2nd Grade Research

My 2nd Graders are awesome at research. We have been been reading nonfiction, taking notes, and writing reports all year. Their teachers are so great at collaborating with me, and it shows in the skills these kiddos have. Teaching with these lovely ladies is easy and fun--and our students learn so much! As I look at these completed new projects I am astonished at the growth we see in one year.

Recently, all second grade classes researched a different country from around the world. I helped them get started on the research part--then teachers continued in their classrooms. Students then worked with their teachers to learn skills about writing a paragraph to report their information. I taught them how to create illustrations in Little Bird Tales (which is one of my favorite multi-media creation tools for the primary grades--Go create a free account and play if you haven't yet!) I then worked with teachers to combine student work into books that have an illustration, a topic sentence, and a recording of students reading the paragraphs they wrote. They turned out great.

Check out our class pages with links to our books (I will link up to the last classes as they complete their books):

2 ANDERSON

2 OLSON

2 KATH

2 THEBERGE

Reading Party

Today we ended I LOVE TO READ MONTH with an All School Reading Party! What a fun way to end the day.

3rd Grade Research and eBooks

Students evaluating images and sketching
before using the computers

Our 3rd Graders have been studying Native American Cultures of the Southwest. This year, I collaborated with 3rd grade teachers to teach research skills and note taking. After students had completed their research, they were ready to start creating their multimedia project. We used drawing programs on the computer or the iPads to create images to go with the paragraphs that students wrote.

After looking at state standards, the teachers and I decided that for this project we would teach the students about evaluating images in the nonfiction texts they were reading to decide what to draw for their eBooks. After a mini-lesson on image evaluation, students used the research texts to find images that were appropriate for their eBooks. Students worked diligently to try to accurately represent the culture they were learning about.

After students had written their paragraphs and drawn their pictures I taught them how to move their documents into Flipsnack.

See our completed eBooks below.

3 Pang
Apache
Shoshone
Pueblo
Ute
Comanche
Hopi
Navajo


3 Plana
Apache
Ute
Hopi
Pueblo
Navajo
Shoshone

3 Bros
Ute 
Pueblo
Apache 
Hopi
Navajo
Shoshone  
Comanche

3 Hessler
Navajo 
Hopi
Apache
Pueblo
Ute
Chyenne
Shoshone 

2nd Grade eBooks

I have been working with our 2nd graders on research skills all year, and they are getting really good at finding the most important information as they read non fiction.

Right now, students are learning about different countries around the world. Students are going to culminate their research by writing an eBook using Little Bird Tales.

To practice each class is using this great free online resource to create a book about their class. Here is Ms. Anderson's class. Look for our Country Research soon!

• Click to view my tale.
•