One of my all-time favorite units in reading/writing to teach is research. Year after year, my students find it to be highly engaging and I see them gaining so much confidence through each of the components. By the end of this unit, my students have truly become experts in their chosen animal and the best part is they've equipped themselves with a multitude of research skills. These skills include:
- identifying what sources are/their use and logging into those sources
- guiding their research through questions
- recording their findings with a graphic organizer
- sharing their findings with a culminating writing project and poster
It is always a joy to see the benefit of this research unit and just how engaged students are. Here's what our research unit looks like in my classroom!
Introducing Research
The first week of this new unit our class spends a lot of time building up their schema around the foundations of research. We discuss things such as:
- The purpose of research
- Steps to research
- Facts vs opinions
- Sharing our research with others
This helps students begin to conceptualize what research is and how they'll be moving through this process throughout the unit.
Exploring Sources
This year I changed up my introduction to research to include a day where students get to explore different sources. We discuss what sources are and how we plan to use them throughout the unit. The sources we use in our class include:
- Non-Fiction books (checked out from our school library)
- Pebble Go
- Epic Books
I spend a day or two for students to engage with and explore these different sources. At this point we haven't jumped into research just yet, but rather giving students the chance to explore and get excited about the work that's coming ahead.
We discuss the features of each source and students get a feel for the source they prefer and discuss why.
Pebble Go
PRO: In kindergarten, we love using Pebble Go (our district has a subscription) because it's an online source that's easy to navigate and the site reads to the students.
CON: One of the downsides to Pebble Go is that there is a username and password. For my kinders, this is tricky because they're only beginning to read/write. To help with this, I print our username and password for each student and tape it into their supply boxes. This helps me a lot because my more capable students get really good at logging in themselves and that frees me up to help my other students to log in.
So, after I model and they practice logging in, students have time to explore around the Animals section to decide on the animal they're most interested and excited to research about. By the end of this lesson, my students have chosen their animal and have experience logging in to the source they'll be using most often during this unit!
Asking Questions to Guide Research
Building upon their understanding, students then learn all about the steps to research: planning, researching, recording, and sharing. I simplify it into these steps to provide an easy-to-follow outline for my students. Furthermore, I explain that as they become experts they will be researching to answer four main questions:
- What does my animal look like?
- Where does my animal live?
- What does my animal eat?
- What is a fun fact about my animal?
First, we discuss how we already come to our research already knowing a little bit about our animals. We take a moment to share out one thing they already know. After this, students then begin to think about the questions that will guide their research in the four areas outlined above (a diagram of their animal, its habitat, its diet, and a fun fact).
I love sharing this video with my students which covers this exact topic:
Now that students have a strong understanding of the purpose behind their research and have guiding questions, they're ready to begin!
I use a simple graphic organizer that helps students track their research. This organizer is already broken into sections for each question students will answer. I collect this organizer after each lesson and pass them back out the next day for the next lesson.
Check out my next post to see what the researching stage looks like in my classroom! And feel free to get my full research unit on TpT!
