Something about the impending holiday season always seems to inspire classroom teachers to make their first foray into research for the year. :) There are currently 3 classes in the midst of a research project, one just wrapped up, and one started today. It always cracks me up that teachers all seem to want to do research at once. What have we been working on? I'm so glad you asked!
Third Grade: Students had been studying animal classification systems. Their assignment was to create an ABC book for each animal kingdom. The students were organized into 6 groups based on their interests. Each group sat at a table with a number of books with information about their kingdom. The first step was for students to immerse themselves in the books and brainstorm as many words for each letter as possible. I had a graphic organizer with each letter of the alphabet, which students filled in while building background information. Then students worked together to gather information for the different letters. To keep track of sources I had students put a post-it note on each book they used. This is their very first experience doing "research," so we had a discussion about plagiarism and the importance of giving credit to the sources we use. However, I didn't want to bog them down with recording each one. They had a plethora of sources and lots of letters to find information for - I felt that this group would not be able to handle a bibliography as well. As long as they thought about it enough to indicate the source they used, that was enough for a first project. I then compiled the bibliography for each team. The students finalized their alphabet books in the classroom, and tomorrow we're going to begin the final piece: a Blabberized animal! My fingers are crossed that the technology plays nice tomorrow morning - although we will probably just be planning tomorrow.
My goal is post tomorrow about the other projects we've been working on. I know you're on the edge of your seat!
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