IIM - Independent Investigation Method - Research Project!

For the past few weeks, my class has teamed up with Mrs. Shore's third grade class to start a research project about the rainforest.  We are following IIM, or the Independent Investigation Method.  We have been careful to document all the steps of our research in a powerpoint presentation that we can share it with our parents and our school when we are finished.  We are also going to become published authors when we put all the information we have learned into our own books via Student Publishing!  Here are some of the photos of our project so far!

First, we discussed the vocabulary of IIM and research.  Then we started learning about our topic.  Here is Mrs. Shore reading a book about the rainforest.  We set up a rainforest discovery station with books, photos, and even stuffed animals so that we could learn as much as possible!

We started keeping a glossary of words we are learning as we read about the rainforest.  Here are photos of a 3rd grade glossary and a 1st grade glossary.

We generated questions about the rainforest because there was still so much we wanted to know!  We sorted the questions into topics.  

Here are are 5 Big Questions to answer!

Next it was time to start our research!  First, we talked about plagiarism.  This video really helped explain about why it's important to credit someone else's work.  

We started by siting our sources.  We will record all our sources on this list.  

Now we are working on taking notes.  We discussed what notefacts should look like and have practiced putting information in our own words in a shortened way.  

Now that we are doing our actual research it is almost time to put everything we are learning together into a product!  The class is so excited to become published authors!  Check back for updates on our books!

Easter Eggs!

I saw a cute activity on pinterest for Easter writing, and of course it came from one of my favorite teacher blogs.  You can get the free printable on her site!  Luckily, our librarian had The Easter Egg by Jan Brett, so I got started on this project quickly.  The kids loved the story and were thrilled that they could design their own eggs!