Kindergarten Research Projects

It's the end of the year and amazing things are happening in kindergarten! This week we completed our animal research projects. These kiddos blew me away! 

I wrote a blog post all about writing animal research papers in kindergarten HERE if you would like to see how I get this started. Today I will share an update on how our research papers went this year and a little freebie at the end to get you started.

I used a class set of books we received from the Kiwanis earlier in the year. They are from Scholastic and come in sets of 5. Each book has lots of pictures of different kinds of animals so students have choices regardless of the book they pick.

Once students picked their book they went to do a little reading on their own. They picked an animal from the book and started writing. I encouraged them to draw a picture first to really get to know their animal before they decided what facts they were going to share.

 I didn't expect them to jump "write in" and start writing but they did! The class was silent as they went to work writing about their animal. Some sat around the floor to find a quiet area for their research and some build little privacy areas around themselves so they wouldn't be bothered.

A little privacy with folders and her book so she can get to work!

A quiet spot on the floor was all this one needed to get focused.

The thing that always amazes me about these research projects is that students that rarely write a full sentence suddenly are writing pages because they are writing about something that INTERESTS them! That's what we want right? Don't get me wrong, we always have choice in our classroom when it comes to writing but this project just really inspires students to do more.

I had to have this one read to me first but once she read it I got it! ANTS! This sweetie spoke very little English when she came to school and now she is writing her very own research papers on her own. What an accomplishment!

"Ants is bug are red"

 Remember what I said about kiddos that don't write very much. They write "I like..." and are done with it on a daily basis? Well this kiddo gives me that a lot but today was totally different. Notice the phonetic spelling....no copying out of the book here! He did his research and wrote what he wanted to write about his creature. Check out those finger spaces too!

Ok, now for the FREEBIE! If you would like this ALL ABOUT page just click HERE.  It also includes an All About Beavers page that I use the week prior during our Reading Street Building Beavers unit. I blogged about that HERE. It's a great way to do a group research project first before sending your kiddos out on their own.

Thanks for stopping by today! It's been a little while since I have blogged about ANYTHING and it feels good to share a little fun we've had in the classroom! We only have a few weeks left....I don't know exactly and I refuse to countdown. (#takedownthecountdown) I am enjoying every last second with my kiddos!

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