Report Writing
Weather Books
Anchor Charts, Common Core, Informational Text, Report Writing, Thinking Maps November 9, 2013I’m a little/lot late in blogging about this, but I still had to share. In September, my 2nd graders and I did an informational text study on weather. We focused on clouds, sunlight, rain, and snow. We read informational books (there are some great weather informational books written by Erin Edison), watched clips on Brainpop Jr., and shared background knowledge. After learning about the type of weather, we created a circle map with facts we learned. Then, we turned the circle maps into an informational book about weather that we wrote together. Since we’ve been studying informational text and text features we also included a table of contents and headings into our books. Here’s a ton of pictures of our work.
Here are our circle maps that we created with the information we learned from the books and the Brainpop videos.
White House – American Symbols Unit
Informational Text, Report Writing, Social Studies, Thinking Maps March 21, 2013So our first grade team took on a huge project and it went so well! American Symbols is one of our social studies standards and with the huge increase in informational text we decided to create a huge unit on it. Each teacher took a symbol – White House, Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, American Flag, and Bald Eagle. Then, we came up with a PowerPoint, books to use, stations etc. My symbol was the White House – see my ideas below…
First, I started out by showing this fun video of a student interviewing President Obama. I started off by telling the kids that we had a mystery symbol today and they had to guess what it was. They loved the suspense and love the video. The video was about 10 minutes long so I picked out the appropriate parts that I thought they would enjoy.
Next, we watched a PowerPoint that I made on the White House. This PowerPoint focused on the main facts that I wanted my first graders to come away knowing. After the PowerPoint, we started a whole group circle map putting up details from the PowerPoint. Then, we read a nonfiction book about the White House and again added more facts.
See our White House Class Circle Map….
Station #4 – World Book Kids Article
Students read a White House article printed from World Book Kids online and highlighted key facts.
The White House has a great website with a virtual tour of the White House. The kids can see a map of the White House and see pictures and information on the various rooms. This is a kid favorite station!