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!

President's Day

 For President's Day we read and watched videos about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  I found this Venn diagram activity on pinterest and had the students complete it as a formative assessment.  We read and discussed each item in advance but some still had trouble deciding where to place them. 

 

After additional teaching, we did a fun persuasive writing activity.  We brainstormed what we would like to do as President and then wrote, trying to use our self editing again.  I took photos of the kids with an American flag and a thumbs up and hung them all outside the door.  They are super cute, and I think I would vote for some of these ideas!

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day we did some writing using our senses to describe love.  After some group brainstorming about what love looks, smells, sounds and feels like, the students finished the sentence starters on their own. 
After attending the first grade conference last month I saw a great presentation about doing writing using the phonics dance.  Since then I have tried to get my kids into self-editing.  They seem to be doing a little bit better, sounding out each of their words when they are done writing a thought, so at least their spelling is phonetically correct. 



We also made pocket hearts for collecting our Valentine's cards.  The directions are below. 

1. Lay one piece of construction paper on top of the other, lining them up as evenly as possible and holding them horizontally.  I put the pink piece on the bottom and the purple piece directly on top of it.
2. Holding both layers together, fold in half to get your center point then unfold (this is only a guideline for finding the center of the page)  Next, bring the two bottom corners up until they meet in the middle along your first fold line.  If using the same colors as I did, the lower half of your page should show 2 pink triangles with a purple rectangle above it.
3. Fold the purple rectangle down then fold the the purple corners to the back and tape in place.
4. Temporarily fold the holder in half and cut the upper corners so they are rounded.  When you unfold the holder it should look like a heart.
5. Write the person's name across the purple band.
6. Decorate the holder with markers, glitter and/or stickers.
7. Tape your holder to the wall and it's ready to receive your Valentine cards

 

100 days of school

Yesterday was the 100th day of school!  Unfortunately, I wasn't in school yesterday to celebrate with my kiddos.  I attended the Texas First Grade Teacher Conference in Austin.  I got some great ideas I am excited to eventually start using, but I missed a lot of fun 100 day activities.

I had the kids work on some 100 themed activities, including measuring how many times they could clap, blink, hop etc in 100 seconds.  They made predictions and then figured it out.  They also tried to come up with 100 food words and 100 animal words.  

Last week we also did this writing activity so that we would already have it on the walls when the 100th day arrived.  We brainstormed what we would all be like when we are 100 years old.  This was seriously the funniest writing I have ever read from my firsties.  They completely cracked me up with their ideas about older people and their big underwear, dentures, and bingo playing.  

We made some artwork to go with it but kept it real simple because we were in a hurry on a Friday afternoon.  They used cotton for the hair and drew wrinkles and spectacles etc.!  

Chinese New Year

For Chinese New Year we watched some videos and made a graphic organizer about how people celebrate.  We also looked at the Chinese Zodiac and read about the personalities of the animals for the years the students were born.

They wrote about how they planned to celebrate Chinese New Year and made dragon masks with construction paper to decorate.  They came out pretty great!

Martin Luther King Day

I saw this idea for a really cute writing activity on pinterest.  Great directions for how to make the artwork can be found here.  I cut all the paper ahead of time and made my own as I helped the kids step by step.  

The writing prompt they were given was to write about a dream they have for the future.  They wrote the cutest, sweetest things!



On a separate note, although I have had parents sign media release forms for the photos, I have gone back through all the photos on my blog and added little sunglasses or pencil stickers using picnik in order to protect the anonymity of my students.  In the future I will not add photos of the children themselves, and just focus on their work.

Santa writing

I got this idea from a post on pinterest.  I thought my kids would be excited to make these.  They came out so cute in all their different shapes and sizes.  

The sentence starter I gave them was: "Oh no, Santa is stuck in my chimney!"  I asked them to come up with three ideas for how to get Santa out.  We wrote our three ideas on a graphic organizer and shared them out before beginning our first draft, or sloppy copy.  Doing a "status of the class" share out like that is helpful for my kids because they get to see many examples and ideas that they can feed off of.  I am so proud of how their writing is improving!

Pilgrim writing

Back when I posted about our Pilgrim compare/contrast activity, I mentioned that we started a writing activity. 

First, we read 2 books about life on Plimouth Plantation.  One was about a boy and all of his responsibilities and chores, and one was about a girl's daily life.  I gave the students a writing prompt which was: "If I were a pilgrim boy/girl..." and they were instructed to write about what their daily activities and lives would be like. 

First, students wrote a first draft, or sloppy copy.  When they finished this, I collected them and made corrections in purpl marker.  After a conference to discuss the changes and correctiond, they got started on their final drafts. 

I have a book of writing Tops and Bottoms that has a cute little Pilgrim Boy and Pilgrim Girl.  When the students were finished with their final copies, they decorated and cut out their pilgrim people and pasted it on construction paper so it looked like they held up the papers.

This little guy has his hands backwards. 

 We hung them all on the wall outside our classroom door for everyone to read and enjoy before Thanksgiving!

Clouds flipbook

We have been studying seasonal changes and weather patterns in science.  This week we focused on clouds.  We read books and watched videos about different kinds of clouds and the weather they bring.  After making a graphic organizer together as a class on the board, the kids made these cute flip books.  They labeled the outside flap with the name of the cloud, described it underneath, and made a picture using cotton balls.  I love the cute things they wrote!

Halloween Writing Activities

I saw so many great ideas for Halloween crafts on Pinterest.  I couldn't decide which one I wanted to do, so we just did 'em all!  

We started last week with the witch's skirt.  I provided all the paper and the students made their own.  Then we thought of as many Halloween adjectives as we could to describe our witches.

On Halloween we read a book about a mummy and a skeleton.  We used our comprehension strategies to make predictions about the outcome and we also used visualizing with the adjectives in the book to make a good picture in our heads.  

After I showed them the artwork they would create, I gave them a sentence starter and we wrote a description together of a mummy on the board.  

They did a great job on their own writing!  Happy Halloween!