School and the City

Animal research projects are the way to go when it comes to teaching informational writing. Kids LOVE animals and have so much fun learning and writing about them. But teaching writing is hard. I feel ya. My team felt is was especially hard to teach informational writing including the need for conducting research. That's A LOT for a 3rd grader, y'all! After some trial and error, I've developed templates to use with my students to walk them through the informational writing process. Research We start with a recording sheet to help students track and organize information as they research. I model this for students first. I show them how to read an article and record the information in appropropriate sections. I like to use bullet points because it helps eliminate students copying sentences word for word. This takes a lot of modeling and a lot of practice! It definitely takes a few days, at least, for students to successfully complete thei...