Animal Research
Collaborate with classroom teachers to work on a research project that meets their science curriculum standards. Here are some excellent resources for elementary school students:
www.kidsclick.org/midanim.html
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals
Equipment needed: computer and color printer
Software needed: Internet browser, Kidspiration or online graphic organizer software such as Webspiration or Bubblus
1. Introduce students to graphic organizer software. Explain that they will make a bubble for each fact they find about their animal. Think out loud as you demonstrate separating a bundle of facts about hawks or koalas. Model putting the facts in your own words. Model saving your document.
2. Allow students several classes to research their animal and collect their facts in the graphic organizer.
3. Demonstrate creating “super groupers” and sorting facts. Have a class discussion about how you can divide up your facts. The science teacher I collaborate with likes these categories: facts, families, and habitat.
4. Students create super groupers and sort their facts. At the end of the class they have an outline to guide their writing.
Animal Comic
Last year my third graders researched animals for a science unit and created animal comics to show what they learned. These were a huge hit and students were incredibly motivated to finish their work and to show them off to their families and peers.
Equipment needed: computer and color printer
Software needed: Comic Life and word processing software
1. Explain the criteria to students. Our criteria looked something like this:
Write at least 2 sentences in the third person that include facts about your animal. For example: Hello. I am a red-tailed hawk. I get my name from my cinnamon red tail. I am a large bird with rounded wings and a short tail.
Write at least 2 sentences in the third person that include facts about your animal’s habitat. For example: I can be found in most of the United States. I prefer open land where there are fields for hunting the small mammals I like to eat.
Write at least 2 sentences in the third person that include facts about your animal’s family life. For example: After my mate and I build a nest I will lay eggs. The eggs will hatch in about a month and my young will spend another 45 days or so in the nest.
2. Explain what it means to write in the third person.
3. Give students time to write their sentences, typing them into a word processing document.
4. Remind students to spell-check their sentences.
5. Show students how to find a picture of their animal. I prefer to use a public images such as those found at www.morguefile.com.
6. Demonstrate how to use Comic Life to insert an image, add speech bubbles, copy and paste text from a word processing document into the speech bubbles, and add a title.
7. Students should save their work and print it when finished.
Lionel’s Tall Tales
Use this interactive website to explore sentences. Each one has a who, what, where, when and why. Mix them up for some silliness. http://pbskids.org/cgi-registry/lions/cor-tales.pl/click
Best Day Ever Comic
Third and forth grade students created comics about their best day ever using KidPix and Comic Life.
Equipment needed: computer and color printer
Software needed: drawing software and Comic Life
1. Students brainstorm their best day ever. Who was there? Where were you? What were you doing?
2. Students use drawing software to illustrate their best day ever. Students could also illustrate this by hand and their drawing could be scanned to make it an electronic image.
3. Demonstrate exporting a drawing and dragging it into iPhoto.
4. Students export their drawing as a jpeg image and import it into iPhoto.
5. Demonstrate Comic Life, how to open it, set up a page, drag in an image, add speech bubbles and fancy lettering.
6. Students open Comic Life, drag in their illustration, and add speech bubbles and fancy lettering.
7. Print and display!
Chicken Chasing Number Stories
Everyday Math is big on number stories. Students solve number stories and write their own. Collaborate with math teachers to have students write number stories about chickens and eggs inspired by the Chicken Chasing Queen.
Equipment needed: computer, projector and printer
Software needed: drawing software
1. Outline criteria for number story.
2. Create a number story as a class.
3. Demonstrate typing the number story on the computer.
4. Demonstrate illustrating the number story.
5. Students work on writing and illustrating their own number story.
6. Print the number stories for use in math class.
An example of a Terrible Hodag number story created by a first grader:
