More Research and Reading

Yesterday I posted about the awesome research strategy I had found in Ralph Fletcher's book, Non-Fiction Craft lessons: Teaching Information Writing K-8.  I am still really excited about that strategy, but noticed yesterday afternoon that most of my students were only focusing on one, maybe two, of the categories for their habitat research.  I started brainstorming and came up with a visual for them to use that would help them organize their notes and let them see if they had facts about each category.  I find that the more hands on and visual the better this class does.  I took a large piece of butcher paper and folded it into fourths.  Then I labeled each square with the categories the children are supposed to be finding information for.  One of our research groups volunteered to organize their facts on their chart for us this morning.  They discovered that they only had information for the animals that lived in their habitat.  "Uh-oh!" they said.  This afternoon they are more focused and more confident!

Rachel said, "This helped me and Tel a lot because we were only finding the animal facts."