First grade research is always interesting. I had to think a lot about how I wanted to do it. I really wanted them to understand the basics of questioning, discovering, and sharing new information with others, but in first grade some of my students are great readers and some are still struggling. We had just finished reading The Enormous Egg in January as a whole school, so I decided to go with the theme of dinosaurs for our research. As I was planning I discovered the Dinosaur Train Field Guide. This is an amazing website that can work on both desktops and iPad and it speaks (like speaks out loud!) great information about a bunch of different dinosaurs. Once I found that website I knew we had to use it because ALL of my first graders could use it and work on their listening skills.
So here is what we did. I created a QR code so the first graders had easy access to get to the website and I created a dinosaur graphic organizer where they could take simple notes. The notes they took were the categories that were on the website (what they ate, when the lived, number of feet (2 or 4), how tall they were, what type of teeth (flat or sharp) and they had to write down one cool fact about their dinosaur. I guided them through the process on the smart board, put them in pairs, gave them their iPad's and papers and they were off. It took three library lessons to finish this (we only spent about 20-25 minutes on lesson time before checkout). Most of the first day was exploring the different dinosaurs, most of the second was spent taking good notes and most of the third day was spent making their "Dinosaur cards" for the display. So I picked the Question, "How Tall were the dinosaurs?" to be our sharing question from our research. So each student, after they finished taking notes got an index card and drew their dinosaur and wrote its name and then added it to my dinosaur wall next to a sign saying how tall the dinosaur was. We used "kids" as our unit of measurement (The dinosaur was 3 kids tall). I wanted the wall to have the units spaced out so "4 kids tall" was actually 4 kids tall but that would have quickly gone through my ceiling, so we had to scale it down.
The kids loved this project, they loved the iPad research, the dinosaur topic. Overall I think they were happy and I was happy.
So here is what we did. I created a QR code so the first graders had easy access to get to the website and I created a dinosaur graphic organizer where they could take simple notes. The notes they took were the categories that were on the website (what they ate, when the lived, number of feet (2 or 4), how tall they were, what type of teeth (flat or sharp) and they had to write down one cool fact about their dinosaur. I guided them through the process on the smart board, put them in pairs, gave them their iPad's and papers and they were off. It took three library lessons to finish this (we only spent about 20-25 minutes on lesson time before checkout). Most of the first day was exploring the different dinosaurs, most of the second was spent taking good notes and most of the third day was spent making their "Dinosaur cards" for the display. So I picked the Question, "How Tall were the dinosaurs?" to be our sharing question from our research. So each student, after they finished taking notes got an index card and drew their dinosaur and wrote its name and then added it to my dinosaur wall next to a sign saying how tall the dinosaur was. We used "kids" as our unit of measurement (The dinosaur was 3 kids tall). I wanted the wall to have the units spaced out so "4 kids tall" was actually 4 kids tall but that would have quickly gone through my ceiling, so we had to scale it down.
The kids loved this project, they loved the iPad research, the dinosaur topic. Overall I think they were happy and I was happy.