Research Projects and Presentations

Next week, we are going on a double decker bus tour of our city (I got a grant for this through donors choose...see this post for more info).  We wanted to do this field trip because many of our students have lived in this city their entire lives and never seen some of the major landmarks in person.  Even when we were driving to special olympics a few weeks ago, the kids were ooohing and awwing over the smallest things they could see out the windows of the bus (like the lake, a train, etc.).  

So, in order to prepare for this trip, we decided to do research projects about our city.  First, we had kids try to brainstorm places in the city.  They really struggled with this, which made us realize how little they actually knew about the city.  Each student chose a place to research from our brainstormed list.  I got a bunch of books from the school library and some of our higher readers were able to actually able to find their places in the books and write down some facts.  For our mid-level group, this task was too difficult.  So, I put together a facts sheet about all of their places.  They had to sort through all the facts, find the ones about their topic, and write those on a separate sheet of paper.

Then, we used this same worksheet to have kids cut apart and sort facts about all of the different places in the city.

The last thing we will be doing next week, is have each student present on their topic.  I created this visual for appropriate presenter and audience behavior.  This is available for FREE here.

I also created a blank worksheet for kids to fill out while listening to their friends present to work on listening to others' presentations.  This is available for FREE here.  

Overall, my kids have loved this unit...some are even drawing pictures of the skyline for fun during their downtime! Can't wait to see their reactions after our trip next week!

On another note...check out my TPT store tomorrow for my memorial day sale...20% off my entire store!