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10 Poetry Books for Kids!

April is national poetry month and if you are not already sharing poetry with your students now is a great time to start. Some educators shy away from reading poetry to their students. Many students think poetry is boring and unexciting. When you tell the kids they are going to listen to some poetry they moan and groan. So what can you do to change this reaction? Read them these 10 poetry books for kids that they will LOVE. There are so many wonderful poetry books that it can be overwhelming. I like to start with poems that will make kids laugh. And there are plenty of silly and wacky poetry books. Many of them are by two authors that I’m sure you know very well: Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. You can’t go wrong by sharing poems from these two. So I am not including their books on my

QR Code Animal Research Reports

One of my favorite nonfiction authors is Steve Jenkins. Students love reading his books and learning about all the different animal facts. The two I love best are Actual Size and What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? I have done several different activities after reading these books to my students including matching the animal to the part mentioned in the book to writing and art activities. Since I bought a set of Chromebooks a few years ago (thank you book fair profit), I have been doing an animal research project with my second and third graders. Students will select one of ten animals and use QR codes that I created to look up facts about the animal. They record their notes and create a simple research report. I chose ten different animals from the book What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? Since I

5 Animal Research Websites for Students

Ready to do some animal research? Finding trustworthy and appropriate animal websites for students to use can be a challenge. Below are my go-to websites that you can feel confident having your students go to. Most of these sites also have videos, games and other educational activities as well. National Geographic for Kids DK Find Out San Diego Zoo Kids These websites below do have some advertisements on them. Ducksters Animal Fact Guide Ready to research and use these animal websites for students? Retry later

Getting Primary Students Ready to Research

We all know just how important it is to teach our students research skills. These include how to find information from print and digital sources, how to evaluate that information and how to use that information correctly. Over the next few weeks, I am going to write a series of blog posts providing ideas, advice, and resources that you can use to get your students ready to research, including your youngest. With kindergarten and first graders, I like to use the term research-readiness. I want to teach my students skills they will need that will help them to prepare to become researchers. This includes learning about the difference between fiction and nonfiction, understanding that nonfiction text teaches us information, understanding that text features help us to find information quickly, and how to begin to search for information on their own. These are things that can be taught throughout the

Biography Research Reports – Print and Digital

These Biography Research Reports can be used for any famous person including historical, current musicians or entertainers or sports stars. There are many different options in both the print and digital versions so you can easily customize the reports to fit the needs of your students. The reports can be used with any sources you have available: library books, encyclopedia articles, articles, online reference sources or internet sites. Print Biography Research Reports There are over 20 pages included in the print reports. Each set comes in color and black and white, with writing lines and without writing lines. Template/pages list: Students can write specific facts about their person on these pages. The personal information sheet will help guide their research by having them answer questions. They can record dates and events on the timeline page and use the summary page to bring all the facts together. On these pages,

Must- Have Biography Series for Elementary Students

My students love reading biographies. Usually, they ask for a biography on a sports star or music performer. They might ask for a biography of someone they learned about in class. And for some reason, they all want to read biographies on Michael Jackson! It can be tough keeping current biographies on the library shelves. Biographies can be expensive and they are outdated as soon as they are printed. Also when it comes to current biographies it’s very possible that students won’t want to read about the person two years from now. So it can be hard to justify the purchase, especially a biography series for elementary students. When choosing biographies I like to stay with the same series for several reasons. I have already determined that the series meets my needs. I know the format of the books in the series. For example, I know what kinds of text

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10 Poetry Books for Kids!

QR Code Animal Research Reports

5 Animal Research Websites for Students

Getting Primary Students Ready to Research

Biography Research Reports – Print and Digital

Must- Have Biography Series for Elementary Students

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