I love working with students in our school on various different activities, and I have had the joy of helping some struggling second graders become real writers. One of the projects they had to work on was a research paper. I helped them do this with a simple model by using The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. (Affiliate link inserted to help fund this blog.)
If you haven't seen this book, you really need to check it out! It has a simple way of telling about something that makes it easy for students to learn more about something and provides a great mentor text for helping students write in an easy way.
After reading the book aloud to them, I started out by modeling what I wanted them to research. I used a Tree Map to show them the information I found about horses. This also served as the information I wanted them to search for their research. I put a star next to the "important" fact and circled the other information I wanted to include.
After I created my Tree Map, they chose their animals to research and researched to create their Tree Maps.
Then I wrote my paragraph using the information and creating a model for them to use.
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After reading the book aloud to them, I started out by modeling what I wanted them to research. I used a Tree Map to show them the information I found about horses. This also served as the information I wanted them to search for their research. I put a star next to the "important" fact and circled the other information I wanted to include.
After I created my Tree Map, they chose their animals to research and researched to create their Tree Maps.
Then I wrote my paragraph using the information and creating a model for them to use.
They used my model to write a rough draft to edit and revise. Their final copy was complete with a picture at the top.
Overall, these second graders learned a lot about some simple research to get them ready for third grade. They really enjoyed working on this and took great pride in it ~ something they all need!
