...and more research!

I fully intended on posting yesterday but was painting most of the night.  We are soooo close to being done with our kitchen remodel.  It's has been very time-consuming and a LOT of hard work but we are so happy with the results (so far)!  I'll show you pics when we're done!

Now on to research!  

Let me just start by saying - my firsties are AbSoLuTeLy LOVING their research every day!  It is so awesome to see them diving into a book to try and find facts on their animal.  They are totally using each one of their text features and it just melts my little teacher heart!  Last week I showed you the baskets of books with all of their specific animals separated.  I also have a table with books that include multiple animals.  I put it in the center rotation this week and gave them a sheet to write more facts that they find.  My number one rule was that they cannot flip through the pages of each book to look and see if their animal is included.  They MUST use the Table of Contents or Index to see if their animal is listed.  If it is not there then they cannot look through that book.  I truly thought I would have to "redirect" several students to not look at all the pages but they really - truly are following my directions!  I am so proud of them.  They are getting more independent every day!  

Here is the table of random animal books:

Here are a couple of sweet kiddos looking for facts on their animal:

The pages you see in the pictures are from the AmAzInG Susan from T.G.I.F.  I am using a few pages from her Creating an All About Book unit.  You have to get this unit to add to your informative writing collection.  It is great and Susan always has amazing ideas!

I am using a few of her pages along with my Woodland Animals Shared Research and Writing Project.  It is Common Core Aligned and includes 8 different woodland animals to research and write an informative paper on.  I also have a Safari Animals Shared Research and Writing Project that follows the same format but with 8 safari animals.

          

The next few days we plan on using bubble maps, circle maps and can/have/are charts from my woodland animals unit.  I'll show examples and let you know how it went!  Thanks for stopping by and have a great Wednesday!