The San Diego Zoo kids website has wonderful resources for kids. We took our kids to the computer lab and had them do a "zoo walk" where they looked up and explored on their own different information about amphibians. I highly recommend their website.
Students listened to various books about amphibians and recorded the information on their organizers. I would alert them to important information before I read and then they would have to tell me what they heard and where they should go on the organizers.
For their writing, they had to rely on the previous paragraphs to decide on an outline together. They came up with their own introductory sentences as a class, and they then had the option of picking one. They also came up with the starters for their closing sentences as a class.