earmal Reports

This last nine weeks the first graders studied about animals and insects. We did a K-W-L chart to start off our lesson. Then the students had to choose an animal that they wanted to learn more about. Students then googled their animal and read about their animal and decided if that is what they wanted to learn more about. Their assignment was to find six facts about their animal that they did not know anything about and write their facts down on a worksheet type of form. Some of the students chose to go to the library and find books about their particular animal. We spent a lot of time working on this because their final product was going to be an animal report that they had written after finding all their facts. We did some editing, using correct spelling, punctuation, etc. The students then re-wrote their report in their best handwriting and drew a picture to go with their report. Then we had an author's tea where we invited our parents to come in and listen to their child read their report. I found images of their animals off of Google and took pictures of their animals and made flipcharts for each one of the animals the students chose. When the parents came to our author's tea, I projected the image of their animal using the promethean board. This way the parents knew what animal the author was reading about and they could see the image on the board with the author's name (for example Bears by Carlos). The parents were very impressed with the student's work and this was a way of getting parent involvement. We served refreshments to our parents after our author's readings. I also posted one of the students work on podbean.com. I recorded four of my students reading one of their facts regarding their animal, but only posted one. It was a good experience for me. The students also were impressed with their images being projected on the promethean board as they read their animal reports. We had a good turnout of parents and the parents were also impressed.

Snakes

This is a photo of a first grade animal report on snakes. Click on the link to hear one fact from the author's report.

http://titamartinez1.podbean.com/mf/web/haikp3/snakes2.mp3