Research

As we strive to create independent learners one of the skills our students need is to research. The phrase "do research" is not one they understand; but rather it is a set of skills that has to be explicitly taught. We believe that research skills can be built upon as grade levels progress, however lots of modeling and scaffolding is necessary for students to truly understand the expectations and be able to reproduce the steps independently.

The Big 6 is a nationally recognized research model. Our school system has adopted this Model to be used with all students from grades kindergarten through twelfth so they have a cohesive understanding of the research steps. The repetition of these steps between grade levels help students learn research as a "routine" and a set of steps they can apply to any project. The Super 3 is meant to be a precursor to the Big 6 and is traditionally used in elementary school. The steps of the Big 6 research process are adaptable to any subject area. For more information and resources visit: http://big6.com

We love graphic organizers! We believe they are key to organizing student thoughts. We introduce every lesson with this Super 3 Planning Sheet so they can think ahead on their entire project.

Depending on the depth of the project and the age of the students, we use one of these note-taking guides for their research notes.

Three Box Note Taking Guide

Four Box Note Taking Guide

For our 2nd grade life cycle project, we divided the class into 5 groups. Each group was assigned an animal (mealworm, ladybug, spider, butterfly, frog). Each student in the group was responsible for researching one stage of their cycle. Students then made a video of their stage. The four stages were merged together into a final product and the class viewed the final products. We broke this project into 4 days:

Day 1: Students were grouped and they went through the Super 3 Research introduction. We talked about what research is, completed the Super 3 Planning Sheet. We then watched a Discovery Education video about the life cycle of a dog to fully understand the concept of a life cycle. ("Introduction to Animal Life Cycles")

Day 2: Students researched using Smores that we created. For 2nd grade, we like to create non-fiction texts on their reading level to guide their understanding. Students completed a note taking guide we created specifically for this project.

• Mealworm Smore
• Ladybug Smore
• Spider Smore
• Butterfly Smore
• Frog Smore

Day 3: Students were given four QR codes. Each QR code took them to a picture of a stage in their life cycle. Students had to decide if that was the stage they researched. If it was, they saved the picture to their iPad, if it wasn't, they scanned another code. We then walked the students through making a video with the Chatterkid app. They recorded themselves talking about their stage.

Students left their iPads together and we airdropped their videos to one iPad and made a video for each animal. We attempted this step with a class and discovered it was much easier for us to do on our own than walk students through it. We put all four videos into iMovie and then exported to the camera roll.

Day 4: We had a viewing party! Students were given a post it note and divided it into four sections. For each video (that was not their own animal), they had to write one fact they learned.

NC Standards Covered:

2.L.1.1 - Understanding stages of life cycles

2.RP.1.1 - Research process

2.TT.1.3 - Tools to present information

• Fourth Grade Light (combined experiments with research)
• "I wonder ..." research projects with 2nd, 3rd and 5th grades inspired by Wonderopolis
• Third Grade Rowan County Research Project (where we live)

Discovery Education videos help us to hook students into a project. It also gives us great access to a wealth of videos to provide background information for students. In addition to students reading non-fiction texts, students can watch videos to learn more about their topic and take notes from there.

We also LOVE Discovery Education Board Builder! We love providing content to students through the use of a board. We provided our fourth grade students a board with videos about light on it. They used that along with print articles to learn all about light! In our example above, we will be moving our non-fiction texts on Smore into a DE Board for each animal. In addition to the text, we can add videos to give them more information. In our third grade reasearch project about Rowan County (where we live), students completed their research on websites and with brochures - but their culminating project was to create a DE Board. A great way to show their learning!!

Renee Cunningham

Media Coordinator

cunninghamro@rss.k12.nc.us

Twitter: @MrsPageTurner

Ann Gregson

Technology Facilitator

gregsonas@rss.k12.nc.us

Twitter: @msgregson