Did You Know? Mini-Research Project

I have used these Did You Know? facts in my classroom for several years in several different ways. Because I am only teaching literacy this year, I haven't been sharing them on our weekly Science board, but I wanted to incorporate them some way. Next week, we begin our big research project around Colorado Animals (read more about past years' work HERE), so I decided to incorporate these facts as a warm-up to internet research!

Here's what you'll need for this quick project:

• Did You Know? Posters: printed four to a page, cut out & laminated
• Did You Know? Posters: printed two to a page, cut out (for publishing)
• Lined Paper (freebie HERE): printed two to a page, cut in half (for publishing)
• 9x11" construction paper: folded in half (for publishing)
• Internet connection (we used our class Chromebooks): for research
• Writer's Notebook: for collecting facts and drafting 

*Quick note: I have two versions of these facts and picked and chose from both sets for my class. There are 35 facts in each set, so you could use one or both sets for your class. Version 1 is linked above and can be found HERE. Version 2 can be found HERE.

We started this in Teacher Time small groups (read more about how I teach Writing Groups HERE). I began by reading through the 1/4 page laminated facts aloud. When a student found interest with a certain fact, I would hand the card to them. We continued this until everyone in the group had a fact to research.

We titled our page: Did You Know? and I had them copy their fact directly underneath (just in case they lost their card).

Our first internet research minilesson was: What makes a good search term? I had them look at their fact and pick two to three key words that they could research. We talked about how one word was too broad, but typing in their entire fact (common occurance!) was not going to give them the resources they would need. I had them work on their Chromebooks in Teacher Time so I could be close by.

Other conversations included perseverance (going on to page 2 if resources on page 1 of the search results didn't give you what you needed), filtering (if you don't understand a resource as a reader, you can't write about it as a researcher-- toss it and find a better resource), and paraphrasing (we used the poster from my Academic Testing Vocabulary Posters to help remind them to put things in their own words).

The expectation was 3-5 facts using bullet points in their Writer's Notebooks. We then worked on getting these facts turned into a paragraph with an introduction and conclusion sentence. As a class, we decided the intro sentence should incorporate the Did You Know? as well as the fact, so we combined then and added an "It's true!" at the end.

Once they got a quick edit from me, I handed them their publishing page (available as a freebie HERE) and we assembled them together as a class. We glued the poster to the front and their research on the inside. They are quick and easy to share and the kids are fascinated by each other's facts.

The biggest take-away from me as their teacher was the search term lessons learned. This has always been a struggle in years past, but by tackling it with a mini-project like this, I found it to be manageable for all of us! I could make quick corrections and they could immediately see that a quality search term yielded much better resources than what they had been trying.

If you're interested in these fun facts, you can pick up Version 1 HERE and Version 2 HERE in my TpT Store. Happy researching!

BONUS GIVEAWAY!!! 

Today is my 3-Year Blogging Anniversary! Woo hoo!! To celebrate this great milestone, I will be giving away ANY three items from my TpT Store to three different winners! Yay!

Just enter below and I will choose a winner next Sunday! Good luck and thank you for sharing this journey with me! You continue to wow, inspire, and encourage me more than you know!

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