Science has been a big hit this year. Once again we started off with the Steve Spangler Orb experiments to introduce the scientific method. The kids absolutely loved it, and came up with great new questions to ask.
We took advantage of their high motivation and enthusiasm with science to introduce them to nonfiction descriptive text structure and note taking. To show them how to make main idea headings and supporting details for their notes, we read aloud the first part of the book, What Is A Scientist? and modeled note taking for them. Then, in collaborative groups, students read about specific fields of science from this book and another resource. They added to the notes we started, and then presented their findings to the rest of the class. They loved being teachers. We feel so lucky because we got a bonus lesson teaching the main idea and details of the book as we introduced descriptive text structure.
After taking notes, we introduced informative writing. This was our first crack at writing paragraphs that included a topic sentence, supporting details, and a closing sentence. But, it connected perfectly with our teaching of nonfiction descriptive text structure. The students were going to have to describe what a scientist is, and what they do. After introducing the elements of informative writing, our kids started "cooking" their ideas for writing by creating a scientist sticker scene that we bought from Oriental Trading Company.
Finally, it was time to write! We had the students work in collaborative teams to write their first informative essay of the year. We were so proud of not only their results, but also their effort. They were presented with a challenging task, and they persevered through it, and had success! This was a great way to start the year!
We look forward to telling you about more of the connections that are happening in our classrooms. We know we have an exciting and engaging year ahead of us!
Kim and Anne
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