Spider research

Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but in this case, an explanation would probably be appreciated, so here is the story to go with the pictures... FINALLY!!

We have 30/day dedicated to intervention and enrichment in which we take all 90+ of our first graders and group them according to their needs. My group currently consists of 19 kiddos that are reading above grade level for this time of year and so my group is structured as an enrichment group.
My focus last month was on having them read for information. Seeing as my kiddos are reading anywhere from level F - I, I needed text that would be appropriate for all but still allow me to focus on the reading or information objective. To alleviate this issue, I purchase National Geographic's book, Spiders in eBook format through Scholastic and then was able to put it on my iPads using the free Storia app. This was a perfect solution as students were still able to "read" the text but also had the option of having the text read to them if needed.

You can see this groups facts beginning to
be organized on the easel behind them.

While students were "reading" they were give a pack of post-it notes to record their new learning and/or interesting facts on. After we finished recording our facts, students worked with their partners to sort and organize their information into categories of their choice (babies, where they live, what they eat, etc) We had done this once prior as a group when we dug into bats and I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with how well they did independently! Once their post-its were organized, they glued them down onto a 12x18 piece of construction paper so we wouldn't have to resort each day.

Last, students used their information to write an informative piece about spiders. This technique worked very well and gave them the resources and information they needed to write from experience and independently in their own words.