Researching in Kindergarten | Part 2

Welcome to part two! In this post I'm going to share with you how the researching stage of this unit looks like in my classroom. If you haven't already, be sure to check out my last post where I discuss how I introduce the research unit to my class.

For this part of our unit my class will begin their research to answer the following questions:

• what does my animal look like (diagram)
• where does my animal live?
• what does my animal eat?
• what is an interesting fact about my animal?

They will utilize the various sources that we've introduced and explored. These sources include NF books from the library, Epic Books, and an online database called Pebble Go. I typically have students spend one day for each of the questions they must answer. This allows them to have ample time to locate the information and copy it onto their planning sheet.

Once their planning sheets are complete, students are now ready to begin creating their published non-fiction books. This stage is completed during our reading and writing blocks because we focus on both reading and writing TEKs.

Diagrams

For this lesson, students have the opportunity to review key text features of non-fiction/informational texts. The one feature we focused on was diagrams. We explored different texts and reviewed how diagrams help the reader understand the parts of something.

I found this awesome video that explores diagrams, too (although, we didn't watch the whole video). It was a great supplement to my lesson. I loved how it included various examples of diagrams and made planning this lesson easier.

Student-Made Diagrams

Now, students were ready to explore Epic Books or the books they checked out from the library to hunt for diagrams of their animals. I provided them their publishing paper where they were to copy the diagram from their source and include at least three labels. I was so proud to see them navigating their sources with such ease.

Preparing for misconceptions or confusion...

One aspect of this lesson that I had to make sure students understood was that they were not so much reading to find information, but rather perusing the pictures to find a diagram. I also wanted them to know that not ALL non-fiction books include diagrams. This meant they would have to look through a variety of books to find this text feature. Luckily, they were pros and were able to find some pretty great examples of diagrams to use for their books.

In part three of our research unit, I'll share how students transfer their information from their planning page to their final non-fiction books. This will be a 2-3 day process where students complete a page that answers the questions: what my animal eats, where they live, and their interesting fact.

Feel free to get my full research unit on TpT!

See you then and happy teaching!