with night animals and then built up. Enjoy!