We started studying the Solar System in science. I decided to combine English and Science for this unit. Each student picked their top five planets. I then assigned them to a planet to do research on. We had a brainstorming session where students wrote down a list of questions they had about their planet. Next, we went to the library and checked out books for our planets. The research then began! It was a blast watching as my students discovered that books had information and answers to their questions. I think they always thoughts books were nice to look at and take AR quizzes on, but they had never realized they could get information from them. Our classroom was buzzing with little workers eating up the information in the books. I loved how they would get so excited about a fact they found and wanted to share it with everyone. They also learned that encyclopedias are great sources of information.
We finished our book research and I have students find an article about their planet online with their parents over a weekend. They brought in the article and we learned how to write a summary paragraph using that information. This paragraph would become part of our final paper.
Next we learned how to form good topic sentences, good introductory paragraphs, a body of a paper, and a closing paragraph. Through several days of hard writing work, they pulled through with great rough drafts. They edited them by themselves. Then they edited with a partner. And finally, they edited with me. Once that was done a final copy was written!
Students even wrote bibliographies as we talked about the importance of bibliographies in research papers.
The final results are magnificent!!
Here is a picture of a final paper:
This student titled his paper "The Mysteries of Saturn" and wrote 5 wonderful paragraphs. His handwriting is impressive too! :-)
I'll post a picture later of our summary paragraphs displayed on our Solar System wall.
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