Our class came up with the following criteria for researchers: - Discover - Observe - Look up information and study - Share what they have learned
“If someone thinks they’ve discovered frogs and then they do all this research and say ‘HEY look at all this about frogs’, people are going to be like, ‘Okay why are you telling us we already know.” - First Grade Student
It is time for our class to start becoming researches. Thus, we have set out on a huge class project where they will be conducting, collecting, observing, writing, editing, and publishing their work. We have faith that the students will do a great job.
We worked on the projects in the following order. Please navigate the website in this order in order to really see the progress that the students made throughout the 5 weeks that we worked on these projects.
Building Background Knowledge/Practice Research: Sea Turtles 1. Mammals 2. Insects 3. Fish 4. Amphibians 5. Reptiles 6. Birds
How Do We Collect Information?
Our students came up with the following list of ways that they can conduct research. We are so impressed with the wealth of knowledge that they have!
Books
Internet and Google
Watching the news
Newspapers
Ask an expert (can communicate through e-mail, letters, phone calls, text)
Explore
Travel
Videos
RESEARCHERS AT WORK:
Can you figure out what they are researching and how they are collecting information?
See what information you can discover about sea turtles!
Our Class Work
Our class did extensive research on sea turtles, and we are lucky to have real live turtles in our room that were there 24/7 for observation. Our kids are used to being around our friends Star & Casper and so they had a bit of background knowledge on the basics of sea turtles, so we thought this would be a good place to begin teaching the concepts of a research project!
Another big focus of this project was "drawing like scientists" and creating scientific drawings complete with labels and specific details. As a class, we decided on our favorite picture of sea turtles and pulled it up on the overhead. We then started drawing together, we would observe details and I would add them to my drawing as a model for the students. After we finished the basic outline, complete with labels, we allowed the students to add their own details (such as coloring, environment, patterns on the shell...) and they turned out beautiful!