Happy Saturday! (And I'm so glad it is Saturday!!)
It has been a loooong week and I kept meaning to sit down and write this post, but never did! So glad it's the weekend (even though it will fly right by)!
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| So true!!!!! |
Anyway, back to business! Right after Spring Break (which was sadly 3 whole weeks ago!), we started our Animal Research Projects. I've done this project every year that I've been teaching and it is always a lot of fun! The week before Spring Break, I have each student pick the animal that they want to study. I send a note and a little research guide home over the break and ask parents to help out with research at home. I usually get most of them back filled out, but there's always a few that come back empty-handed. No big deal, we just find some books in the library and do a little online research in class.
Then it's time to take our research and write it into our research journals.
I pull the kids in small groups during writing time, so it takes about a week to get everyone done. This year, our awesome librarian showed us World Book Online. We had half of the class looking up their animals online while the other half looked through books and worked on their illustrations. It was great!!
After our journals were complete, we went to the computer lab to type up our research into a Kidspiration web. I love using those webs because it is easy for the kids to use and it looks great as a part of the final product.
Once our projects are complete, the last thing we do is have a party!! I love to invite other classes to come see our projects as a warm up for the kids. They're a little shy at first, but then they do such a great job. On the Friday after we're done, I always invite the parents and admin and other teachers to come and see the projects as well! We had a great turn out this year and the parents were really impressed with all of our hard work. It was so great to see how proud everyone was of their project!
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| Did you see my little photo-bombing friend? She tried to do that in every picture! Love her!! |
Love these big, cheesy smiles!!
What are your favorite traditions from your classroom? I would love to hear what you enjoy doing each year!!
Thanks for sharing. We start our research unit next week. We are going to do research on birds and at the end we will dress up like our birds to present our research. I've never used kidspiration webs before, those look super neat. My kids really like popplet, they have a web verison and one for the iPad too.
ReplyDeleteSince this is my first year in second, I don't have any favorite traditions yet but I know our bird research and our greek myth study will both be high on the list. :)
Stephanie
The Learning Chambers